Notes from my Knapsack 6-5-2025
Jeff Gill

A few words about Joseph Warren, 250 years later


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As I hope you're aware, there are many plans being made around Ohio and the nation at large for 2026's 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The America 250-Ohio organization has been active around Licking County already, and we'll hear more from their cooperating groups in coming months.

Back in 2023 I had the pleasure of noting an early 250th anniversary, of Rev. David Jones passing through Licking County on February 10-11 in 1773 and leaving the first detailed historical reference to our area. And 1776 brings us to 250 years next summer.

But we just marked 250 years since the Battles of Lexington and Concord, generally acknowledged as the formal beginning of the Revolutionary War (the Boston Massacre in 1770 & the Boston Tea Party in 1773 early eruptions of what was to come). April 19, 1775 was "the shot heard 'round the world" at Concord Bridge, an overt hostilities between the local militia, the Minutemen for how quickly they trained to be ready to meet British regulars, and the armed forces of the Crown.

I had started to tell you all about our West Courtroom's art, and will return to the subject; Todd Kleismit, the America 250-Ohio executive director came on May 1 to help us mark the restoration of that glorious space. But I wanted to pause that narrative to mark an event I've long found inspiring.

June 17, 1775 is having a 250th commemoration, and it's the date of the Battle of Bunker Hill, just across the Charles River from Boston. The British forces moved to push Colonial troops out of fortifications overlooking the harbor, thinking as one of their generals said that "this untrained rabble" would not take much pushing.

They pushed back. One general commanding the valiant defense, Israel Putnam, was cousin to Ohio's renowned Rufus Putnam; another who leapt to front line defense while holding a general's commission was Dr. Joseph Warren. Thanks to Esther Forbes's 1944 novel "Johnny Tremain," I've long had a soft spot for the humane doctor behind the patriotic legend, and history supports much of how Forbes portrayed him, and how Disney depicted him in 1957's movie version.

The actual Joseph Warren has Warren County in Ohio named for him, among fourteen states with one, along with a dozen cities and a few dozen townships across the United States. He took command of a redoubt, a strong point at the hinge of the thin American lines, where that "untrained rabble" held off three charges by well-trained British troops until their ammunition ran out, and faced with long rifles and fixed bayonets, their lines broke.

Not Warren, though. In 2011 his skull was exhumed and forensically examined. The shot that killed him left a clean circle on his left cheekbone, unmistakably indicating the calibre of round which was that of an officer's handgun, and the damage in the back of the skull marked the angle the shot was fired from. It was almost certainly an officer, on horseback, who recognized the Patriot leader, and in fury at the casualties his forces took in gaining the ground, shot a standing, unflinching Joseph Warren in cold blood.

He was brave, he was steadfast, he stood his ground, and his death inspired the Revolution that was to come, and outlived him. I honor his memory this June 17th, and you might want to, as well.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; this isn't the last America 250 piece you'll read by him! Tell him what inspires you in history at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 5-30-2025

Faith Works 5-30-2025
Jeff Gill

Are there missing verses in my Bible?


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Apparently, there's a social media post going around on clips and reels and memes and such, talking excitedly about "missing verses" in someone's Bible, and that "they" (we all know about "Them!" of course) are making scriptural verses disappear.

After answering a couple of direct questions, this sounded like a definite item for this column, but I ask your forgiveness in advance: it will take two weeks. So this one won't resolve the whole issue!

On "missing" verses, it's true up to a point; many if not most modern translations have had to deal with new information about ancient texts in Greek and Hebrew. As for "missing," any translation I know has moved them into footnotes, so they're on the page, but not in the main body of the text.

To keep it as brief as I can, there is in the textual history of Scripture a number of verses which are "problematic." In the hundreds of Greek and Syriac and other early (pre-Latin) manuscripts (because the Bible is translated into Vulgate Latin by St. Jerome in about 400 AD, well after the first manuscripts in Greek script were written down), there are variations. Small variations, but unmistakable ones.

You can have ten versions of a New Testament book, like Matthew or John or Ephesians, all from before 300 AD, and within those ten texts three or four different phrases at the end of a line, or as a section transition into the next. Scholars for millennia have had to pick and choose WHICH reading of a verse or line to use in creating the new translation -- as Jerome did in Bethlehem making his Latin translation.

Luther is kind of his own thing (largely influenced by Erasmus, whom we'll come back to) in German, but when the English Reformation got rolling, influenced by Luther's translation and Calvin's work in Geneva, King James organized around 60 scholars to give English a good translation; before the Reformation, Wycliffe and Tyndale (and Coverdale) had already done versions in English, which the Roman Church condemned, as they used exclusively the Vulgate Latin. King James's translation team in 1604 used Wycliffe & Tyndale & Coverdale's work as a starting, but they wanted to go back to Hebrew & Greek originals themselves -- so they had to wrestle with which Greek text?

They chose the 1516 "Textus Receptus" which just means "Received Text," the brilliant Erasmus's best shot in the early 1500s to assemble a reliable consensus Greek text from the ancient manuscripts available -- at that time. The King James committee also chose the Masoretic text of the Hebrew scriptures (and used the Vulgate for the Apocrypa because they were running out of time by 1610, but that's not an issue for most American Protestants, so I'll skip that), which was a translation of a translation, but it would do until the Dead Sea Scrolls appeared in 1946.

The final "Authorized Version" of 1611 for the King, known today as the "King James Version" made a number of different choices than Erasmus in the New Testament reading of variant texts; some good choices, some because they suited the king's needs in the politics of the day. Puritans, who end up in large numbers coming to America in the next few decades, weren't thrilled with the AV, or KJV, because of those variations, but quickly it dominates in English over the "Geneva Bible" though many copies of it would make their way to the Colonies with the Puritan emigrants . . .

So there's already in 1611 a history of variant readings in different translations. This is all because Erasmus didn't have ALL the Greek manuscripts available to him when he assembled the "Textus Receptus," plus more very old manuscripts were yet to be found in the monastic libraries of the Far East.

That's part one on "missing verses" in today's Bibles; come back next week for part two!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he wishes he read Syriac, but textual studies requires more patience than he possesses. Tell him what you've always wondered about at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.