Hip and Thigh: November 2005

I wish to continue in my series examining what I believe are so as to defend their belief that the King James translation is alone the Word of God. These 6 arguments are not exhaustive, but represent a summary of key unquestioned and unaffirmable KJV only presuppositions used for the defense of their position.

With this post, I come to the third key argument, the textual argument.

King James onlyists believe the King James translation is derived from the best manuscript evidence of the original biblical languages. Some will go so far as to say the original Hebrew and the original Greek language texts used by the King James translators represented the exact duplicates of the original prophetic oracles of the Old Testament for example, as well as the original apostolic epistles from the New Testament. So, in other words, when the KJV translators were translating Isaiah, they were looking at what was really a photographic copy of Isaiah'’s original collection of prophecies.

When they were translating the book of 1 John, it was if the Apostle John just wrote it the day before.

The King James onlyists further claim we can trace God's direct, providential hand guiding the transmission of the biblical texts down through history. God'’s providential direction is clearly evident in the language texts used by the KJV translators.

I will take up this idea of textual, providential guidance in a later post, but with this one, I thought it would be helpful to present a quick overview of textual criticism because it is so misunderstood by the vast majority of Christians, as well as maligned by KJV onlyists.
To begin, we need to pause and consider the value of our printed Bibles. Christians in our modern world fail to realize how recent printing has come on the scene and appreciate how it transformed our world.

Up until about 1450, when Gutenberg invented his printing press, all published material was hand written. Any sizable document took a while to hand copy, and if there were a need for many copies of the same document, depending on the available human copiers, it would take some time to duplicate them. Printing revolutionized how we communicated with one another, something that was heavily exploited by the Reformers during the Reformation.

In a similar fashion, we see an information revolution happening over the last 10 years with the emergence of the Internet and email. Ten years ago, I didn't have email. If I wished to write a friend in Arkansas from California, I had to take the time to write out the letter (or type it), put it in an envelope, and mail it.

My letter would probably take 3-4 days to make it to Arkansas. My friend would then have to take the time to respond to me, mail his letter, which again would take 3-4 days to return to me. Depending upon how quickly our letters got turned around there was maybe an 8 to 10 day period of me sending a letter and waiting for a reply.

Now, with email, my letter is in my friend'’s email box with in five minutes. If there happens to be a glitch in the system, my message might be delayed a day. Even more remarkable is how I can email a friend around the world in the same amount of time.

As email is to letter writing, so printing was to publishing. It took the transmission of information to a new level never before considered. When Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the church door, by the next day, there were a multitude of printed copies.

To have hand written them would have taken several days or more.

The original biblical texts were hand written - painstakingly copied by a variety of different people in different areas of the world with varying degrees of abilities. These hand written texts are called manuscripts.

Thus, when people speak of manuscripts, they have in mind hand written documents.

Materials -- What the manuscript is written on. Papyrus is paper made from processed reeds.

It is easily the cheapest material in production of a manuscript. Parchment, on the other hand, is made of leather from some sort of animal. It is more time consuming to make, plus it is pricey, because animals were not cheap in the ancient world.

Only important documents were reserved for parchment.

Form -- What the manuscript looks like. The manuscript could be either in a scroll form: pieces sown together to make a roll.

Generally, parchment was used for scrolls. Or, the manuscript could be in codex form: bound together like a book.

Completeness -- How much of the manuscript is available to study.

It could be in fragments, or what is a small portion of a text. It could also be partial, a small portion of a chapter, or maybe a page from a manuscript. It could also be a whole, complete document, all the way to being an entire OT or NT.

Style -- How the manuscript was written. The manuscript could be written in uncial style, or all capital letters. Or in minuscules, small letters.

Also, the text could be arranged in columns or be a single running text.

With the NT alone, we have nearly 5,500 pieces of manuscript evidence either entire, partial, or in small portions. That does not include the lectionary citations, what would be early worship books, Church father citations, and the multitude of early translations of scripture.

Put together, experts believe the NT has 20 thousand plus pieces of manuscript evidence attesting to the veracity of the NT documents. The textual evidence for the NT dwarfs any other book or document in ancient history.

Keeping all of this evidence in mind, there is a fundamental question we need to answer: With all of these tangible pieces of manuscript evidence, how do we boil it all down to produce a working apparatus used for translating a Bible?

This is where textual criticism comes into action. The idea of a textual critic has a negative connotation attached to it because people mistakenly believe a critic is criticizing the Bible and casting doubt upon God'’s Word. This is hardly the case.

A critic is someone who evaluates the quality of a produced work of some sort. There are movie critics, art critics, and drama critics as well as critics of other literary documents. For example, there are critics surrounding the publication of Jonathan Edwards's handwritten sermon manuscripts.

Though we know our modern day critics will make critical remarks against a movie for instance, their job is to evaluate the quality of the film, not just talk bad about it. In the same way, textual critics of the NT evaluate the quality of all the available manuscript evidence so as to determine what the original autographs said. They deal with the four areas I highlighted: materials, forms, completeness and style.

The role of a critic is imperative because we are dealing with hand written documents, and hand written documents copied over and over for a long period of time will contain variants. What exactly is a variant? It is any reading of a particular verse or passage that will vary between two or more manuscripts of the same verse or passage.

For instance, perhaps a passage in a group of manuscripts will read, The Lord Jesus Christ, where as in another group of manuscripts we find in the same passage the words, Jesus Christ. The words the and Lord are added to the first group, but absent from the second.

What is the cause of these variants?

There could be a multitude of causes. The most common is human error when copying; anything from fatigue causing mistakes, sloppy penmanship, not paying attention when copying, etc. There are also intentional variants, like harmonizing two similar sounding passages, particularly between the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Whatever the case, a trained textual critic can evaluate the value of these variants, sort through them and draw some reasonable conclusions as to which one represents the original writing of the prophet or apostle. For example, one of the most reasonable conclusions when evaluating variants is to take the oldest reading. A copy of the book of Luke that dates to just 200 years after Christ is more than likely going to reflect the original book of Luke, than a copy of Luke that is dated a 1,000 years after Christ.

Why is that? Because the book dated a 1,000 years after Christ is more likely to have gathered more and more variants as it is representative of a copy that is the end product of a vast amount of copying over a millennium of time. The manuscript just 200 years removed from Christ has not been around a long enough time to pick up copying errors.

Despite how well tuned textual criticism has become over the years after the Reformation when Christians became interested in determining the original text, KJV onlyists cast a dark shadow of suspicion over the helpful role it has played in sharpening our understanding of the biblical documents. They do this in a couple of ways:
They will exaggerate the significance of the variants, implying that God'’s Word becomes lost among all of them. They claim in their literature that the manuscripts utilized by modern versions are different in THOUSANDS of places, suggesting that any modern version is an entirely different Bible altogether, as if it is like comparing the story of Jesus from The Book of Mormon with the historical Jesus of the NT documents.

Also, KJV onlyists will claim that many of these variants are a result of heretical men intentionally altering the Bible so as to promote their heresy. For example, KJV onlyists imply that heretical individuals would slightly alter the biblical text to water down Christ'’s Deity, or make Him appear to be a created being. In fact, pretty much all KJV literature has a section providing extensive verse comparisons between the KJV, which is suppose to be translated from the pure, providentially guided texts, and a variety of modern versions, which are suppose to be translated from a text that reflects these heretical alterations.

The problem, as we will see, is there is no evidence of such heretical corruption. It just doesn't exist. If anything, orthodox Christians leaned toward altering the text so it will reflect orthodoxy more clearly.

I will take up the separate question of whether or not heretics have corrupted our Bibles in a later post. I also direct readers to a Q and A I wrote on my website addressing .

In closing, I believe it is important for Christians to have a correct understanding of textual criticism.

It is not a boogey man that is to be feared, but is an essential process in maintaining the integrity of our Bible. The next time I will take up the transmission of the OT documents and the NT documents, and consider the KJV view of providential preservation.

11/9 Greetings to all you readers, and thanks Alan for the plug.

is a typical KJV only, classic dispensationalist, antinomian, Arminian Fundamental Baptist. He toils under the delusion that he has some sort of reputable apologetic, end-times ministry guarding the Christian Church.

He regularly posts articles under the section of his website entitled, . Generally, Mr. Cloud has to re-publish his posted articles because the information he is alerting his readers about is out-of-date and filled with blunderous errors of fact.

A good example of this is a daily article listing from in which he criticized Steve Camp for his call to reform Contemporary Christian music. Aside from his ridiculous criticisms of Steve and his , Mr. Cloud consistently cites out of date information about Steve.

The most amusing is his biographical background to Steve where Mr. Cloud states he is a member of John MacArthur's . The fact of the matter is that Steve was once a member of Grace from 1998-1999 and by the time Mr.

Cloud published his criticisms of him, Steve had been living in Nashville for nearly four years.

Why I did this, I don't know, but I took the time one afternoon to write Mr. Cloud and correct his error about Steve's Church membership.

I pointed out that many of his Daily Articles are rank with these sort of errors and that he would do his ministry good if he would take the time to do better research on those subjects he is posting about. All I got in return was a dismissive "thank you, but I know what I am doing you amateur punk" style email.

What has Mr.

Cloud posted this time? Well, in his November 3rd posting, Mr. Cloud warns his readers of some .

He lists 14 major heresies meddling the Church in these end times. Basically, it is the typical cult heresies like the denial of Christ's deity, the rejection of the Trinity, Pentecostal errors and so forth. But scroll down to number 12 and guess which false teaching Mr.

Cloud has named? Why it is none other than Calvinism. Bahaaaaaa.

You can just see the blood dripping from the point of the v.

12. The false teaching that God chooses who will be saved and that only those who are chosen can be saved (Calvinism)
a.

The Bible says that God wants all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:3-5; 2 Pet. 3:9).

b. Jesus died for the sins of all men, not just some who are pre-chosen (1 John 2:1-2).
c.

God has ordained that every person who believes on Christ will be saved (Jn. 6:40).
d.

God has commanded that the gospel be preached to every person (Mark 16:15).
e. The Holy Spirit convicts every sinner and Jesus draws and gives light to every sinner (Jn.

1:9; 12:32; 16:7-8).
f. Believers are the elect of God, but that does not mean that God chooses some to be saved and the others not to be saved.

Election is based on God'’s foreknowledge (1 Pet. 1:2).

Yes, all the Calvinists I know just hate evangelizing because why take precious time away from smoking pipes and reading heavy theology just to witness to the lost when God has already chosen whom He wants to save?

Please. Don't you just admire the way he is able to roll every Arminian platitude and eisegetical interpretation into 6 brief bullet points? And this guy really thinks he is a legitimate defender of the Christian faith?

If there is no one in particular contending for the , I certainly nominate David Cloud.

I would like to continue further into my examination of the .

I have already considered the first argument called the . This time, I move to the second one on my list that I call the promise argument.

The promise argument can be summarized as follows: According to KJV advocates, God has promised throughout the pages of scripture that He will preserve His Word.

This promise of preservation entails more than just the message of God's entire revelation, but the actual words in the physical, autographic biblical text. Put another way, God does more than promise the preservation of His overall revelation, but has promised the preservation of the very words as the prophets and apostles originally penned them.
One of the more scholarly KJV advocates, D.

A. Waite, describes this promise argument in this manner,
You may be asking yourself, "Do we have the Words of God today?" or, "Are the Words of God intact today?

" I believe every one of the Words of God has been preserved or kept right down to the present. There are two strong reasons for this. (1) The first reason why I believe in Bible preservation is that God has repeatedly promised in both the Old and New Testaments, that He would preserve and keep every one of His Words that originally gave in the Hebrew and Greek languages.

(2) The second reason I believe in Bible preservation is that God has always kept His promises in the past, and we assume that He will keep up this perfect record in the present and on into the future. (Defending the King James Bible, 1995 edition, pg. 6)
Because God has promised such accurate, pristine preservation of His Word that in turn means there must be an available copy of the original autographic text of the Hebrew and Greek containing His preserved Word.

King James advocates obviously conclude that available copy was to be found in the original language texts utilized by the KJV translators: the Ben Chayyim edition of the Masoretic text for the Hebrew of the OT and the Erasmus Received Text for the Greek of the NT.

I will be covering the idea of biblical preservation in more depth when I come to the textual argument, but here I want to look at the KJV only claim that God has promised, as Waite stated, He would preserve and keep every one of His Words that He originally gave in the Hebrew and Greek languages.

Does God's promise to preserve His word extend beyond the divinely revealed message of the whole of scripture so as to encompass the physical copies of the original autographs?

Let me state here that I do affirm God's preservation of His revelation as it is contained in the pages of the Bible. I believe God has preserved His Word with such care that any reputable, conservative English translation conveys accurately what the original authors wrote. I reject, however, the KJV only claim that God's promise of preservation involves God providentially guiding the transmission of one group of manuscripts down through history and protecting it from any variation among the copies.

I further reject the KJV only idea that God supernaturally directs the copyists of the biblical text to copy the original biblical document with exact precision so as to keep it from containing variants, and that God guided the copyists to re-insert words and phrase that allegedly fell out from the text either accidentally or intentionally. Yes, I believe God preserves His Word, but I believe it is in the totality of all the available manuscript evidence, variants and copyist errors included. Again, I will cover preservation in fuller detail at a later time.

First, I believe the KJV advocates falsely equate the idea of "God's Word" or "words" with the exactness of the physical text. Now, I need to be absolutely clear here. I am not saying that we can't point to a physical Bible and affirm it is the Word of God.

I certainly believe that. What I am saying is that the biblical idea of God's Word has always been God's divine revelation, and not the physical text.

Through out the Bible, the writers of scripture speak of God's revelation as the Word of the Lord, or in the plural, the Words of the Lord.

The Word of the Lord is either revealed by speech, the proclamation of a prophet or apostle; or by writing, the written sermons of a prophet or the epistles of an Apostle. The term, Word of the Lord or the Words of the Lord, is synonymous with the whole of God's divine revelation. Eventually, that divine revelation was encapsulated in the biblical documents containing the 39 books of the OT and the 27 of the NT.

The Bible then is a written record of the divine mind revealed to man, particularly God's redeemed people and can properly be considered, The Word of God.

The Word of the Lord testifies to itself as being infallible, pure, true, trustworthy, holy and all the other theologically descriptive terms used to explain its source being from God. Once God's revelation was written down, however, men had to maintain copies of that revelation in order to transmit it through history.

Those copies, unlike the divine revelation with its source in an infallible God, are man-made with their source in fallible men, and as a result, errors of transmission seep into the copies. In fact, variants are an unavoidable reality with handwritten documents like the manuscripts for the Bible. Regardless of how meticulous a person will be to guard against mistakes when copying, mistakes do happen.

We have about 3,000 pieces of manuscript evidence for the OT documents and 5,500 pieces of manuscript evidence for the NT documents. Even the cleanest, most intact manuscripts from this collection contain variants and mistakes. (I recognize that KJV onlyists exaggerate the significance of these variants as to their impact upon scripture, but I will take that up in a later post).

Men make mistakes in copying and God in His wisdom was pleased to allow that to happen. However, the mistakes found in the physical texts of copied scripture do not equate the loss of the divine revelation. The divine revelation is still infallible, pure and trustworthy.

It is the copied physical text that contains the errors. KJV advocates insist that if any deviation takes place in the actual physical copy, then God's revelation has been marred or worse still, lost. Yet, God has never promised that He will prevent the miscopying of His divine revelation that is written.

What God has done is to entrust godly men to copy His Word and do the best they can under normal circumstances in maintaining the text's integrity. And, in spite of all the many copying mistakes, godly men have done a remarkable job of keeping the text's integrity despite KJV advocates accusation of intentional corruption by heretics.

Furthermore, God allows His written divine revelation to be translated, and translation definitely alters the original, autographic text by removing it from the original biblical language and rendering it into another, entirely different language.

The presence of foreign language versions of God's written revelation that have been used of God to bring men to salvation, along with guiding His people, is alone enough to disprove the promise argument as put forth by KJV advocates.
The most problematic area where the KJV promise argument falls apart is with the abuse of scripture KJV advocates utilize in order to defend their claim of God's promise. For example, D.

A Waite examines 15 passages of scripture in his attempt to demonstrate that God has promised to keep every word in tact to this very day that was originally written by the original authors. Though many of the passages he cites speak of God's promises never failing, none of them have any relevance to God promising to preserve His Word on a textual level exactly as the original authors wrote it. Waite ignores the context from where the passages are taken and infers his own conclusions by reading into them what he wants them to say in an eisegetical manner.

The one passage nearly all KJV only advocates appeal to in order to establish the promise argument, however, is Psalm 12:6,7. Probably the first KJV advocate to use this passage in defense of God's promise of preservation reaching into the King James translation, was 7th -Day Adventist, Benjamin Wilkinson, in his book Our Authorized Version Vindicated and re-published in D.O.

Fuller's book, Which Bible?

The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

(KJV)
Removed from its immediate context, and read with KJV only presuppositional glasses, the passage appears to vindicate what KJV advocates argue. God's words are pure words and He will keep and preserve those words through every generation forever. The immediate antecedent for the plural pronoun them is the plural noun, words.

Thus, it would make sense to conclude that God has promised to preserve His words.

However, the Hebrew language is sharply different from English in that it has grammatical gender, something not common to English. In Hebrew, the pronouns will match the antecedent nouns in both number and gender.

Here is Psalm 12:6,7, the two thems of verse 7 are masculine in gender and with the second them actually being singular (literally, him). The closest antecedents in our English translation, the two words in verse 6, words, are really feminine, so the two nouns do not match the masculine thems. The closest masculine nouns are found back in verse 5 with poor and needy.

Hence, God is not promising to preserve the text of scripture, but preserves the poor and the needy from being overwhelmed by the ungodly. When considered in its entire context, that interpretation appropriately fits. Doug Kutilek has detailing this passage in light of the KJV only promise argument.

In summary, the KJV only claim of God promising to preserve every word written in the original autographs so that even this very day we can hold what amounts to a photo copy of Paul's letter to Titus, fails in light of the historic evidence. Yes, God is faithful to keep His revelation from corruption and this I believe He has accomplished. However, it was not in the manner that KJV onlyists claim.