Inerrant

What do you think? Do you honestly believe a KJVO church would actually make such a statement, given their absurd claims about the KJV?

If in fact there were a church with said statement and it became KJVO (God forbid) they would certainly change it.

Errors in translations (MV) are man made errors. This is why MV's are not inerrant. The KJV has some errors in translation as well.

- Blessings

 

Some of those Baptist churches are not KJVO that include that statement, and then some include that statement that ARE KJVO, but want to make a distinction from other Baptist churches that hold to a position that the KJV "corrects" the Greek (a misunderstanding of Ruckman's position on the KJV), but by extension, since they believe that the original writings are inerrant, and the KJV being the only current English translation translated from those writings, that the KJV by extension is inerrant.

Ascribing inerrancy to ONLY the original writings is a farce. That is confusing the difference between inerrancy and inspiration. Many make the argument that copies do not fall under either inerrancy or inspiration, also a farce. When Jesus quoted Isaiah 61 in Luke 4:18, He was quoting from a COPY of the originals, and yet this verse and numerous others like it were still what Paul considered "ALL scripture is given by inspiration of God". In Revelation 1, John wrote 7 letters to the 7 churches in Asia. If inspiration was limited to "the originals" which one of the 7 letters was the original! When Paul wrote that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, Revelation had not even been written yet, so if inspiration does not include future copies and writings, then Revelation would not be inspired.

Modern Versions (MV)

This is a lengthy subject that couldn't be covered in a comment. But there is a lot of dishonesty among the translators of the MV's. It's become a very big business (at one point, Rupert Murdock, owner of Fox News and some other very questionable and ungodly publications, owned the rights to the NIV). You can now create a Bible to fit whatever your doctrinal preferences are. If you don't like a reading somewhere, revise it and make another bible.

The "scholars" attempt to confuse everyone with thousands of translations, reclassifying manuscripts (mss) into different families/groups of mss when a certain text supports the KJV it is shuffed off to another group so as to appear that the "best and more reliabe" texts do not support it. And straw man arguments are erected against the KJV (1611 or 1769 Blayney, where was the word of God before 1611, "scholar" or "skolar" etc..).when the issues are raised about the major doctrinal errors and omissions contained in the MV's. Critics will point out KJV copyist errors (because the printing press malfunctioned or was not caibrated correctly) who don't know the difference between VERSION and EDITION.

Examples:

Mark 16: MV's remove last 12 verses of the entire chapter (or have a footnote denying it's validity). Dean John Burgon wrote a book "The Last Twelve Verses of Mark" that have never been refuted defended the mss evidence for this.

Acts 8:37 "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God" removed, or the entire verse is removed altogether

1 Tim 3:16 "God" exchanged for "He" so you can't tell that Jesus is God from this verse.

Daniel 3:25, "THE Son of God" is changed to "a son of the gods".

John 1:18, Jesus is either made to be the only "begotten God" or as the ESV reads "No one has ever seen God; the only God,[e] who is at the Father's side,[f] he has made him known" which makes the Father NOT GOD.

Matthew 18:11 "For the Son of man came to seek and save that which was lost" removed.

These are just a few SMALL handful of changes and omissions made in the MV's that affect major doctrines of the Bible. Even in a debate yesterday about free will, someone quoted a verse from one Bible in Leviticus, where "offered voluntarily of his own will" was removed in the other. So it DOES make a difference. There are almost 8,000 deliberate changes made in the modern texts underlying the MV's. Examination of the Westcott and Hort texts shows erasure marks ON THE GREEK MANUSCRIPTS used to support the MVs.

Common sense says if God told us to preach the WORD, we must have a copy of it somewhere. Not just CONTAINED in a book, because even a dictionary you can find the words of God somewhere, but IS the Word of God. If there are thousands of Bibles that contradict each other on MAJOR DOCTRINAL ISSUES, then they can't possibly all be the same; that defies the laws of non-contradiction. If faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, where is the word of God? There are no more "original" manuscripts, so when a scholar tells you "that's not in the 'ORIGINAL' manuscripts" he's LYING to you.

MV critics of the KJV will simply have you believe that God is not omnipotent enough to preserve His word. So they muddy the waters by trying to bring confusion as to the trails of where the copies came from. Any honest scholar that is NOT on an MV translating committee (i.e. James White) that has done an honest evaluation of the manuscript evidence will admit that the evidence that God's word has been perfectly preserved is in the KJV. Common sense tells you that you can't have 2 entirely different lines of manuscripts produce the same Bible. ONE OF THEM IS WRONG. And since the MV's come from a line of manuscripts whose foundation is based on a ROMAN CATHOLIC manuscript found in a dumpster in a Vatican library (Codex Vaticanus), it's not hard to tell which line is wrong.

 

Salty,

Textual variants do not have a negative impact on any doctrinal content. It truly is amazing to comprehend how so many different manuscripts can have almost complete agreement.

 

"Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian" Acts 26:28

How would you like to be "almost" saved

 

Inerrancy is over rated

 

When people bring up conflicts between various accounts (did Jesus heal the blind man while entering Jericho or exiting?), I don't see that as a bad thing but good. It confirms that these evangelists did not forge their accounts but were motivated by the gospel to communicate the gospel in the narrative. Each read vertically rather than harmonizing, those details wouldn't really matter.

 

Even atheists use the plethora of bible versions against Christians. The multitude of so many translations is an indictment against Christianity.

When the Romney/Osama campaign was underway, the Atheist's put out a billboard:

"Sadistic God, Useless Savior, 30,000+ Versions of Truth"

 

It is one thing to have various accounts that harmonize with each other when examined, quite another to have accounts that have explicit contradictions among each other.

 

And yet, that is what we have.

 

My own personal opinion is that the most accurate translation into the American English is the American Standard Version.

I use the NIV rarely and never warmed to the flow of the text, and I do question the foundational text(s) used to support that translation. But I leave that for others to discuss.

I definitely like the Geneva Bible, and love mulling over the writing of Tyndale when it is in its original form - when compared to the ASV there is a wonderful cohesiveness. It shows that even early translators who were a lot smarter than me were outstandingly honest and scholarly in their handling of the texts.

What I suppose bothers me most, is that folks will actually argue over what is the Word of God.

 

This is tricky. On the one hand, we have no original writings. All the manuscripts that we have are copies of the originals. So, to the extend they are faithful copies, they are inerrant.

An important part of "faithful translations" is the role of Holy Spirit in preserving scripture throughout church history. This is seen, IMHO, in the overwhelming accuracy between literally tens of thousands of documents. There are small variations that people point out, but they miss the obvious... overwhelming accuracy in nearly all cases.

 

Ahhhh! Inerrancy is way over rated and can't be applied to any translation.

 

If the Bible is not inerrant and infallible (the two are inexorably linked) then it is not trustworthy or authoritative. Inerrancy is not about translations, it is about the original autographs from which all subsequent copies and translations trace their origin. If the source is wrong then the translations we have today are wrong. And yes, my dear KJVO friends, that means the KJV is wrong.

 

You you......Heretic! !! :laugh:

 

Two issues.

I think you think that the OT was written much in the same way the NT was written. However, many OT documents exhibit editorial remarks that made its way into the text. So one would have to ask, when was it inspired? When Moses wrote much of the Law. Or when someone (Ezra?) added editorial remarks? What it inspired completely when it was uncomplete? Or the Psalms. Was it inspired when David first sang the song (or wrote it down?)? Or was it fully inspired after someone (Ezra?) compiled the psalms and arranged them theologically to add further truth and doctrine to the psalms than when left individually?

Second, I'm not sure that inerrancy and infallible are inexorably tied together. As I have stated, in parallel accounts, we want and expect differences in the minor details. That way, we know they are not forgeries but original to the person who was writing them. The truth that each communicates in its own right is infallible. But by the strictest of terms for inerrancy, there is error if one seeks to harmonize the text. But harmonization is something I don't think the synoptic writers ever intended to happen. They wanted their story to be read vertically not horizontally.

 

These are the exact same questions the German higher critics were asking. Their conclusions not only negated inerrancy, but also inspiration. Your questions as to when the OT was inspired has the unintended result of calling inspiration into question.

Biblical inerrancy recognizes textual variants in copies and translations, but it also recognizes the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiration and preservation (2 Peter 1:21; Matthew 24:35).

From the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy:

Infallibility is tied to inerrancy by necessity. If the Bible is not trustworthy then it is not authoritative.

We want and expect differences? Now, we may expect textual variants in copies and translations, but do we really want them? If the Church concedes your assertion then who, where, and when are the brakes put on these "minor details"? Who decides what is a minor or major detail? It opens a Pandora's Box.

Now you're injecting your own rule for hermeneutics. The harmonizing of the Gospels is not always going to be a perfect fit. Inerrancy is not intended to mute the differences between the biblical writers. Inerrancy speaks to the trustworthiness and accuracy of their writings.