Featured IFB & the KJVO myth...

Bob, I appreciate your response, which is why I wrote "some KJVO advocates". The King James Bible is a wonderful translation. I will never criticize someone who uses it as their primary English translation.

 

Such a person would be believing something that the Scriptures do not state nor teach and would likely be teaching opinions of men as supposedly being a doctrine of God. No positive, clear, consistent, sound, just, true, scriptural case has been made for claiming that the KJV is the inspired, preserved word of God.

The Scriptures do not state nor teach that the process of making Bible translations is by inspiration of God. The Scriptures do not teach that the textual criticism decisions, Bible revision decisions, and translation decisions of one exclusive group of Church of England scholars in 1611 are the final authority. The final authority for the Scriptures clearly existed many years before 1611. There are actual errors in KJV editions so how can errors be considered the final authority for the word of God? The 1611 edition of the KJV was corrected and revised by a greater authority than it itself, which would demonstrate that the 1611 KJV was not the final authority.

 

After conversing with @Pastor_Bob in this thread I break the KJV adherents into two camps: 1. Those with a KJV preference 2. KJVO. Those with a KJV preference use the KJV as their daily reader. They preach from the KJV. They do not claim that the KJV is the only English translation that qualifies as the Word of God. IMHO, KJVO'ers are a different breed. They do believe that the KJV is the only inspired English translation. They do take on cult-like aspects. Generally, I agree with leaving them to themselves. I make an exception when someone I know is being influenced by their falsehood. At that point, it may be necessary to fight on behalf of someone who is at risk of being deluded.

 

There comes a point when you may have to. If one of the Christian schools in your area has a teacher, who teaches kids the KJV is the only Bible and they (kids) go to 20 different churches on Sunday and Wednesday, that can cause a problem. I have had kids from this school question or be upset because I was not teaching from the KJV. I would have to unteach that this indoctrinated kids with. I only had a small percentage of a percent of his students. The rest are in other churches, likely questioning their Sunday School teachers and pastors because they don't use the KJV. Most people can't defend modern translations against this kind of attack.

So, it may come to a nessacity to "take the show on the road". Confronting the teacher/administrator that teaches such.

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I can name several such beliefs that, more than likely, you and I both believe and practice.

Does the KJV accurately represent the overwhelming majority of extent manuscript evidence? If a translation says the same thing as the originals, it is conveying the same message as the inspired originals.

To quote a friend, "God did not inspire men or manuscripts, He inspired words! God did not concern Himself with parchment, vellum, papyrus, and ink, but with words! It was, and still is, the words of God that are inspired. It makes absolutely no difference if those inspired words are written by the hand of Moses, Samuel, David, Daniel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, or if they were carefully copied by a copyist in his own handwriting, or if they are scrawled on the rest room wall! If they are the same words, they are God's words, and if they are God's words, they are inspired words!"

Of what factual errors are you speaking?

 

Claiming that the KJV is the final authority is a very extreme, radical KJV-only claim. It is a claim made by Peter Ruckman. Claiming that the KJV is the final authority is in effect the same thing as suggesting that the KJV corrects the Hebrew OT and the Greek NT. It is in effect denying that the KJV is a translation with derived secondary authority as it tries to make the KJV an independent authority in and of itself.

 

The KJV does not actually accurately represent the overwhelming majority of extent manuscript evidence in those places where it follows minority readings and in those places where it follows conjectures found in no known original-language manuscripts. In places where the KJV has inaccurate renderings, it does not say the same thing as the originals. There also examples of Church of England episcopal bias in the KJV, and believers in the 1600's pointed them out.

 

The claim that the KJV is the final authority would conflict with or would contradict your statement since it would suggest that the KJV does supersede the Hebrew OT and the Greek NT.

 

A number of KJV defenders or KJV-only authors maintain that it is incorrect to use the term inspired for the KJV.

In the preface of the book Cleaning-Up Hazardous Materials by Kirk DiVietro, H. D. Williams wrote: “The false application of ’is given,’ to translations throughout the centuries must stop. Inspiration of translations is a false doctrine concocted by men to justify a position when they were caught proclaiming a doctrine that cannot be substantiated by the Scripture; by the grammar of passages in question, or by history” (p. v). Phil Stringer asserted: “The verse does not say that the words that God gave are preserved, transmitted, or translated by ‘inspiration’” (Brown, Indestructible Book, p. 394). D. A. Waite contended: “There is no scriptural proof that any translation of God’s Words is inspired of God” (A Warning on Gail Riplinger’s, p. 32). D. A. Waite observed: “The accurate view of Bible inspiration is found in 2 Timothy 3:16. That verse refers to the way that the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Words were produced by God’s true plenary verbal inspiration” (p. 20). Charles L. Surrett wrote: “There is no theological reason (no statement from God) to believe that a translation into any language would be inspired in the same way that the original writings in Hebrew and Greek were. No translation has been ‘God-breathed,’ as 2 Timothy 3:16 says of the originals” (Certainty of the Words, p. 75).

D. A. Waite wrote: “God never once caused any human writers or translators to operate any more under his DIVINE INSPIRATION of the words in any translation or version throughout human history thus far (nor will He in the future) in the same or even in a similar sense as He did when He originally gave His Word under DIVINE INSPIRATION” (Dean Burgon News, August, 1980, p. 1). H. D. Williams wrote: “Inspiration refers solely to the original and preserved God-breathed Words, which were recorded by the prophets and Apostles” (Pure Words, p. 20). H. D. Williams asserted: “The Greek word, graphe, in 2 Timothy 3:16 refers to the autographs” (Hearing the Voice of God, p. 193). In the preface of Kirk DiVietro’s book Cleaning-Up Hazardous Materials, H. D. Williams quoted D. A. Waite concerning the three Greek words that make up the first part of 2 Timothy 3:16. Waite noted that “these three Words refer exclusively to God’s miraculous action of His original breathing out of His Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Words of the Old and New Testaments” (p. iv, also p. 2). Waite added: “These Words do not refer to any Bible translation in any language of the world” (Ibid.).

H. D. Williams quoted D. A. Waite as noting: “Theopneustos is a compound adjective which comes from two Greek words, theos (God) and pneustos (an adjective meaning ’breathed’). Pneustos comes from the verb, peno ’to breathe.’ It does not come from nor is it synonymous with the noun, pneuma. It comes clearly from the verb, pneo (to breathe)” (Cleaning-Up, p. iv). Ralph Earle asserted that the Greek word “literally means ‘God breathed’--theos, ‘God,’ and pneo, ‘breathe’” (Word Meanings, p. 409). Marvin Vincent also maintained that this word comes from the Greek noun for God and the Greek verb ‘to breathe’ and meant “God-breathed” (Word Studies, IV, p. 317). E. W. Bullinger defined the Greek word as “God-breathed, God-inspired” (Lexicon, p. 414). Waite asserted: “Gail Riplinger and others are totally in error to claim that an adjective (pneustos) could be taken as a noun (pneuma). This is contrary to all Greek grammar, whether classical or Koine. It is clearly false teaching and false doctrine” (DiVietro, Cleaning-Up, p. iv

H. D. Williams asserted: “There is no such thing as re-inspiration, double inspiration, derivative inspiration, or advanced revelation for any translation to allow reinscripturation” (Word-for-Word Translating, p. 83). H. D. Williams claimed: “Every person holding the view that the King James Bible is inspired, derivatively inspired, derivatively pure, or derivatively perfect is not only linguistically and historically incorrect, he is theologically incorrect” (Pure Words, p. 21). H. D. Williams asserted: “If we attribute purity and inspiration to the translated Words of God in any language, we are in reality claiming double inspiration, double purity, and double Apostolic and prophet-like men who chose them and who wrote them” (p. 63). H. D. Williams contended: “Since the Words of God are unchanging in their original pure, perfect, inspired ’jots and tittles,’ no derivative can be formed” (Pure Words, p. 17).

Jim Taylor argued against the idea of derived inspiration, and he noted that “inspiration is not an attribute. It is a process” (In Defense of the TR, p. 39, footnote 33). Jim Taylor maintained that “inspiration does not extend to a translation” (p. 39). Taylor concluded: “Since inspiration is not an ongoing process, nor a quality, ‘derivative inspiration’ is not possible” (p. 327).

 

That wasn't the question, brother.

 

No, sir, no conflict or contradiction. The Word of God is my final authority. I just happen to believe that the KJV is the most accurate, preserved translation of the Word of God.

 

I disagree. I make that very claim, for me. What, may I ask, is your final authority?

I'm not going to change my position just because a radical happens to believe the same thing. That being said, I am worlds apart from Ruckman in my position and my disposition.

I disagree. What about the overwhelming majority of English-speaking church-goers who cannot read the first word of Hebrew or Greek? What should their final authority be? Isn't that what the doctrine of preservation is all about?

I don't deny this; in fact, I have said as much. The KJV derives it's authority insofar as it correctly reflects the originals.

 

Because you choose and want to believe something does not demonstrate that what you believe is actually the truth. According to the greater authority of the preserved Scriptures in the original languages, there are places where the KJV does not have the most accurate translation.

According to the KJV translators themselves, the KJV does not actually preserve some original-language words of Scripture. In their 1611 marginal notes, the KJV translators sometimes pointed out that they did not provide an English rendering for some original-language words in their underlying texts.

Most present KJV editions do not preserve every word that was in the 1611 edition of the KJV, and they add over 140 words not in the 1611 edition.