Featured KJV to “UNV” and back

A number of folks on the Baptist Board seem to “make a living” debating about Bible versions. This post is not intended for debate, although some of you can find a reason to do so (and of course this is a debate forum). However, a better response might be to relate your journey to where landed on your Bible preference, rather than making this one more version debate. My purpose here is to show that sometimes our experiences are not what others might assume.

Many people assume many of us “older folks” prefer the King James Bible because we grew up with it. No doubt that is, but it doesn’t reflect the whole story.

For the most part, my memories go back to the early 1960s. My first Bible was a King James Version. Back then in our churches around here practically everyone used the King James Bible. However, there was little talk or teaching about it. Mainly, folks believed their Bible was trustworthy and were skeptical of the new Revised Standard Version. Seems associations and convention in the South had warned against it. The New American Standard Bible was once mentioned in our pulpit by a young visiting preacher. His idea of it was that the NASB was just the KJV with some newer, more up-to-date words (“you” for “thou” type stuff). Seems everyone took his statement at face value and there was little of no reaction to it. (His statement was incorrect, though he may have believed what he said.)

I doubt I ever carried a different version of the Bible to use in church, though I really don’t remember for certain. Nevertheless, I was not committed to the sole use of the King James Bible. In fact, I guess I thought it was sort of outdated. In Sunday School when I was a nearly-grown teenager I would read from the King James Bible and “translate” it into modern English as I was read (changing pronouns and verbs and such like to the way we talked). I think I had a Living Bible back when those were popular. Older people used and trusted the King James Bible, but I don’t remember any specific talk or discussion of “King James Only” in our circles.

After I surrendered to preach, I enrolled in a Bible College. It was generally conservative but somewhat progressive. They took the position on the Bible that only the original autographs were inspired. It was here I began my journey back to confidence in the King James Bible.

This Bible College was covertly “anti-King James.” They did not appear so outwardly to the churches, but were so within the four walls of their sanctum. I was “UNV” – unaligned with any particular version (and largely unaware of a versions debate). It was the school’s mixed message which eventually caused me to study the subject of Bible versions and decide I preferred the King James Bible. I started with books popular at the time, such as Which Bible by David Otis Fuller (pro) and The King James Version Debate by D. A. Carson (con), as well as The Men Behind the King James Version by Gustavus S. Paine (about the translators).

Most of the instructors at the Bible College were also pastors. Many were from generations that grew up using the King James Bible, and they preached from the King James Bible in their churches. (I think there were two exceptions.) Though they took the position that only the autographs were inspired and that other versions – particularly the NASB – were better than the KJV, they always recommended the student preachers to use the King James Bible when they visited and filled in at churches.

In the classroom they spoke plainly about their opinions of the King James Bible. In the pulpit – not so much. One leading professor emphatically exclaimed to his class (which I was in), “I had just as soon use a Catholic Bible as an Episcopalian Bible.” (But he did not!) Classroom and chapel often proceeded with a litany of what was wrong with the King James translation of this or that in the texts being studied. Perhaps it was what I perceived as hypocrisy that bothered me the most. At the end of the year I concluded that higher-learning experience and did not return. The quest of learning about the Bible continued as part of my larger journey of learning about the church.

So there you have a journey. An outwardly neutral anti-KJV school took an unaligned student and turned him toward a KJV supporter. It doesn’t make me right or wrong, but it is my journey. It is not what many people might suppose about “older” King James Bible supporters. Being “old” and using the KJV is not necessarily a default position.

 

Just a made up term.

 

Yes, but I do not know the answer.

My experience is not varied enough to give a great answer, but I would guess that, yes, it is common. If one excludes the fundamentalist Bible Colleges that are KJVO, the rest are probably ambivalent toward the KJV, at best, and more likely opposed to promoting and using it.