Featured The Key to the KJV-Only Conundrum

I had an interesting phone conversation today with a young man who believes that the KJV is both inspired and inerrant. One reason it was interesting is because the young man wants to be a Bible translator. At any rate, I asked him if he believed in either the providential or the miraculous preservation of Scripture. (I believe in the providential preservation of the mss. of Scripture.) He said he believed in both, but could not answer my followup question.

Now here's my followup question and the whole point. If you believe in the miraculous preservation of Scripture, then there must be:

(1) A point in time where that miracle clearly happened. Every miracle in Scripture was instantaneous, whereas God's providence always occurs over a period of time.
(2) The miracle of preservation must be evident to all, because it was always that way in Scripture. Every miracle recorded in Scripture was openly visible and easily recorded by the writers of Scripture.

Now, when God's providence in preservation is at work, you do not see perfection on the earth. For example, the Bible is clear that God providentially preserves the earth, but it is certainly not perfect. However, when a miracle occurs, the final result is visibly perfect.

Now, the inspiration of the Scriptures was a miracle. For example, when the Apostle Paul wrote an epistle that was inspired, the Holy Spirit guided that process miraculously so that the whole was inerrant. All conservative Christians believe that.

Note also that no miracle appears in Scripture that negates a previous miracle. This means that Ruckmanism cannot be Biblically correct, since his view is that the KJV supersedes the original texts of Scripture. If that were true, then the first miracle (inspiration) would be negated by the second miracle (preservation). That is impossible.

 

He wants to do the OT of the "Lifeline Japanese NT" for which I am the lead translator. And he wants to travel to Israel to study Hebrew. I tried on the phone to teach him the ironies of his position....

Actually, the only thing that is miraculous is the original inspiration. A miracle is when God reaches down into nature and does something contrary to nature. So when the Bible was inspired, God breathed it out so that it was 100% His Word and 100% human written, but also 100% inerrant. That is a miracle, because nothing done by humans is inerrant. Then God protected the mss line by His providence.

Translation is done by humans with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, as the KJV translators well knew, according to their essay, "The Translators to the Readers." The Holy Spirit does not guarantee perfection in the human He has guided. So He will guide me in the choice of a sermon subject and content, but He won't guarantee that I don't make blunders of fact, grammar, etc., in that sermon.

 

Didn't know that. So Scrivener wasn't enough for him, eh? Is it published? (Not that I want to buy it. )

 

To be clear, this is a fine young man. He loves the Lord, witnesses for Christ and wants to be a missionary. Sometimes here on the BB folks think that a KJVO position means poor character. It could just mean "needs teaching."

 

Consider this: did a miracle occur in 1611 when the committees met to translate?

1. Note the word "committee" first of all. You will look in vain through the Bible to find a single case when a committee performed a miracle. God used Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, Peter, Paul and others, but they were all individuals.

2. Note further that the KJV committees never claimed any miracles. I have the classic The Men Behind the KJV, by Gustavus Paine, and never in the whole book do the KJV translators claim any miracles in their work. But miracles are plain to all. They are not hidden. Why? They are for the glory of God. Secrets do not glorify God, so miracles are always plain to see, yet we have no miracles recorded in the translation of the KJV.

3. Now, since God uses individuals to accomplish His miracles, a committee would not have been needed. Only one translator would have been needed, and the miracle would have consisted of a vision, or a dictation method with no human participation, or maybe just a couple of rocks with the new translation cut into them!

 

Well, well, well. Good try, but I would dispute your conclusion. I would say that the miracle was all of Jesus. The disciples simply followed His orders in the production of the food. So I would say that He made the food miraculous, that is He made the food special so that all the disciples had to do was hand it out and it was multiplied. There is nothing in the text to say that the disciples themselves multiplied the food.

But if you are correct, it would be hard to apply it to the KJV in 1611. I'm pretty sure the bread and fishes that Jesus produced was perfect--no typos.

 

I would further add that the KJVO movement is a huge distraction from when we should be doing--reaching the world for Christ. Whenever a conference is called, whenever a book is written for the movement or is necessitated against the movement, valuable resources are used up.

Case in point: several from the Dean Burgon Society formed a Bible society for the propagation of the Word of God, the William Carey Bible Society. It was a total flop, ending up not supporting a single missionary Bible translation, according to my last look at the website. It's website is now unreachable: http://www.wcbible.org/.

The DBS itself has done some good, in that it has reprinted good material from the past. However, to my knowledge it has never held a revival meeting, printed a Bible in any language but English, sent out a missionary or supported a missionary Bible translation.

As a missionary Bible translator and consultant I would like to say to any DBS people reading this: Start obeying the Great Commission instead of the KJV Commission! I like to tell my students that the Bible is a sword. You don't defend a sword, you fight with it. Go out and stab the Devil!

 

Surely if there had been a miracle in the production of the KJV, then the translators would have recorded it and it would have been common knowledge in the early 17th century.

I believe that God providentially guided the translators of the KJV, but there was no miracle in 1611.

 

What about in the corrections and revisions of the KJV? Were there any miracle then? Others here on the BB know more about the revisions than I do, but nothing I have read, even by KJVO writers, records any kind of miracle in the corrections and revisions.

 

Just to be sure of my thesis here, I've started going through some of my KJVO tomes. I just read Ch. XXX of Forever Settled, by Jack Moorman of the DBS, "The Crowning Jewel, The Authorized Version of 1611." Moorman makes no mention of any miracles in the preservation of the KJV or traditional texts.

However, in what I hope does not become a rabbit trail, he makes this extremely weird statement: "And in the New Testament, in particular, it is the simple truth that the English version is a far greater literary work than the original Greek. The Greek of the New Testament is a language which had passed its prime and had lost its natural grace and infinite adaptability" (p. 249).

The idea that the Koine Greek had "passed its prime" is a view that not one single Greek scholar or prof holds that I know of. In fact, the papyrii prove the exact opposite: the Koine of the NT is exactly what the average guy in the streets of the Roman Empire was speaking in the first century.

A similar result was found in Ch. XI of Final Authority, by Bill Grady, "The Old Black Book." There is no mention or claim in this chapter of any miracles occurring in the translation of the KJV. In fact, there is only one mention of God's providence in this chapter, and that is in connection with the death of translator John Reynolds on p. 157, which has nothing to do with the possibility of the possible inspiration of the KJV.