Featured A Timeline of the KJVO Movement

NOTE: Byzantine/Majority authors and developments will only be mentioned as they relate to the KJV Only movement. Non-English translation efforts will also only be mentioned as they relate to the KJV, or if they represent a previous “Only” movement.

200 BC (more or less, who knows)—The Septuagint (LXX), a Greek version of the Old Testament, is translated ostensibly by 70 Jewish scholars.

1st Century AD—A Septuagint Only movement develops. Later on, famed Christian scholar Augustine (354-430) would be one of the advocates of the idea of a perfect Septuagint, and would complain to Jerome that he should not have translated the OT from the Hebrew. Thus, the first "Onlyist" movement. develops.

 

4th Century—Jerome (c. 340-420) translates the entire Bible into Latin from the original languages. This is the Latin Vulgate Bible.

395—Jerome writes his “Letter to Pamachius on the Best Method of Translating,” defending his Bible translation method. He believed in translating the Bible from the original languages, so his method is a precursor of modern evangelical Bible translating.

5th Century on—a “Vulgate Only” movement develops. The Vulgate eventually becomes the authoritative version of the Catholic Church, which then insists that it is more authoritative than the Bible in the original languages. This is thus the second precursor of the KJVO movement. We could say the Catholic religion is still “Vulgate Only” to one degree or another.

 

1611—The translation of the KJV is finished. The translators worked from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and did not claim perfection.

1688—Francis Turretin (1623-1687), a reformed theologian, writes his Instsitutio. The second volume is The Doctrine of Scripture to teach the verbal inspiration of the Bible in the original languages, and oppose Vulgate Onlyism. His doctrine comes down to us in the 21st century as verbal-plenary inspiration, as taught by Louis Gaussen, B. B. Warfield, John R. Rice, and other evangelical theologians. This is the standard doctrine of the inspiration of Scriptures until the KJV-Only movement happens along.

1769—The main revision of the KJV takes place. This is the version used by almost all KJVO advocates, even those who advertise “1611 KJV” on their websites and church signs.

 

Happy to provide information. Hopefully, this thread will not result in a fight. It is meant to be historically informative.

 

Good post. Thinking it over, I see how this is relevant.

 

If you don't mind, this is about history, not doctrine per se. Thanks.

 

That is correct. Here are relevant quotes from Turretin, mentioned above, speaking in 1688 of the Catholic "canon" that the Vulgate was authoritative. The idea that the translation can correct the originals is originally a Catholic doctrine.

"Some, like Bellarmine, Serarius, Salmenron, Mariana, and others, hold that it [the Vulgate] does not contrast this version with sources, but only with the other Latin translations in circulation, and they believe that it can be emended and corrected from the sources. Others say that it has been ruled absolutely authentic, so that it cannot be improved and is to be preferred to all other editions, and even the original manuscripts can be corrected from it, as if they were corrupted; such is the teaching of Cano, Valentia, Gordon, Gretserus, Suarez, and others. Anyone who studies the language of the canon will readily understand that the canon inclines toward the latter opinion."
Francis Turretin, The Doctrine of Scripture, ed. and trans. by John W. Beardslee III (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 162.

"But the question is whether the original text, in Hebrew or in Greek, has been so corrupted either by the carelessness of copyists or by the malice of Jews and heretics, that it can no longer be held as the judge of controversies and the norm by which all versions without exception are to be judged. The Roman Catholics affirm this; we deny it."
Ibid., 113-114.

 

1769—The main revision of the KJV takes place. This is the version used by almost all KJVO advocates, even those who advertise “1611 KJV” on their websites and church signs.

1819—Henry John Todd writes Vindication of our Authorized Translation and Translators, contra John Bellamy and James Burges, who had called for a new translation. However, this book can hardly be said to take a KJVO position, though some KJVO advocates claim Todd as their own. The book does not launch a movement.

1831—The Trinitarian Bible Society is formed in England, originally in protest against the liberalism being seen in the British and Foreign Bible Society. Eventually the TBS will be an important defender of the traditional texts of Scripture, though not a KJVO organization per se. They might be called “Textus Receptus (TR) Only.” They become the publishers of the Greek NT edited by Scrivener in 1894 to represent the Greek text used by the KJV translators, and it becomes the standard Greek text for KJVO advocates and translators. (The TBS people are good folk, and I have a good friend with them, and have met one of the British leaders. I do not oppose them. They are doing good, IMO.)

 

Good point.

For the purpose of this thread, I would define "KJV Only movement" as an organized effort that believes the KJV is the only preserved Word of God in the English language. Therefore, I'm not including as a "movement" such events as J. J. Ray writing his book in 1955, God Only Wrote One Bible. Though that book had influence, which I will note, it did not launch a movement.

 

Similar.

 

I'm not sure. You'd have to source that for me.

 

Nope. Baptists had not heard of the guy back then.