Featured Is the KJVO Movement Dying?

Right, "Bible for Today" was Waite's website and church name.

I didn't know Jack Moorman had passed away. Thanks for informing me. I'm sure he was a good man. The DBS crowd called him a scholar and a textual critic, but as a Bible prof and Greek teacher, I have to say his "scholarship" was very poor. He often did not source his information--we were just supposed to take his word for things, I guess. Other times he got sources wrong, quoted from 2nd parties who had the book that he didn't (something to be done only rarely), used very old sources which were not up to date or had been replaced, etc.

 

I place the origin of the movement in 1970, when two books came out: The Christian's Handbook of Manuscript Evidence, by Peter Ruckman, and Which Bible?, edited by David Otis Fuller. Those both turned out to be very influential books.

Fuller's book purported to be truly scholarly, with essays by well known scholars like Zane Hodges, Robert Dick Wilson, etc. Of course, then there was the seminal book included (the whole book!) by Benjamin Wilkinson, the 7th Day Adventist.

Ruckman's book was actually pretty tame for him, and he had the cachet of a PhD from Bob Jones University to make him look good.

Some would object to 1970, citing earlier works like God Wrote Only One Bible, by the mysterious Jasper J. Ray in 1955. But that book did not really start a movement, and did not have the purported scholarship of Ruckman and Fuller. Plus, it was revised in 1970!

By the mid-1970's, the movement was affecting Bible colleges. There was so much arguing in the dorms of Tennessee Temple by then that Lee Roberson, our pres, announced in chapel that there would be no more Bible translation discussions in the dorm, on pain of demerits or worse.

 

That is correct about Lee Roberson. I heard him preach 100s of times, have some of his sermon books, and have read his biography by James Wigton, Lee Roberson, and Roberson's own autobiographical book, Double-Breasted. Never have I heard or read of him saying the KJV is all there is. He was far more interested in soul-winning, world missions, and otherwise serving the Lord.

 

Just to clarify, Hyles did not take his KJVO position until the early 1980s, after his mentor and father figure John R. Rice went to Heaven in December of 1980.

Here is a paragraph from my book on Rice that discusses the change:

These facts set the stage for understanding how Hyles changed his doctrine of inspiration after the death of Rice, at least in the public arena. Even his defenders have admitted that he held to the inspiration of the Scriptures in the original languages (as opposed to the English language) until after Rice’s death. In his 1967 book Let’s Study the Revelation, Hyles referred several times to the meaning of words in the original New Testament Greek to clarify the KJV’s rendering. According to Hyles, however, contrary to the 1967 references, he had always held the same position on the inspiration of the KJV but did not reveal his position to Rice out of respect. He wrote, “There were two or three things with which I did not agree with Dr. Rice, but I never told him” (Hyles, Fundamentalism in My Lifetime, 152). One of those “things” he alluded to was that the KJV was an inspired translation which should never be changed or corrected. (John R. Rice, by John R. Himes, p. 270).​

John R. Rice would have been appalled at the position Hyles took, that you could not be saved without the KJV. And by the way, speaking as a missionary, that is a terrible position because many languages do not even have a TR based NT, much less some kind of "KJV" in their language.

 

Fundamentalists opposed the RSV, but the movement did not become KJVO at that time.

When the RSV was published, fundamentalists opposed it publicly and strongly. I have a pamphlet of two radio messages by fundamentalist Bob Sumner (1922-2016) in 1952, immediately after the publishing of the RSV. The pamphlet opposes the RSV, exposing the liberalism of the translators, and various errors of translation.

Sumner was never KJVO, and indeed opposed that movement in his paper, The Biblical Evangelist, and elsewhere. As evidence, here is what he said in the above mentioned pamphlet, The New Bible, An Appraisal of the Revised Standard Version: "No one of any intelligence, to my knowledge, would object to a new translation IF it is an HONEST translation" (p. 2, emphasis by Sumner).

This fundamentalist opposition to the RSV continued for many years. John R. Rice wrote against it as being a liberal version in 1969 in his magnum opus on inspiration, Our God-Breathed Book, the Bible (p. 389). Again, Rice was never, ever KJVO.

 

I have both of these, and they reveal a very radical position, as you know.

The second one was edited to leave out at least one very insulting statement.