Originally posted by Bartholomew:
Again, anti-KJVOs demand proof they can't even offer for thier OWN position.
Nope.
Scott, here is the bottom line for you: do you believe that God preserved his words only through a multitude of imperfect manuscripts, translations, etc.?
Yes because we have over 5000 mss that vary with each other along with 12000 ancient handcopied translations and 12000 citations by early church writers- which again vary in wording but generally not in substance.
And which of your imperfect manuscripts, etc. claims this?
None that I am aware of but I never claimed this was a biblical belief nor did I cut KJVO's off from proving their beliefs from an honest treatment of historical/mss evidence. My belief is based on the evidence with overriding respect given to scripture.
Let me explain. Scriptural facts:
1-God inspired His Word through the original writers (prophets, holy men, Apostles, and those writing under Apostolic authority),
2-God is perfect therefore anything He directly inspires (breathes) is also perfect,
3-divine inspiration of scripture ceased with the deaths of the Apostles,
4-and God promised to preserve His Word for His people.
Evidential facts:
1-there are variants in all of the extant mss evidence,
2-obvious deviations and errors are identifiable by comparing mss with each other and other evidence,
3-when these obvious problems are eliminated less than 5% (some say less than 1%) of the exact wording of the originals is still in question,
4-allowing any subset of the available options on the uncertain texts will not effect any biblical doctrine.
5-there is a difference between one's word and their words.
6-we no longer have the words God inspired however we can be absolutely certain that we have His Word because of the overwhelming agreement of the evidence.
If you dogmatically promote a doctrine that is not taught by ANY of your imperfect manuscripts, then either you are in error, or they are all incomplete. (It must have been part of the originals that passed away for ever...)
I believe from the Bible that God preserved His Word. I observe from the historical facts of biblical mss transmission that He did not choose to do it by a continuous line of perfect facsimiles descending from the original documents.
If in fact I did harbor such a belief, I would none the less be precluded from KJVOnlyism since the KJV contains text that has zero mss support such as "God forbid" in Romans and "book of life" in Rev 22:19. These two facts alone means that the KJV cannot be descended from a "perfect line" of mss since no mss exists that contains this text.