THE KING JAMES BIBLE

We must candidly note that Scriptural references for God's preservation of the Canon (which books) of Scripture are perhaps about as convincing {link to skeptic's page} as those for preservation of the Text (which words) of Scripture.
  1. You won't find a list within the Bible text which expressly limits us to the 66 Canonical books (and so excludes the Epistle of Barnabus of the same time period, let alone the Koran, Book of Mormon, or other pseudo-authorities), although we today have historical evidence of early conflicts and that the list was ultimately decided and closed.
  2. Similarly, you won't find a complete collection of original manuscripts (or indeed any at all) to determine "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4), although for the New Testament we have some early, conflicting manuscripts and fragments (in which the scholars delight) and thousands of later, largely uniform, complete manuscripts.
Just as I rely on the Jews to decide and close the Canonical books and Text of the Old Testament, I rely on early Christians for the list of Canonical Books (New Testament), and their successors for the Canonical Text. There's endless debate, but little profit, in questioning whether the Christians in the first few centuries were led by God to correctly define the Books for us or whether our forefathers in the next few were led to correctly define the Text for us. The priniciple is the same.

Yet that is exactly what began to seriously overtake Christians about a hundred years ago, starting with the Revised Version of 1881. Around that point, the Church began to forfeit its birthright, and turned over its responsibility for

to scholars, and eventually to mere booksellers. The vast majority of scholars espouse a blatantly deistic theory: they simply assume that, although God inspired the "original manuscripts", He tossed them carelessly into the maelstrom of time. This same theorizing leavens the thinking of Christians today, even those "conservatives" who would be aghast at being called deistic.

Of course, I’ve read apologetics for ecumenical Bibles since I was a youngster. They all assert a lack of doctrinal differences among versions, which my recent experience just reinforces is falsehood. The standard apologetics are about the only thing you’ll find in most church libraries, if anything is to be found on the topic. Examples are the works of Hobbs, Goodrick, Comfort, and White, which I consider next. I then conclude with counter-arguments from Burgon and Hills.

Herschel H. Hobbs wrote

'The Baptist Faith and Message' says that the Bible has 'truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.' This, of course, refers to the original manuscripts of its component parts. Serious students of the Scriptures know that, through the years, copyists' errors were made... none of these errors affect to any great degree the spiritual contents of the Scriptures. But with the discovery of thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament, most of these errors have been traced to their source and eliminated.
The Baptist Faith and Message, Convention Press, 1971, 5133-02, page 28.
In fact, serious students sight subtle semantics. Errors do not "affect to any great degree the spriritual contents"? Piffle. "most ...errors have been traced to their source..."? Hobbs and other modern scholars dismiss the notion that heretics were the source of corruption, but fully endorse the notion that the Faithful were the source of corruption almost all of the thousands of manuscripts! Hobbs also wrote:
..A friend now retired... for almost 50 years taught the Greek New Testament... Some years ago he was asked to serve as interim pastor [and] for three straight Sundays he read his Scripture from the Greek... translating it, of course. After the third Sunday the deacons told him not to return, saying, "We want someone who preaches the Bible."
Getting Acquainted with the Bible, Convention Press, 1991, 5132-75, p. 153.
And perhaps rightly so. Was this friend merely showing off his ability to translate-on-the-fly? That's neither preaching or necessary. I've yet to see any insights offered by "the" Greek Text that wasn't manifest in the King James.

At least Mr. Edward W. Goodrick (who worked on the NIV - New International Version) starts out with refreshing honesty in his introduction to his book Is My Bible the Inspired Word of God?

...some of our practices are downright dishonest. For it is deceitful to hold the Bible high and proclaim, "I believe God’s word is inspired from cover to cover!" while saying under one’s breath, "in the autographs." Neither is it a mark of Christian character to... thrust the uninspired translation high over [our] heads while we think of the nonexistent autographs.
Mr. Goodrick deals in principles. He illustrates using four sections of pipe conveying God's words to us: the inspired autographs, transmission, translation, and interpretation. He discusses how "pollution" can enter the stream along the pipeline. He also has some other nice analogies and discussion. He correctly notes that one should be comfortable with your Bible and uncomfortable with your interpretations, rather than the other way around. But in the end, Mr. Goodrick just develops the standard apolegetics for the modern versions, including his NIV. These are the same apologetics ridiculed by liberal scholars like William Barclay. Goodrick claims that his Bible is less than one-tenth of one percent polluted, if we neglect counting the last 16 verses of Mark, and the story of the woman taken in adultery (which, I say, we should certainly not.) Mr. Goodrick's book primarily deals in generalities, and rarely with any actual verses. We can summarize his views as:
And what are the prospects to further reduce the pollution entering the stream from this section of pipe? [textual criticism] Experience allow us but one answer: There likely remain still buried in ruins or forgotten in some monastery corner manuscripts as old and older than we now have. And, with the aid of the computer, the techniques of textual criticism are bound to be refined to reduce that already small percentage of possible errors even more. [p.58]
Oh, how will these misguided people react if they ever dig up a really old papyrus that contains John's Gospel, Chapter 3, but which omits verse 16? A similarly misguided rush to dig in the dirt and worship the scholars is found in Philip Wesley Comfort's The Quest for the Original Text of the New Testament. In the preface he writes: Mr. James R. White {link to his website, which also documents his interesting debates with Romanists and Mormans} in his book The King James Controversy correctly distinguishes the two areas of controversy:
  1. Textual Disputes: what were the original words, and
  2. Translational Disputes: what are the best renderings into English?
He correctly handles an example of the first case (textual dispute) when he admits that "God is manifest in the flesh" (I Tim 3:16) has more than sufficient support from the Greek manuscripts. When one believes this, one has eliminated almost all common versions except the King James and straphangers like the New King James Version (NKJV).

However, Mr. White trips up in his handling of the second case (translational dispute), in his apparent zeal to favor the NKJV over the KJB. Regarding 2 Corinthians 2:17, there are no textual variants, and it is a simple translation issue:

The three, in my opinion, oldest and best attested (broadly used by the church historically) texts available in English today (King James, Rheims-Douay, and Aramaic) appear unified on this verse. However, Mr. White prefers the NKJV, and the apparent weakness of his argument compels him to overreach so far that he writes "if the KJV translators were alive today they would gladly admit that ‘peddle’ is a better translation than ‘corrupt,’ and would adopt it themselves." Amazing, no? As if translators in the 17th century did not understand the concept of, or have a word for, peddling! Well, I’m sure that translators and publishers of modern versions are profit-seeking, i.e. they’re peddlers of God’s word, thus their actions are condemned by their own translations (or maybe they'd rather admit peddling than corrupting?) I’m equally confident the KJB translators were quite familiar with peddling, and I for one am not ‘buying’ Mr. White’s assertion here.
Cogent counter-arguments are offered by John William Burgon (late Anglican Dean of Chichester), and E. F. Hills. Both defended the Traditional Text against modernistic revisors. Mr. Burgon wrote the pleasant-to-read tome The Revision Revised, first published in 1883, two years after the release of the Revised Version (RV) of 1881. Burgon summarizes the textual arguments of Dr. Hort (the scholar behind adoption by the RV committee of a minority Greek text):
We devoutly wish that Dr. Hort's hypothesis of an authoritative and deliberate Recension of the Text of the New Testament ... were indeed an historical fact... We desire no firmer basis on which to rest our confidence in the Traditional Text of Scripture than the deliberate verdict of Antiquity... we hail such a monument of the collective piety and learning of the Church in her best days with unmingled reverence and joy...

We are invited to make our election between the Fathers of the Church, A.D. 250 and A.D. 350, -- and Dr. Hort, A.D. 1881... Which are we to believe? the consentient Voice of Antiquity, or... shall we prefer to be guided by the self-evolved imaginations of one who confessedly has nothing to offer but conjecture?

Dr. Edward F. Hills summarized his views as:
... many contemporary Christians ... want a Bible version that pleases them no matter whether it pleases God or not... Some of them unite with the modernists in using the R.S.V. or the N.E.B. Others deem the N.A.S.V. or the N.I.V. more "evangelical." Still others opt for the T.E.V. or the Living Bible.

But God is bigger than you are, dear friend, and the Bible version which you must use is not a matter for you to decide according to your whims and prejudices. It has already been decided for you by the workings of God's special providence. If you ignore this providence and choose to adopt one of the modern versions, you will be taking the first step in the logic of unbelief... If you adopt one of these modern versions, you must adopt the naturalistic New Testament textual criticism upon which it rests [and regard] the special, providential preservation of the Scriptures as of no importance. But if we concede this, then it follows that the infallible inspiration of the Scriptures is likewise unimportant.

I believe it is quite possible to faithfully update the 1611 English translation with more modern words or spelling (for example, use "betray" instead of "bewray"), since I use the 1769 update of the text. However, it is reflects poorly on Christianity that no one has proven capable of doing so since then -- review of the 1881 RV or even recent NKJV attests that disturbing textual or translational liberties were taken to a greater or lesser degree.

I might even consider putting the Johannine Comma (that's the scholastic term for 1 John 5:7, which many consider the Achilles' heel of the King James Version) or other debateable text in italics, like the second half of 1 John 2:23 is in the King James. (Italics are the KJV translators' means for denoting words added to assist the reader, or believed to have a degree of doubt such as the case of 1 John 2:23b. By contrast, modern revisors boldly add words, and relegate debateable verses to footnotes or eliminate them altogether, generally without qualm or comment.) However, the 1611 translators were undoubtedly aware of the debate even then surrounding the Comma, yet considered the evidence strong enough that they did not put the Comma in italics. I believe that the Comma will be ultimately vindicated as authentic Scripture.

REFERENCES:

Bibles versions:
  1. The Holy Bible, Douay Rheims Version, revised by Bishop Richard Challoner, TAN Books and Publishers. You can read it online.
  2. The Holy Bible from the Ancient Eastern Text, George M. Lamsa, original (c) 1933, HarperCollins. This version, arguably based on manuscripts in the original language of much of the New Testament, is supported by the The Aramaic Bible Society, Inc.
    On the weak belief for God’s preservation:
    1. Is My Bible the Inspired Word of God?, Edward W. Goodrick, (c) 1988, Multnomah Press.
    2. The Quest for the Original Text of the New Testament, Philip Wesley Comfort, (c) 1992, Baker Book House.
    3. The King James Controversy: Can You Trust the Modern Translations?, James R. White, (c) 1995, Bethany House. See pp. 21, 22, 114, 207.
      On the strong side:
      1. The Revision Revised, John W. Burgon, 1883 (fifth printing 1991), Hobbs Publications, P.O.Box 14218, Ft Worth TX 76117. pages 292-293.
      2. The King James Version Defended, Edward F. Hills, (c) 1984, The Christian Research Press. pages 242-243.
      3. Which Bible? David Otis Fuller, Institute for Biblical Textual Studies.
      4. Fundamental Baptist + KJV works may be found at the Way of Life site.
      5. Of some interest also is the King James Bible site.
      6. An article by the Trinitarian Bible Society {link to TBS site, Britain}.

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Updated June 30, 1997