KJV Onlyism Revisited:Separating Fact from Fiction, Part 1 - - How Translation Works

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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And good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line. For quite some time, we have been advertising that sometime in the future, we are going to go over the presentation of the

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King James Only Controversy Separating Fact from Fiction, a PowerPoint presentation that I have offered for, as I said, a number of months now.

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A number of people have downloaded that PowerPoint presentation, and if you have done so, you would want to fire that up, get it ready to go, because that's what we're going to be doing over the next couple of weeks.

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But I would like to have the opportunity for interaction from folks. There's a lot of strong feelings about biblical textual issues, and so I'd like to try to leave the lines open for your comments toward the end of the program, possibly the last half hour.

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However, if there are folks online toward the end of the program, then we'll go ahead and wrap up the presentation at that point, take the calls, and then continue from that point in the future.

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So if you'd like to do that, then keep that in mind. You'd want to be calling in about 50 minutes from now, about 10 minutes till the hour, and we'll be able to put you in the queue and have you ready to go with the questions that you have on the subject of the translation of the

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Bible, the transmission of the Scriptures, and specifically the King James Only Controversy. If you have the

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PowerPoint presentation, then you'll want to get it fired up, and I'll be starting with that right now.

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Now, of course, we have dealt with the King James Only Controversy in many forms in the past. We have had the debates on the program, it wasn't last summer, but the summer before that, we went through a lengthy period where we played comments and statements from the

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Southwest Radio Bible Church, and we had D .A. Waite and others that were on that program, and their comments,

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Theodore Elitis, and responded to them. We invited those folks to be on, but they were not interested in doing so.

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We would like to be able to have debates on this subject, but getting the King James Only advocates to actually defend their position and to do so in a scholarly debate where there's an even playing field is extremely difficult to do.

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And so, keeping that in mind, we are not making this presentation without someone to respond to it, and because that would be to our advantage, we'd love to have some folks on to discuss these things, but we simply can't find those folks who are at least published in the field or at least somewhat recognized as taking a stand in the area.

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We can't find them to do that. They don't want to come on the program and do that kind of thing.

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So the one -sided presentation isn't really all that one -sided. In fact, we will be presenting some of their favorite points as we go on, and sometimes in a stronger way than they themselves do.

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So keeping that in mind, looking at the PowerPoint presentation, slide number 3, if you'd like to get started with it there, this has been a subject that has certainly resulted in a tremendous amount of heat, shall we say, that has been directed toward myself and in fact toward anyone who would dare to respond to the

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King James Only position. I can honestly say that though in volume

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I have received more response from other religious groups, for example, my dealing with Roman Catholicism or things like that, the volume certainly is understandable.

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In that case, I've written one book on this subject. I don't really address it all that often in comparison to the debates that I do on Roman Catholicism and things like that, and so it's understandable why

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I would get more emails on the subject of Roman Catholicism or Mormonism than I do

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King James Onlyism. However, as far as the nastiness of response and as far as the personal character of the response, nothing has rivaled the

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King James Only controversy, and specifically about those individuals who would present the

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King James Only controversy as their own perspective. There's simply no group as a whole that has proven itself to be more willing to question your

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Christianity, your faith, your love for God and his word, or your brains than King Peter Ruckman, and you discover very quickly that there is a tremendous willingness to attack individuals on a personal level as if that somehow is relevant to the subject at hand.

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It is a shame. Tex Mars, for example, has written, James White, a boastful

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King James Bible opponent, continues on his baseless crusade to bash King James Only believers.

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It makes for a rather sad spectacle to observe critics of the King James Bible like Mr. White humiliate themselves and show disrespect for servants of God.

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I am praying he will be given a repentant heart and know the grave damage he is doing the kingdom of our

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Savior. Well, of course, I'm not an opponent to the King James version of the Bible. We immediately see and will see throughout the presentation that King James Only proponents identify the

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Bible, and identify the King James Bible specifically, as right together with King James Onlyism.

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If you oppose King James Onlyism, then you oppose the King James version of the Bible, because for them, the two are the same.

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And that, of course, demonstrates a bit of a confusion on their part, because you can believe that the

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King James version of the Bible is a fine version of the Bible, that it is perfectly readable, so on and so forth, without enshrining it as the only possible

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English translation, the best English translation, etc., etc. You do not need to do that.

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There is no reason for the individuals to believe that there is an attack upon King James Only believers when you respond to King James Onlyism.

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But that kind of thinking is part and parcel of the King James Only movement.

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Elsewhere, Mars had called me a servant of Satan and a devil, which is normally not the indication of an individual who is playing on a fair ground.

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Of course, Gail Ripplinger, the author of New Age Bible versions, the next slide, calls me a rude, crude heretic.

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She did that on a radio station in Detroit, Michigan. And a serial soul killer.

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Now, that one is on a video that I actually haven't seen, but I thought that was...

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Gail Ripplinger loves to alliterate. She likes to make up names based upon people's last names.

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And she likes to, for example, use my last name of White, and so in one of her books,

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James White meets Vanna White, Whitewashed Walls, etc., Little White Lies, etc.,

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etc., etc. She likes playing little games like that, and it is absolutely positively amazing to me to recognize that so many churches today that would oppose women preachers, would oppose women in ministry, will open their pulpits to Gail Ripplinger and let her spew her venomous hatred toward anyone who would oppose her, whether you're

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King James only or not. She goes after King James only folks just as readily as she does anybody else, right from the pulpit.

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It's an amazing thing. The Ripplinger saga is indeed a fascinating thing, and I would just point out to folks that if you have the time, and in fact what

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I should have done, and maybe next week I'll go ahead and do this, if you have the time, go back into the archives of the program back to September of last year,

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September of 2000, and listen to some of the clips from Gail Ripplinger that I played.

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In fact, maybe someone out there in the massive control center of this worldwide webcast, our huge staff, might be able to find, lurking in the recesses of our network somewhere, the clips that we played from the

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Southwest Radio Bible Church, that's what it was, and especially the utterly fascinating discussion that Gail Ripplinger provided about the sinking of the

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Titanic, which is still without a doubt one of the most amazing,

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I'd say it was about four or five minutes, somewhere along those lines, amazing four or five minutes that I have ever listened to in my entire life.

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I'm not sure why I enjoy listening to it, other than every time it leaves me sitting there with my mouth hanging open, absolutely searching for the words to express how utterly inane a statement and a series of statements could possibly be made.

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It's something. Maybe we can track that down. It may be hiding over on my side of the network, and people can't get through to that, or I don't know.

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We'll see if we can't track it down and maybe play it next week, or maybe this week, I don't know. But anyhow,

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Gail Ripplinger, New Age Bible Versions, Rude, Crude, Heretic, and Serial Soul Killer, and those are the nice things.

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So anyways, but aside from these folks, there are others who are very serious about this, and I'm sure that Gail Ripplinger is very serious about what she says.

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I just would invite you to listen to what she says, and that leaves you somewhat amazed.

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But there are others who are very, very serious that don't tie the

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NIV into the sinking of the Titanic, for example. And we should recognize that King James -only -ism can be preached.

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What I mean by that is you can take the King James -only position, and you can really make it sound good.

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You can take this position, and if you are selective in your use of verses, if you're selective in your use of information, if you are not fair in your presentation, and you may not, let's even be fair at this point,

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I think there are many people who preach King James -only -ism because they have that tradition delivered to them, and they don't know that it,

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A, is a tradition, that there is a perfectly full and consistent response to it, so on and so forth.

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They don't know what the other side is, so they're not consistent in their use of sources, they're not fair in their use of sources, just simply out of ignorance.

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So I think we should be fair at that point, and be helpful in that way.

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But anyways, there are those who can really preach this stuff. It can sound really, really good to individuals because you preach it in such a way that you have passion, you can present it in such a way that you touch upon key issues.

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For example, you look at the deity of Christ, and you can tie together passages from the

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King James Version of the Bible in comparison with, frequently not even the same modern translation, but quote -unquote modern translations, they're all sort of just thrown into one big group.

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And you can make it sound like modern translations are specifically attempting to deny the deity of Christ.

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And you can touch upon the Resurrection, and all sorts of different subjects that you can try to make it look as if the

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King James Version of the Bible is superior on doctrinal issues.

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And that's the main reason that most people hold to King James -onlyism. They've only heard one side, they've heard it from someone they trusted, and they've heard it presented in the context of, we need to hold firm to God's Word, we need to stand against liberalism, we need to stand against the influx of modernism, and all the rest of that stuff.

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And it appeals to a portion of our thinking that is a proper portion of our thinking.

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I don't think that we should be embracing liberalism and everything else.

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I don't think we should move the ancient landmarks, as Scripture says.

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Just because it's new doesn't necessarily mean it's better. We understand all of those things. And so, do they have a point?

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Let's look at some passages where, if you were to present them in a certain way,

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I'm getting messages here that are completely confusing me.

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I don't know what CD you're all talking about, and it's not on a CD, so that wouldn't help much. Anyways. Let's look at some passages such as 1

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Timothy 3, verse 16 in the King James Version of the Bible. 1 Timothy 3, verse 16.

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Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.

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Notice that the word God is used here. Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness,

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God was manifest in the flesh. This, of course, is a reference to the deity of Christ, because we are talking about the revelation of Jesus Christ in the flesh.

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But it's very easy to then say, now, those of you who have any of the dreaded modern translations, especially such as the

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New American Standard Bible, look at 1 Timothy 3, verse 16, and what does it say? It says, by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness,

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He who was revealed in the flesh. Now, it sounds to the vast majority of people that He who and God could not possibly be a quote -unquote honest mistake.

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It is a huge difference, and when you then sort of roll this into all sorts of other examples that are going to be given, it certainly looks like there is a change that has been made.

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And please notice the words that I'm using here, a change. The King James Only presenter might say, look how this text has been altered, changed, look what has been deleted.

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Each one of those passages assumes what?

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It assumes a particular standard. And what is the standard that is always used? The King James Version of the

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Bible. Well, immediately, if we're going to be talking about issues like that, then we need to recognize the

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King James Version of the Bible came into existence between 1604 and 1611. What was the standard before that?

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And could not someone have compared the King James Version of the

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Bible in 1611 with, say, the Bishop's Bible, or with the Geneva Bible, which were

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English translations that preceded the King James Version, and say, look, the King James has changed this, or altered this, or added this, or deleted that.

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Why does the King James get to be set up as the standard to which everything else then becomes an alteration, addition, or subtraction?

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Very frequently, the presentation is so heavily loaded with that kind of information, that kind of thinking, that it's simply impossible for people to get a fair sense of what's going on.

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But going back to 1 Timothy 3, that does look like a major difference between the renderings.

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Why is there a difference? Well, that's one of the major portions of the presentation that we'll be covering over time.

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Slide number six has a comparison chart, and this is a very small chart.

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You generally, when doing PowerPoint presentations, need to keep your fonts large enough for people to see.

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There are books, many books, that are published from the King James -only perspective that would have lists like this that are many pages in length, where you take the

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King James Version of the Bible, and you compare it to, quote -unquote, modern versions. Now, this generally would not work, for example, in comparing the

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King James Version of the Bible with the New King James Version of the Bible, because the New King James Version uses the same

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New Testament text, especially, called the Textus Receptus, as we will see later on, that the

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King James does, and so it would join the King James Version in the readings that it has.

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But what you really have here is a comparison between the two text types that people utilize, the

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Textus Receptus with the King James Version, and the modern text under the modern versions.

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But, again, most folks who see a list like this are not aware of that. When I first saw it, when I first saw things like this in high school,

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I certainly did not have the background to know what I was really looking at. You would think that those who produce it would take the time to have the background to fairly use this kind of information, but they do not.

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But be that as it may, notice Matthew 4 .18. In the modern versions, it says,

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He. In the King James Version, it says, Jesus. Acts 19 .10, in the modern versions, the

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Lord, but in the King James Version, the Lord Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 9 .1,

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we have the word Jesus in the modern versions, but Jesus Christ in the King James Version. In 2

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Corinthians 5 .18, we have Christ in the modern versions, but Jesus Christ in the

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King James Version. In Acts 16 .31, we have Lord Jesus, but in the

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King James Version, it is Lord Jesus Christ. And in 2 John 3, in the modern translations,

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Jesus Christ, but in the King James Version, Lord Jesus Christ. In each one of these, in each one of these, you have one of two things.

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It's always presented as a diminishment of what was originally there.

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That is, the original full material is found in the

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King James Version of the Bible. And then the modern translations cut this down somehow.

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The modern translations, for some reason, have some purpose in diminishing from the person of Jesus Christ by somehow using shorter names for him.

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Now that's how it's always presented. Of course, the other possibility would be that the

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King James Version represents a text type that is expanded.

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That is, a text type where the titles, especially of deity and the

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Lord Jesus, have been expanded on the basis of piety over time. Now that possibility is never mentioned in King James -only materials, but that is the other possibility.

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Slide number seven. This one's one you might want to use. I've used this many times.

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I remember once I was at a very large church in the valley, and a student of mine from a university class

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I was teaching invited me to come over and play a Mormon. And so I came over, and I had my white shirt and dark tie and dark pants.

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I even had a little name tag on, and I role -played the Mormon. And we got to the issue of the

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Bible, and this is what I used to throw a curve at everybody in the class.

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And I'll guarantee you one thing, it will always get their attention.

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It really will. I'm about to kick somebody out of the chat channel for grousing about my beautiful fractal backgrounds that are a part of this

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PowerPoint presentation. They are very, very pretty, and if that person does not say that they are, he's going to find himself wobbling through the uprights here in a second.

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But anyways, what you might want to do is what I did. I said, hey, how many of you have, for example, the

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New International Version, the NIV? And of course, at this particular place,

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I knew that was going to be the popular, these are young people, I knew it was going to be the popular translation.

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And of course, as a Mormon, I was saying, well, you know, what about all these different versions of the Bible? There's been all these changes, you know,

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King James is better, etc., etc., etc. And so what

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I did is, and I would, one thing I would say, don't do this if you're not going to have time to explain what you're doing here.

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If you only have a few minutes, don't do this. Not a good idea. Ask the folks who have the

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NIV in the audience, don't think there's really much of a difference? Think your translation is just easier to read?

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Okay, let's say you were sitting in your front room with a Mormon missionary and he takes out his Bible and he asks you to read with him from John chapter 5, verse 4.

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John chapter 5, verse 4. Go ahead, look it up in an

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NIV. What will you do if you were sitting there and you had the

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NIV and you were trying to explain to a Mormon missionary? There really aren't any differences and he asks you to read

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John 5, verse 4. Well, those of you who have the

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NIV and look it up, and I always pick upon a person to do so, and they start looking at it and they get this strange look on their face.

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And normally the room becomes very quiet because there is no

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John 5, verse 4 in the NIV. I think maybe twice over the years, grand total,

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I've had someone who recognized this fact before I raised it.

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But most of the time people are unaware of the fact that there is a textual variant there. You will find it at the bottom of the page in little teeny tiny micro print.

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It is down there. But look at John chapter 5 and you'll see it goes from verse 3 to verse 5 in the rendering of the

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New International Version. And you will also discover that, for example, in the

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NASB it will be in brackets and so on and so forth. But it works best with the NIV because the text isn't even there.

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It's just down at the bottom of the page. Now there's a reason for this.

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We will explain what the reason is. But again, what I'm doing here at the beginning is explaining how it is that people can preach this perspective and make it sound so convincing.

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Make it sound so good. They have arguments that they can present.

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But of course, the next slide, slide number 8, the defenders, the modern translations are not without their arguments as well.

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There are many issues one can raise in looking at the King James Version of the Bible. For example, when we looked at 1

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Timothy 3 .16 in the King James Version of the Bible, we saw that the word

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God was not there. It's in the King James, but it's not in the modern translations.

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Well look at this, look at number 9 in the presentation, John 1 .18 in the King James Version says,

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No man has seen God any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared

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Him. But the New Revised Standard Version reads, No one has ever seen God.

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It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made

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Him known. Now notice the difference between the only begotten Son, King James Version, and God the only

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Son in the NRSV. In one, you have the only begotten

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Son, which I would argue can properly be understood as a reference to deity, given the entirety of the

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Bible's teaching on it, but just in of itself is not a reference to deity. But in the

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NRSV, we have God the only Son, a Trinitarian phrase to say the least.

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Modern translations use the word God of the Lord Jesus at John 1 .18.

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Now if there's a conspiracy involved at 1 Timothy 3 .16, does there not need to be a conspiracy involved here?

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The problem is it would be a reverse conspiracy. Now I am aware there are those that argue that John 1 .18,

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if you put God there it's Gnosticism and all the rest of that stuff, Jay Green does that for example, and we'll address that later and demonstrate that is certainly not the case and that is a very poor argument.

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But if you've got a conspiracy on the one part, then you'd have to have a conspiracy on the other.

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Next slide, number 10. In the same way, the King James Version agrees with the Jehovah's Witnesses New World Translation in not having a reference of prayer to Christ at John 14 .14.

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Modern translations agree that here the Lord speaks of prayer to himself, while the King James Version lacks the word me in the phrase, if you ask me anything in my name.

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So for example, Jesus when he is talking about prayer to Christ, he's talking about the future after he's gone back to the presence of the

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Father, and in the New American Standard he says, if you ask me anything in my name

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I will do it. But the King James simply says, if you ask anything in my name. Now in the New American Standard, the only way you can ask

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Jesus anything in his name after he's gone back into the presence of the Father is through prayer. But the

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King James Version, like the New World Translation, says only if you ask anything.

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There's no reference of prayer to Christ in the King James Version of the Bible, and it's a very, very, very common thing for King James only advocates to argue on the basis of similarity and say, look, modern translations look like the

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New World Translation, we know the NWT is wrong, therefore, modern translations must be wrong as well. However, in reality, we will discover that that is a two -edged sword.

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Well, we're going to take a break right now, and we'll continue on with slide number 11 in the presentation, right here on The Dividing Line, we'll be right back.

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And welcome back to The Dividing Line, my name is James White, we are looking at a PowerPoint presentation on the subject of the

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King James only controversy, and pointing out there are passages that can be urged against the

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King James Version of the Bible in the very same way that others are urged in favor of it.

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The next slide, slide number 11, provides a comparison of the King James Version of the Bible and the

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New American Standard Bible at Revelation 1 .8. The King James Version says, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the

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Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. However, the New American Standard says,

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I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the

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Almighty. Now especially if we understand these words to be spoken by the

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Lord Jesus Christ, then obviously having Lord God would be another reference to the

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Deity of Christ that is not found in the King James Version of the Bible. So could we not, if these were the only passages that we cited, start making an assertion, a case, that there is a conspiracy involved in the

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King James Version of the Bible to hide the Deity of Christ? Well, that would certainly be an unfair thing to do, but that's exactly, of course, what is done by King James -only advocates in the presentation, presentations that they make.

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On slide number 12, we have another example of a possible conspiracy. At first,

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John 3 .1 in the New American Standard Bible, we read, See how great a love the

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Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God, and such we are.

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But look at the King James Version of the Bible, Behold what manner of love the

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Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. The entire phrase, and such we are, an affirmation of our sonship, our adoption as sons of God, is not found in the

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King James Version of the Bible. Why would it be deleted? Why would it be left off? Again, notice, deleted and left off.

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If you make the King James a standard, why would it be added, for example? What happened to adoption as sons?

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Well, we'll take a look at that a little later on. In reality, of course, there is no conspiracy involved on either side, and I'm not talking here about bad translations.

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I'm not talking about liberal translations. I'm not talking about groups that have a clear and purposeful reason for altering the text of Scripture, whether that be the

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Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons in a cultic sense, or whether that be liberal opponents of the

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Christian faith in the sense of the Jesus Seminar, people like that. I'm not referring to any of those types of translations.

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But what we're talking about here has to do with the good translations of the

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Bible in comparison to the King James Version of the Bible that are conservative translations, that are translations done by those who believe in the

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Word of God and who do not carry along with them some anti -supernaturalistic bias, etc.,

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etc. There is no conspiracy in explaining why there are differences in any of the passages that we just looked at.

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There are simple, logical reasons why there are differences in translations. Most of the time, those differences are based either upon textual reasons, that is, the modern translations are translating a different text than the

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King James did, or they are translational reasons, that is, the underlying

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Greek or Hebrew text is the same, but the way of rendering it is taken in a different way.

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And anyone who is bilingual, knows more than one language with some level of fluency, is fully cognizant of why there would be differences translationally.

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Unfortunately, however, very few people take the time to learn the backgrounds of the Bible. Hence, they are easily misled and upset by variations that are perfectly understandable and do not indicate any kind of evil intention or corruption.

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Quite simply, King James -only -ism thrives on the ignorance of the

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Christian people concerning the history of their own sacred scriptures. That's what it thrives on.

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If people were aware of the history, if people were aware of how the

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Bible came to them, then King James -only -ism simply would not exist in the form that it does today.

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You would not have dozens and dozens and dozens of books out there, basically beating the same drum, making the same errors, and using the same bad argumentation.

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Does that mean that every King James -only person is ignorant? No, not in the sense of incapable of understanding, but yes, ignorant of many facts, or willfully ignorant of many facts.

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I've had many people, I've had many King James -only advocates, who were absolutely, positively unwilling to listen to any kind of response to their position.

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They automatically identified anyone who would respond to King James -only position as an opponent of God's Word, and they had no interest whatsoever in hearing what that person had to say, basically on the level of saying,

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I don't want to listen to a heretic. That was the kind of response that we get.

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If people simply knew the background of the biblical text, how it came to us, the process of translation, the process of transmission, then the vast majority of arguments put forward by King James -only advocates would simply disappear, would simply be seen for what they are, misunderstandings.

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Let's look at some of the passages that were cited above and see how there really is no conspiracy involved.

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Number 14, slide number 14, 1 Timothy 3 .16, one of the very favorite passages of King James -only advocates, to understand why modern translation is different from the

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King James Version and, in this case, the New King James Version, we need to know something about the text from which these translations came.

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The KJV and the New King James Version, their New Testaments, are based upon a 16th century

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Greek text known today as the Textus Receptus, or as you will normally hear me refer to it, the

36:35

TR, Textus Receptus, the Received Text.

36:42

Modern translations are based upon, generally are based upon, the Nestle -Aland

36:47

Greek text. The most recent version of that is the Nestle -Aland 27th edition of the

36:55

Greek New Testament, the NA 27. Next slide, the

37:01

Textus Receptus represents what is called the Byzantine family of manuscripts.

37:08

These manuscripts constitute at least four -fifths of the extant

37:13

Greek text in our possession. Now of course what I'm referring to here are handwritten manuscripts, those written up to 1453 and then of course thereafter.

37:27

I mean 1453 is that particular period of time is when printing is invented, but in reality it's another 60, almost 70 years before the

37:42

Greek New Testament as a whole is actually printed and published, that being done by Desiderius Erasmus in 1516.

37:52

And so basically up through the time of Erasmus, the beginning of the 16th century,

37:59

Greek manuscripts were handwritten. Four -fifths of all of those that are extant, that continue to exist to this day, obviously there were those that were written and that were destroyed, that we don't have available to us today, but four -fifths of those that still exist that have come down to us through history make up the

38:27

Byzantine family of manuscripts. The vast majority, however, of the

38:34

Byzantine texts come from the 10th through the 15th centuries.

38:41

Now think about that for a moment. The vast majority of the Byzantine manuscripts that we have come from the 10th through the 15th centuries.

38:53

So they are removed by a millennium to a millennium and a half from the originals.

39:03

They represent what is called the later ecclesiastical text, rather than the more primitive text of the first centuries.

39:12

This is called the majority text, though the TR differs in over 1 ,800 places from the majority text type.

39:19

And I would like to expand on that a little bit. You may find in your local

39:26

Christian bookstore, especially in the used book section, the majority text by Hodges and Farstad.

39:33

There's another Robinson Pierpont version as well that is out there. I have it in BibleWorks 5 .0,

39:43

which is available on the Alpha Omega Ministries website. The majority text and the

39:50

TR are not the same thing. The majority text and the TR would agree in a majority of instances against the

40:02

Nestle -Aland edition of the Greek New Testament when there is a difference. They are very similar to one another, but they are not identical.

40:11

One of the problems that you encounter in reading King James -only literature is that King James -only advocates, when it is convenient to do so, will utilize arguments that are actually arguments for the majority text.

40:29

If however they are to be consistent, then that would mean that they would have to at times correct the

40:34

TR and therefore the King James version of the Bible when the majority text goes against them and agrees with modern translations.

40:43

That they are not willing to do. And so when you find a person who is pushing the

40:50

King James -only as the only translation you should use, utilizing arguments that actually are arguments for the majority text, you're finding a person who's being inconsistent.

41:01

How many of them know they're being inconsistent? I don't know. Not very many of them. But they are being inconsistent.

41:09

The majority text, basically, with a few exceptions, and they have arguments amongst themselves as to how to do these things, because there are places, especially in the text of the book of Revelation, where the text is very, basically by counting noses.

41:28

If, for example, you have a variation in one of the Synoptic Gospels, and let's say there are, well there's 5 ,300 some odd manuscripts of the

41:39

Greek New Testament. Not all of them contain all the New Testament, of course, some of those are small fragments, but a large portion of the

41:47

Byzantine manuscripts would contain the entire New Testament. Let's say in one of the

41:53

Gospels you have 2 ,000 manuscripts that contain the disputed passage.

42:01

Basically, if you look at them and 1 ,500 manuscripts read one way, and 500 read the other way, the one that has the 1 ,500 wins, and that's what you put into your text.

42:12

It's a counting of noses. Now, if you get down to where it's 983 read one way, and 1 ,017 read the other way, then you get all sorts of arguments about how things are supposed to work, and how you're supposed to do things.

42:30

But generally, it's sort of like an election. Whoever has the largest number of votes wins.

42:37

That's how you determine the majority text. And a lot of folks like that idea.

42:44

They say, well, look, this is the best way to go. The problem, again, I would point out is that the vast majority of these texts come from the 10th to the 15th centuries.

42:55

And you would have to establish, and much work has gone into attempting to establish this, that if the majority text, at the end of the process, at the end of the handwritten process, reads a certain way, that that necessarily represents what the primitive text was.

43:16

That is, the readings found in the earliest manuscripts will produce the majority of readings in the later manuscripts after the process has gone through.

43:26

And there's a book by Pickering out there that utilizes tremendously complex mathematical formulae to attempt to substantiate this very concept.

43:38

I think attempting to apply the statistical calculus to the very human process of the transmission of the text over time just doesn't work.

43:54

I don't think you can apply mathematical formulae to, for example, the monk who makes transcriptional errors based upon numerous issues such as it is stinking cold in his cell, he has no central heating, he has no fluorescent lamps, he has 20 -80 vision, his quill is freezing in the ink, and he's just having a bad day.

44:23

I think a situation like that utterly defies statistical calculus, and yet that is what is done.

44:30

Now, actually, the argumentation of many modern folks, and especially

44:39

Reformed folks, in embracing the majority text type is ecclesiastical in nature.

44:48

That is, there are those who are promoting the idea that since the TR is what was used sort of, right, simply by default by the

45:00

Reformers, and that's the translation that's used, for example, in the Westminster Confession of Faith, that somehow there has been an ecclesiastical choosing of this particular text over against any other particular text.

45:13

Now, that is a simplistic representation of the ecclesiastical text position, but I would simply point out that that is the exact same argumentation that was used by the

45:25

Roman Catholic Church in defense of the Latin Vulgate at the time of the Reformation. In fact, in my book,

45:32

The King James Only Controversy, Chapter Two, is about how this kind of process is going on and on and on throughout history.

45:42

This isn't the first time that someone decided that one particular translation, one particular text type, is the be -all and end -all of all things.

45:52

You can't have anything else. That has happened more times than you might expect.

46:01

So, the majority text position, especially as espoused in the ecclesiastical position, I did a credenda -agenda disputatio with,

46:10

I think, Douglas Jones or Douglas Wilson, I forget which one it was, on that particular subject a number of years ago.

46:17

It's available at the credenda -agenda website. And I just do not believe that the ecclesiastical text type position can answer the meaningful questions.

46:25

It can't, you know, if someone's going to tell me you have to have this particular reading when all

46:33

Greek manuscripts up to 1500 never had this reading, then they need to give me something better than, well, the church has used this text and therefore that means we should, too.

46:45

I don't find that kind of argumentation overly compelling. Call me skeptical if you wish,

46:50

I guess. But I think you need to have a better basis than that. And possibly some of you who have been exposed to the ecclesiastical text type position would like to get online and present your case, maybe we can talk about it, but that at least is where the majority text comes from.

47:11

In fact, let me mention at 8 minutes until the hour, if you would like to get online,

47:16

I know we've only gone through 15 slides, and as I look down here, how many slides are there in this little presentation?

47:22

We have 50 of them. This is going to take a little while, obviously. If you'd like to get online, however, the number is 866 -854 -6763.

47:32

866 -854 -6763, I have my Nestle All in Greek text sitting here that has the textual variation material available to me.

47:42

And during the break, I will throw some more eyedrops in my eyes so I'll be able to see it nice and clearly. I would like to thank all those who have been praying for me on that, by the way.

47:51

As of yesterday, I still have a bandage contact in one eye, but I'm 20 -20 in one eye and 20 -40 in the other, and that's better than a lot of folks have.

48:01

Can't complain about that. And hopefully looking, Lord willing, in a few weeks to being 20 -20 in both.

48:09

But still not totally out of the woods yet, but I can see what's on my screen now. It used to be that I had a font size in the chat channel, for example, of about 20, and now

48:21

I'm down to 13. So that's hopefully helpful. 866 -854 -6763,

48:28

I have the text here in front of me. If there's some textual variations you'd like to look at, if there's some differences in translations you'd like to look at,

48:35

I have BibleWorks 5 .0 fired up and I can bring up the various translations.

48:42

I can't guarantee you that I've seen every single one, and so I may not be able to give you an answer right off the top of my head, but I will certainly be glad to look at it and I'll hymn and haw long enough to be able to bring up the text and take a look at them.

48:56

866 -854 -6763. If you'd like to be on the program today, we will start taking calls after the break on the hour.

49:07

And that is our friendly neighborhood dog named Zeke who wanted to be on the program today.

49:14

Zeke is a wonderful friend of the ministry. Good old

49:21

Zeke. Somebody give the boy a laser and he'll be happy. He likes chasing the laser.

49:27

You know a laser pointer? He thinks that's the coolest thing on the planet. Anyways, let's go ahead and look at number 16.

49:35

We have a few more minutes before we take our break. And again, 866 -854 -6763, your opportunity to ask questions today on this particular subject.

49:47

The graph that is presented on slide number 16 and also that is found on 17 has confused some folks, though I think it's really very useful information.

50:00

One of the questions that I would ask, especially of those who are majority text advocates and then of the

50:06

King James advocates who would then use their same argumentation, is if your methodology is correct, would it not consistently give us a particular text?

50:24

In other words, if the majority text methodology at the beginning of the 21st century yields the majority text that is published today, then shouldn't that methodology have always given us the same text?

50:41

In reality, it does not. Now the argument I know that is made by many majority text advocates is that what we have as far as extant manuscripts today, manuscripts that have survived a time and come down to us today, does not represent the state of what manuscripts actually existed long ago.

51:03

I think that's a little bit of a begging of the question and a begging of the issue, but that is the argument that is made.

51:08

I do understand what the arguments are. But if we look at extant manuscripts, and if we don't assume some sort of strange conspiracy, if we do not assume, for example, the idea that, well, since the majority text manuscripts were used, they were used until they were worn out, and therefore they were then disposed of and burned, and that's why you don't see them in the early church, and etc.,

51:41

etc., etc., that kind of stuff. If we just don't do any special pleading, special begging, slide number 16 presents to us an interesting comparison.

51:57

The Roman numerals at the bottom of the graphic, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, are the centuries.

52:05

So the 2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century, 5th century, so on and so forth. The bars above them, the white standing bars, represent

52:17

Alexandrian manuscripts. The black standing bars represent

52:25

Byzantine manuscripts. And the bars are meant to represent relative numbers of manuscripts.

52:34

So when you look, for example, at the 3rd century, we have a number of manuscripts that exist.

52:42

However, they're all Alexandrian. If you look at the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries, all of the manuscripts found are

52:53

Alexandrian. Only in the 5th century do you have a very small appearance of the black standing box.

53:03

And you will see that still, I would estimate, and I created this so I could go back and get the specific numbers, but I would estimate that we're looking at approximately one -fifth of the manuscripts

53:18

Byzantine in comparison to the Alexandrian. It is not until the 9th century that you see the

53:32

Byzantine manuscripts overtake the Alexandrian manuscripts as to number. And so if you lived in any century before then, and probably through then, if you add it all up, what came before, the majority text of the first millennium would be

53:49

Alexandrian, not Byzantine, in form. Now what that tells me is if your methodology gives you a different text over time, then it's not a sound methodology.

54:06

And that is why majority text advocates, and then those King James Only advocates that even bother getting into this level of argumentation, have developed the argument, well, you know, the majority texts were destroyed because they were worn out, and they were used so much, and so they were burned, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

54:27

That's why those kind of arguments have to come in. If you simply look at the data as it exists, the

54:33

Alexandrian text type, which is the primary text type of the modern text, was the majority of the first millennium.

54:42

That is why King James Only advocates vilify the Alexandrian text type tremendously.

54:50

They have to. They have to. 866 -854 -6763.

54:55

We have at least one caller online. This is your opportunity as well. Get online now. 866 -854 -6763.

55:02

We'll be right back. And welcome back to the

55:07

Dividing Line. We are talking about the history of the King James Version of the

55:13

Bible, and we are going to be looking at, once we get into the specific textual variations, we're going to be looking at how the variations arose.

55:27

We're not necessarily going to get into all that today. One of the most common, for example, that we see at 1

55:33

John 3 .1, Homo Etelyuton, is found there, the similar endings. And I was just challenged by someone to use that term seamlessly in the presentation, and I did.

55:43

And I will expect him to send me an Amazon gift certificate for having done so. But 866 -854 -6763, 866 -854 -6763 is the phone number for you to get involved in the program today.

55:57

Yes, we would very much invite those of you who disagree with me to participate.

56:06

There are many people who do. There are many people who just absolutely detest me for what

56:14

I'm saying right now, though you may be listening to it and going, well, why would anyone detest you for what you've said so far?

56:21

Because I'm skewering a tradition. It is a tradition. And when you touch sacred traditions, shall we say, quite simply, people get upset.

56:40

And it's not because you've done anything wrong, but just simply because that's the way things are. Well, anyways, we have so far only one brave caller.

56:48

Now, some of you did try to call in earlier, or maybe it was just the same caller. And I won't mention any names, but your call went off out into the great wild blue yonder of the cell phone.

57:01

Please try to call back again and understand that we're a small ministry and we were just doing our best to do customer service.

57:10

We really were. 866 -854 -6763 is the number, and let's go ahead on up to the cool country of Colorado.

57:22

Yeah, 75 degrees isn't so cool. 75? It's only 82 here. Yeah, it's mid -November.

57:28

Actually, this is Peter Ruckman in Florida. Oh, hello, Pete. How are you? Yeah, yeah.

57:33

First of all, you would not have said hello. You would have already insulted me, and you would have slapped me across the face with the dirty hands that have lots of chalk on them.

57:42

Yes. Well, two things. One, we can get back to this later if you want, but I did just get back from ETS, and I was there when your name came up a couple of times during a

57:53

Geisler session, so if you want to hear more about that, we can get back to that. During a Geisler session? Yes.

57:58

Oh, please, pray tell. My ears doth burn. Well, it seems I could be getting off topic, though.

58:04

That's okay. Get off the topic. Yeah, well, he did come out with a new book when

58:10

I hung up last week. Somebody else had mentioned it, and you were wondering if it was his old book, but the book came out.

58:17

He saw his first copy Tuesday, and they had it for sale there. It's with H. Wayne House on Open Theism, basically.

58:26

And his view, this paper he presented that Wednesday morning, was essentially taking the position that logically, philosophically,

58:36

Open Theism reduced to Process Theology when you got right down to it. And so he delivered that paper, and then opened it up to questions and responses, that sort of thing.

58:50

And somebody, of course, raised their hand and brought up that nasty Potter's Freedom book.

58:57

Did you know who this person was? No, I did not know. It was just somebody sitting a few rows behind me, and they asked how essentially the gist of it was.

59:05

In light of the fact that James White is showing you to have a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Calvinist thought, how are we to trust you and your representation of Open Theism?

59:20

So his response, he kind of looked at the guy, and when the guy was finished, his response was, well,

59:27

I happen to believe I'm correct on both of them. And then about five minutes later, after he did another question specifically related to it, somebody came in late, they raised their hand and said, excuse me, this has been covered already.

59:41

I came in late, but James White has written a book called Potter's Freedom. And the guy,

59:47

I think he was inwardly rolling his eyes, although he's played enough not to. But the guy just brought up Potter's Freedom, and kind of a similar related thing to that one.

59:57

And at that point, he said, well, I have addressed that in a new appendix to the second edition.

01:00:04

So if you get the second edition, we'll deal with that. And then, of course, it moved on. But I thought you'd enjoy hearing about that.

01:00:10

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And unfortunately, in light of the nature of that appendix, that's somewhat disappointing.

01:00:17

But anyways. I was going to say, I also talked to Bruce Ware, and he was very excited about getting a copy of The Guided Justifies, and mentioned that.

01:00:28

Yeah, we had had, I'm not sure how to get hold of him. You could contact Founders Ministries, but when we did the, what was that, about a month ago or so now, when

01:00:39

I was in Lynchburg with Dr. Ware, his presentations on open theism were just devastating.

01:00:46

They were so good. And what I really appreciated about Bruce was that he was passionate in his proclamation.

01:00:53

I've never figured out, I'm even passionate about textual criticism, so I'm really weird. But I've just never, ever figured out how anyone can teach or preach without passion.

01:01:06

And Bruce Ware is a tremendous scholar, he's just a tremendous intellect, and yet he's not afraid, because sadly there is a fear amongst

01:01:17

Christian scholars on this issue to be passionate with your conclusions.

01:01:25

And he was very passionate in what he had to say. Now this was the, did you attend the debates on whether open theism should be classified as being within the pale of orthodoxy?

01:01:37

Yeah, it wasn't actually a debate, what it was was a paired lecture, a plenary session that John Sanders from, it was after lunch

01:01:45

Wednesday, John Sanders had the one o 'clock to two o 'clock slot in the main conference area, and then

01:01:51

Bruce Ware had two o 'clock to three o 'clock. Okay. And so it wasn't a direct give and take, but yeah,

01:01:58

I attended both of those and got the tapes of those. What was your feeling as to the take of the whole body, shall we say?

01:02:08

Well actually, interestingly enough, it wasn't just a matter of feeling. What happened was there was a group, pretty much seemed to me to be spearheaded by Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware, and what they did is they put forth a resolution that essentially open theism did not fit within the pale of orthodoxy as ETS should propone it.

01:02:32

And so what, it was not a binding resolution in any sense in terms of membership, but it was just an official statement.

01:02:39

And so that was presented on Wednesday, Thursday night after the final session, there was discussion, open discussion from 9 .30

01:02:47

to midnight. And then Friday morning at the business meeting, it was put to a vote. And it was 11 % abstained, 18 % voted against the resolution in favor of open theism, and the other 71 % voted for the resolution.

01:03:06

So it did pass that ETS is officially stating, although it's not binding on membership in any sense, but they are officially taking the position that open theism is unacceptable.

01:03:17

So now, was there some discussion as to whether this will become, is this just the first step of making it a binding thing?

01:03:25

Well, it would be the first step, there wasn't anything definite as to whether future steps would be taken.

01:03:31

If it was a binding one, it wouldn't have passed, because that would require 80%. And so in terms of changing the doctrinal statement, like when the

01:03:39

Jehovah's Witnesses tried, you know, when they did the Trinity one to keep the Jehovah's Witnesses out, to go to that extent would have to be 80%.

01:03:46

Clark Pinnock made the comment the night before, or during his session, he said, tonight

01:03:52

I expect a slap on the wrist, hopefully it won't be a noose around my neck the following year.

01:03:58

But I think it was, you know, only 18%, which, I mean, one way it's a lot, but when you had leading open theist speaking bringing their entourages,

01:04:07

I felt like it was a pretty good vote, because a lot of people were concerned that it might not be anywhere near that overwhelming.

01:04:14

Yeah, yeah, Bruce had mentioned that. And for those folks who aren't familiar with what we're talking about here, open theism is the concept,

01:04:22

Gregory Boyd and others, Sanders are the main proponents, I guess, Clark Pinnock, that the future is unknown to God, because the future in essence does not yet exist.

01:04:33

God has omniscience of all that that does exist, but since the future does not yet exist, God does not have knowledge of future events in the sense of exhaustive divine foreknowledge, which is what has historically been held by Christians, really from the beginning.

01:04:48

So this is unfortunately a movement that has gained much strength, and there's at least two books

01:04:56

I can recommend on the subject, I haven't seen Dr. Geisler's, but I can obviously, Dr.

01:05:02

Bruce Ware's book, God's Lesser Glory, was the first one really to hit the battle, shall we say, and John Frame has just come out with a new book also on the subject of open theism.

01:05:16

I picked that one up there as well. Right, I picked it up at Lynchburg. Battle for God was the name of the

01:05:21

Geisler House one, and I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but we'll take a look at it. The other thing that I think you'd find interesting was the comment, again, showing the misrepresentation of Calvinist thought was a certain well -known philosopher who deals with time a great deal made the statement in a personal conversation,

01:05:42

I was actually getting one of his books signed, and he made the statement about maybe there's certain things

01:05:47

God couldn't do because man has created an image of God, and it wouldn't be consistent to destroy his own image in a certain way.

01:05:54

Are there limitations in what God could do? And then he said, well, certainly you couldn't come up with anything worse than the

01:05:59

Calvinist concept of God burning people in hell for no reason, which I thought was utterly appalling.

01:06:07

Unbelievable. Yeah, so we talk about a misrepresentation of a viewpoint, but overall

01:06:14

I was a little cautious with your mentioning some of the things you'd run into, and I actually found to be very friendly, met a lot of well -known speakers, and even though I'm just a little old bachelor's degree and associate member, very gracious, you know, asking questions about what

01:06:32

I did and taking extra time. I met a lot of very, very friendly, very gracious people there, so I did thoroughly enjoy the experience.

01:06:40

I hung out with the John Piper crowd. He wasn't there, but his number two guy,

01:06:46

Tom Steller, brought a group from the Bethlehem Institute, about 16 young guys in training there, and so I got to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with them and sit in a room with, 20 of us in a room, with Michael Horton talking to us and a few other experiences like that that were very enjoyable.

01:07:04

Alright, well, excellent. And do you want to get to King James at all? Yeah, yeah, I've got one other caller on the line, so let's go ahead and hit that one real

01:07:10

Just very quickly, it was Douglas Wilson, by the way, the one you had in Credenda. Yes. And, you know, he talked about, again, that whole received text -related thing,

01:07:19

I don't know if you use that term, but, you know, at the TR. But the thing I always run into, especially with some of the crazed people

01:07:25

I taught at their school a few years ago that turned out to be like this, they seem to have no distinction between majority text,

01:07:34

TR, and variations thereof. I mean, it's just one monolithic hole in their minds, straight from God, and never to be changed.

01:07:43

Is that typically the case, where they never seem to see these distinctions and variations? Oh, yeah. I have very frequently, for example, even to the point of demonstrating differences in published editions of the

01:07:54

King James Version of the Bible, if you want to see someone just stop in their tracks without any response, their whole position depends upon the existence of a monolithic, singular, perfectly identifiable text that they then identify as the be -all and end -all of all things.

01:08:11

Well, the problem is, you have five different editions of Erasmus. You have two from Stephanos.

01:08:18

You have Beza. There's differences between each one of those. On the John Ankerberg show, the late

01:08:24

Arthur Farrstad had even mentioned that he knew of about 106 different TRs, different versions of the

01:08:33

TR. And so, since the whole system requires the creation of a singular text that has no variation, then you have to be able to identify that text with utter particularity.

01:08:49

Well, you can't do that. And so, when you present that kind of thing, it is extremely troubling to at least the thoughtful King James -only person, and very troubling to the one who's at least trying to make some brownie points with the people around him.

01:09:04

I think you're just an Alexandrian. Yeah, well, I've been called the high priest of the Alexandrian cult, in fact.

01:09:11

We've jokingly said that the Alexandrian cult meets on all three Thursday evenings. Please bring your own bowling shoes and donuts.

01:09:18

Well, if I'm ever in Phoenix, I'll go get some Krispy Kremes and join you.

01:09:23

Okay, man. Thanks for the report on ETS. That was very, very helpful. Thank you. Okay, bye -bye. All right, bye -bye. 866 -854 -6763.

01:09:32

I was very interested in knowing what was going on, because I really do believe that the issue of open theism needs to be identified for the heresy that it is.

01:09:44

We need to draw the lines. There is no way that the Christian God who promised his son, who prophesies of the work of the

01:09:54

Messiah, was merely predicting and hoping. A God who does not have exhaustive knowledge of the future is a

01:10:01

God that must, in essence, be growing and learning and changing. This is a fight for the very essence of Christian theology.

01:10:09

There is no Christian theology in the resultant positions of Clark Pinnock and others, and so it is a fight to be able to define what it is we believe.

01:10:20

And we need to pray for folks like Bruce Ware and John Frame who are leading that fight against open theism and identifying it as the heresy that it is.

01:10:31

So keep those folks in mind. 866 -854 -6763.

01:10:37

Let's go ahead and go out to California and talk about 1 Timothy 3 .16 and talk with Johnny.

01:10:45

Hi, Johnny. How are you, James? Doing good. Good, good. It's not only 1

01:10:50

Timothy 3 .16, by the way. It has to do with the passage dealing with whether it's

01:10:56

God or he who. Yes, that's right. Because I've actually, you know, I've got some of the passages that actually use the term theos, referring to Jesus Christ memorized, but I kind of hesitate in using 1

01:11:08

Timothy because I know that the modern translations, and I know that liberal scholars, because of their biases, would go against the rendering of the

01:11:17

KJV, and I even know that the NIV doesn't translate it that way either. And I want to know exactly how it is that the modern translations would opt to take the he who translation rather than the

01:11:32

God. Well, that's actually, we're going to discuss it rather fully. I don't know if you have the

01:11:37

PowerPoint presentation or not that I've been going over today. I haven't been able to listen to the show.

01:11:43

Oh, okay. I don't have internet right now. Oh, all right. Have you downloaded the PowerPoint presentation sometime in the past when you did have access to it?

01:11:52

No. Okay. To be honest, I don't even know what a PowerPoint presentation is.

01:11:58

Okay, well, there is a, if you will send after the program, if you'll send me at NA27 at AOMIN .org,

01:12:09

if you'll send me an email that has in the subject line

01:12:14

AV1611, AV1611. Nothing else in the email, just AV1611, then

01:12:24

I will be sending, my system will automatically send back to you a

01:12:31

PowerPoint presentation. It is a PowerPoint is a basically a slideshow and it has a link in the message that will be sent to you where you can download a free

01:12:42

PowerPoint viewer. If you don't have Microsoft PowerPoint, the program, you can still download a free viewer that will allow you to view that which

01:12:53

I send to you. And then that will allow you to listen to it.

01:12:59

And that will explain very fully, and it's somewhat difficult to explain without being able to look at the text, the variant of 1

01:13:08

Timothy 3 .16. But in essence, there is basically only one line difference, a small line difference.

01:13:17

I do have your book in front of me, The King James Only Controversy, and I have your... The graphic? Yeah, I have the, well, the difference that I understand was, let me see if I can see here, that one of them has the line on top of the

01:13:31

O and the E looking letter. Right. And there's like a squiggly kind of line inside of the O. Not really a squiggly type of line, but it's the difference between Haas and Theta Sigma.

01:13:43

So yes, that's correct. Okay, so I have this here, but why is it that in more ancient times, the text was basically hell, that it was

01:13:56

God who was manifested in the first place? Why is it that now the modern translations have almost taken that position, you know?

01:14:03

Because it has to do with also, I remember Walter Mern was on a show called

01:14:09

The Long John Neville Show, and he was talking to this guy. He wrote a book called

01:14:14

The Passover Plot, I don't remember his name. Yes, uh -huh. And Walter Mern had brought up that Romans 9 .5

01:14:20

says that Jesus, who is God over all, blessed through the ages, amen, and that the guy said that that is a distorted translation of the passage, that it was deliberately mistranslated to try to teach the beauty of Christ.

01:14:36

Why is it that it's a distortion in there? I know that there are liberal biases that go against it, but on the basis of the

01:14:43

Greek text, why is it that they feel that way? Well, there's two very, very different questions there.

01:14:50

The first question in 1 Timothy 3 .16 is simply a matter of the underlying text. And the

01:14:56

Nessean 27th edition goes with Haas, which is he who you can argue in light of the numbers of manuscripts and which manuscripts, one way or the other.

01:15:08

But since the NA 27 utilizes the relative pronoun he who is manifest in the flesh, the vast majority of translations go with that.

01:15:17

That's totally different. That's a completely different subject than Romans 9 .5. Romans 9 .5, there is no difference in the

01:15:24

Greek text. The reason that there are differences between translations at 1

01:15:30

Timothy 3 .16 is because there's a variation in the Greek, the handwritten Greek text. There is no variation at Romans 9 .5.

01:15:37

That's totally translational in Romans 9 .5. Now, that person who said that to Walter Martin is exactly backwards as far as the facts go, because the most consistent rendering of Romans 9 .5

01:15:52

and the grammar that is used there would in fact give the understanding of the deity of Christ that is found, for example, in the

01:16:01

New King James Version of the Bible and other passages like that. Romans chapter,

01:16:08

I'm not sure why this is, Romans 9 .5, there we go. For example, the

01:16:15

New King James Version of the Bible, which I think has probably the best rendering of Romans 9 .5,

01:16:24

gives at that particular passage, "...of whom are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh,

01:16:30

Christ came, who is overall the eternally blessed God. Amen." And so that particular rendering,

01:16:37

I think, is very, very good. There's a whole discussion of Romans 9 .5

01:16:43

and how it should be translated in my book, The Forgotten Trinity. It's not really covered in the

01:16:49

King James Only Controversy because it's not really a major issue. It is a translational issue.

01:16:55

I think it is mentioned, but it is not the lengthy discussion I have in The Forgotten Trinity.

01:17:00

So it is interesting that those two passages that you refer to illustrate the two reasons why there are differences in modern translations between each other and between that and the

01:17:14

King James. The first in 316 is because of an underlying textual issue.

01:17:19

What do the Greek texts say? Certain Greek texts have the reading, "...he

01:17:27

who was manifest in the flesh," and others have the abbreviation of the word, "...theos."

01:17:34

The older texts generally have "...he who..." rather than "...theos." Now, again, you could argue that, and I think it's worth arguing that "...theos..."

01:17:43

should always be at least given as one of the possibilities there. But that's a textual issue. Romans 9 .5 is not.

01:17:49

Romans 9 .5 is all the Greek texts say the same thing, and so the issue is how do you translate those particular

01:17:57

Greek texts? And the person who was speaking to Martin has it exactly backwards, that the best way of rendering that, given

01:18:03

Paul's own usage, I think I listed, if I recall correctly, in The Forgotten Trinity, about five grammatical or syntactical reasons why

01:18:14

Romans 9 .5 does refer to the deity of Christ. So, but is it debatable?

01:18:20

I mean, would there be a Trinitarian scholar that would say, you know what, I agree with you that,

01:18:26

James, that Jesus Christ is God, but I don't think that Romans 9 .5 is one of those passages that teaches it.

01:18:32

Yes, of course. Ah, I see. Of course. Well, do you have any more callers, or could

01:18:38

I ask you one more question? Yes, actually, I do. I'm looking at, first of all,

01:18:46

I'm going to have to start training my board ops on how to spell biblical names.

01:18:52

That would help some here. I'm going to guess that Z -A -C -H -A -R -I -A is supposed to be

01:19:03

Z -E -C -H -A -R -I -A -H. Maybe that would be the case, but let me just see if I can even help.

01:19:12

The other caller here real quick. Yeah, it's about the piercing thing.

01:19:24

Sam and Tyler, I really wouldn't have much of an answer for you right now.

01:19:30

I'd have to sort of, I think I did address that in the book. I'm sort of just filling time here.

01:19:36

Just a second. Zechariah. Oh, which book? The King James only, or? Actually, I didn't.

01:19:42

I didn't. Yeah, there's issues as to how to translate. They will look on me whom they have pierced.

01:19:50

ESV and then the New American Standard, they have pierced. And each one has pierced, but some of the modern translations use something other than that.

01:19:59

I'd have to do a fair amount to look at that specific passage, and I really wouldn't have time in the three minutes we have left to do that.

01:20:07

So Sam, sorry I can't be much help to you on that. Maybe I'll try to take a look at it over the course of the week and be of more assistance to the future.

01:20:16

Really quick, Johnny, then go ahead and throw one last one out because we're about out of time. Okay. I have a friend who's a

01:20:21

Oneness Pentecostal. It's actually a two -part question, really brief. My friend is a Oneness Pentecostal. However, he believes that the

01:20:27

King James Version is the best version, and that's the only version he will use. However, the people at his church disagree.

01:20:33

Is there, among Oneness Pentecostals, is this a belief, or is it just my friend? Yes, it is very common for Oneness Pentecostals to be

01:20:41

King James only. King James only, but it's not monolithic? No. Okay, and what do you deal with some of the things that he says that he feels that...

01:20:53

I mean, he's not very specific as to what it is that he objects to about the other translations, but how do

01:20:59

I approach him? Well, that really depends on why he believes in King James only -ism and what his objections

01:21:09

Well, he thinks that it's basically the closest thing that we all get to the original. Well, then that would require possibly looking at some of the sections in the

01:21:18

King James only controversy, chapter 9, problems with the King James, and you can demonstrate that there are issues there.

01:21:28

And, but eventually you're going to be getting into textual issues, the background of the text, things like that. But he's into studying the

01:21:35

Dead Sea Scrolls, and I told him, yes, well, the Dead Sea Scrolls are older than the manuscripts used by the KJV. And he said, yeah, but they're not that different.

01:21:43

Well, he's sort of flying on automatic pilot at that point. I'm not sure that he really knows what he's talking about there besides Dead Sea Scrolls, and there's some argument about this, but the

01:21:53

Dead Sea Scrolls do not contain New Testament texts. So, and the vast majority of the issues are

01:22:00

New Testament and not with, not Old Testament issues. All righty?

01:22:05

All right, bro. Okay. Thanks for calling in. God bless. All right. Well, yeah,

01:22:11

I am aware of the, I'm going to have to look at what's going on with the

01:22:16

Zechariah 12 thing. But anyways, thanks for the calls today. That's always helpful in the last half hour to have folks that have some good questions, some good insights into what's going on.

01:22:30

And next week, that means I need to sort of make a mark here. We will sort of run back over slide number 16 just real briefly, and then pick up with 17.

01:22:41

So those of you who are listening and going over the presentation, that's what we'll be picking up next week.

01:22:47

And that hopefully will be helpful to you. If you need to get hold of this presentation, drop me an email,

01:22:53

NA27 at AOMIN .org. In the subject line, put AV1611, AV1611, and my system will send it back to you.

01:23:01

Please don't send it to me. If you have hotmail or something like that, it's a four megabyte file attachment.

01:23:07

Your system won't accept it. It just bounces back to me anyways. So, but if you have a real ISP, go ahead and get hold of it.