DEBATE: The LSB is superior to the KJV; James White vs. Thomas Ross

Opening Prayer and Debate Introduction

So, as I typically would, as I enter any pulpit, I just would like to start us off with a quick prayer before I introduce what's going on today, so let's pray. Lord God, I do just thank you for the privilege it is to come together with fellow believers, to sit down and to discuss, to disagree, to banter and have fellowship and all these things that we've done today in these last few days, Lord.

It's a privilege to talk about you crucified, and Lord, I pray that today, through the earnest thought and debate from these two gentlemen, Lord, that you would bless the time, that you would bless the hearer's ears to learn new information and to be able to consider these things with a biblical mind.

And Lord, it is upon the name of Jesus Christ, the substance upon which we've been preaching throughout these days, we say these things, and I say that in the holiest name, Jesus Christ, amen. So, again, I just want to thank Jeff Rice and Covenant Reform Baptist Church for opening up their doors to this debate.

The debate topic, if you don't already know, it is the Legacy Standard Bible as a representative of modern English translations based upon the UBSNA text, is superior to the King James Version as a representative of the TR-based Bible translation.

I dare you to try to say that ten times fast. Taking the affirmative on that is Dr. James White, as he will be representing the Legacy Standard Bible. The denial of the debate topic is going to be represented by Thomas Ross, representing the King James Version of the Bible.

I'm going to go ahead and introduce both of our speakers today, as with a little bit of information about who they are. Dr. James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. He is a professor of church history and apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, and has taught Greek, Hebrew, systematic theology, textual criticism, church history, and various topics in the field of apologetics for numerous other schools of which I participate in.

He has authored or contributed to more than 24 books, including the King James Version Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter's Freedom, The God Who Justifies, and What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran.

He is an accomplished debater, having engaged in more than 175 moderated public debates with leading proponents of the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormonism. He is a pastor slash elder of Apologia Church in Arizona.

He has been married to his wife, Kelly, for more than 40 years, and has two children and five living grandchildren. Please give a round of applause for Dr. James White. Here on my left, I would love to introduce the one that is taking the denial position of the King James Version, Thomas Ross.

Thomas Ross here grew up doubting the existence of God, but through God's grace, turned to the Lord Jesus Christ in repentant faith shortly after entering college at the age of 15, and was born again.

He earned a BA from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA from Fairhaven Baptist College, and an MDiv from the Great Plains Baptist Divinity School. A Master of Theological Studies from Anchor Baptist Theological Seminary, and should complete and submit his PhD dissertation this year at Great Plains Baptist Divinity School.

He has taught systematic theology, Greek, Hebrew, apologetics, textual criticism, and other courses with a variety of church-authorized Bible institutes, colleges, and theological seminaries in the United States, and in foreign countries.

Thomas Ross serves the Lord at Bethel Baptist Church in, I cannot pronounce where that is in California.

El Sobrante.

El Sobrante, right there. Thomas Ross has engaged in public moderated debates both in the United States and internationally with leading representatives of non-Christian worldviews, and with representatives of pseudo-Christian cults and religious organizations.

He loves to read and study his Greek, Hebrew, and English Bible with the intention of obeying.

Them.

He has also translated the Aramaic portions of scripture, and he has written several books. So I would love for you to please give a round of applause for Thomas Ross. So I will go ahead and just cover in what this debate format is going to consist of, the times and the order of events right now.

So for the debate format itself, we're going to have opening presentations from both gentlemen. These are going to consist of two 25-minute opening arguments or presentations in that way. It's going to start off with James White followed by Thomas Ross, and that format has been agreed upon by both men as the consistent way that these things are going to flow.

So James White will start, Thomas Ross will go second following him. So after the opening presentations, which are 25 minutes each, there will be a second presentation consisting of a rebuttal for 12 minutes each for both opponents on this.

Following this, we'll have cross-examinations, 10 minutes to 10 minutes on both sides, followed by another cross-examination of 10 minutes to 10 minutes on both sides. Then we're going to have a third presentation slash a rebuttal for eight minutes for both opponents, again, following that same format, Dr. James White going first, followed by Dr. Thomas Ross.

After this, we will have concluding statements, five minutes given both. And then after this, we will then have a short break, which I will just announce this now. If you look at the end of your pews, you should see some of these note cards that are around.

We would ask that this is how you're going to be turning in questions for the Q &A moment. You will write down your question on it, rip it out, and then you will give it to Pastor Jeff Rice. Please raise your hand, Brother Jeff.

Please get them to him, and we will start immediately sorting those questions as fast as we can so that we can get right into the very short, after the short break, going into the questions and answers.

Just to give you just some miscellaneous details, some rules of order of how this is going to be taking place, questions from the audience should be submitted during that short break that was just mentioned.

Those questions, please, again, give it to Jeff Rice. One thing I would ask that you would abstain from is expressions of approval or disapproval during this debate. This would include clapping, facial looks, anything that would insinuate that approval or disapproval.

You should stay quiet until the break, please. So when these questions get asked, each person here is going to have one minute to respond to these questions that are directly asked to them. The opponent will have 30 seconds to respond to these questions if he would like to do so.

He has the option of refusing this. During the cross-examination, the person answering questions will take no more than 30 seconds again to answer a question. So I would ask you guys today to please show me a little bit of grace.

I am the moderator for this. The moderators, to do things like passively make sure people stay on time, but is not the active role of determining the validity of arguments made or even if presentators are staying on topic.

The speakers can do this for themselves and point out if the other party is failing to do what he needs to do with the audience as the judge of these matters. Presentators are allowed to use visual aids, as you can see on the TVs on both sides of this room, and a speaker's time clock begins immediately when the speaker begins to talk.

This will, again, be done with as much grace as possible, as I will be the timekeeper. And on that note, we will go ahead and turn the time over to Dr. James White, and I will get down from up here.

James White’s Opening Case for the Legacy Standard Bible

All right. Well, good afternoon. I think this may be one of the earliest debates I've done in the day, and in fact, congratulations, you all are in attendance at my 180th moderated public debate. I had no idea in 1990, when I started debating gerrymatitics at a large Catholic church in Long Beach, California, that that was going to lead me to Tullahoma.

Yes. God's providence. It is good to be here. Thanks to Brother Ross for being here as well. It's going to freak me out, because the doctor who did my cardiac ablation in 2011 was Thomas.

Ross.

So if you start touching my heart, I'm running. So that's just all there is to it. But it's great to be with you. I actually have more time. I thought we only had 20 minutes, so my prepared material is only for 20 minutes, so let's tell some jokes.

No.

Let's just, we can get to talk a little bit more slowly than I would otherwise, so that'll be very, very, very useful. Now why are we here? Well, we have an important subject to discuss, and I'm looking forward to this particular perspective.

I've debated the issue of the King James Only movement for a long time. But this is going to allow me to, I think this is going to allow us to shed a little different light on the subject, because I'm defending the idea that not only is this the best-looking Legacy Standard Bible in existence in the world, oh, I'm sorry, dude, no, uh-uh, I'm sorry, but that the Legacy Standard Bible is superior to the King James Version.

And I believe very, very firmly that the King James translators would be on my side in this debate. I believe that they would definitely support the thesis that I am putting forward, and I want you to understand that, and hopefully that will lead us to some very interesting conversation.

I'm going to give you three reasons why the thesis needs to be supported and affirmed. First, the LSB is textually superior to the KJV. That is, the text upon which it is based is superior to the text that was available to the King James translators.

That was all they had, and we'll discuss that a little bit more at that particular point in time in the debate. But today, the LSB has a superior text that it is translating and providing to us in English than was available to the King James translators.

We have found far more manuscripts and have much more knowledge of the manuscripts than they had at that particular time in history. Secondly, the LSB is lexically superior to the KJV. We'll not spend a lot of time on this, but the fact of the matter is we have learned much about the languages, both Hebrew and Greek, that was unknown at the beginning of the 17th century, between 1604 and 1611, when the King James was being translated.

We have learned much more about the relationship of those languages to other languages, and so our understanding of the lexical backgrounds has improved greatly, and the King James translators would be very, very appreciative and would expect us to utilize that information to improve our Bible translations today.

Finally, the LSB is translationally superior to the KJV. That is, we've learned more about those languages, not just as to the meanings of words, but we have learned more about those languages as to the grammar and syntax of those languages so that we can translate them more accurately today than we could in 1611.

Now, first, I want to just throw this out here, and hopefully it will help us to, I think, have a sort of a foundation to stand on. I wish to point out a startling reality. I believe firmly that the King James translators would be completely on my side in the debate.

Today.

Their preface to the reader, which unfortunately is not published in most King James Bibles.

Today.

If you have a Cambridge or something like that, you might have the preface to the reader in there. It's not a short piece of material. It was written by the translators, and it gives their translational methodology and a defense of a new translation, because theirs was the new kid on the block when it came.

Out.

That preface to the reader makes this very, very clear. The King James translators believe that translations should be, in the common language, understandable and accessible, just as the original preaching was in ancient days.

And so the idea of having a translation that is not in the language of the people, that is difficult to understand, that requires them to carry a dictionary with them to figure things out, is the exact opposite of the perspective that they had.

They believe that translations should be, in the common language, understandable and accessible to people. They also believe that translations must differ from one another, and as long as the intention of the original authors is sought, even the meanest or the least fancy translation is the Word of God.

In fact, they even defend themselves, because they knew that there would be people who would say, well, the Catholics are better at doing stuff like that. Just leave it to the Catholics. And they said no.

Even the meanest translation that honestly seeks to render the meaning of the original is to be called the Word of God. And so they were in no way, shape, or form saying that the translations that came before theirs were inferior, weren't the Word of God, were being replaced, anything like that.

At all.

That's just not what they believed. They believed that difficult texts should have notes providing alternate translations and possibilities, and they provided that. And again, it's a shame that a lot of the King James printings today do not include the many, many, many marginal notes that the King James translators themselves provided.

So they were not saying that this text that we're putting in the text is the final word, because if you translate in one way and then put a little star, it says, or it could be this, obviously you're not saying that what you put in the text is the only way it can be translated, the only way it can be understood.

And yet they did that. That's a very important thing to keep in mind. Their new translation, they knew, would be opposed by those preferring older translations. Hence, there would be other translations in the future they never envisioned the KJV as the final word.

And in fact, I think they would be stunned to find out that 400 years down the road, there would be anybody that would be defending their translation as the only translation you should use. They would be absolutely beyond comment amazed that anyone could actually come up with that perspective.

They would expect that there would be many translations that would have long eclipsed theirs by the time four centuries had passed by. That is truly where they're coming from. So let's look at the three points that I want to present, and hopefully we'll do so with clarity.

The LSB utilizes far, far more manuscript evidence than was even dreamed of by the KJV translators, who would have loved to have had access to what we have today. While they used printed text based upon a handful of manuscripts, the LSB has access to manuscripts a solid 1 ,800 to 1 ,200 years older than those used by Erasmus, for example, for the New Testament.

Now, in regards to the Old Testament, not so much. The 1525 Blomberg was used there, and the current Bibli Hebraicus Ducartensia, they're very, very similar. There's very few differences between them as far as the Hebrew text is concerned.

But as far as the New Testament is concerned, we have so much more access to so many more manuscripts today than they had at that time, and you must understand that the ability to know which manuscripts were which, to have a number designated to them, to know what they contain, where they are stored, that is very much a modern convenience that we have only had for a very short period of time.

They did not have access to that kind of information that we have access to today, and that the LSB translators certainly had access to as well. So as a result, the LSB represents more closely the words of the apostles themselves in many places, and for the sake of time, we'll look at only three of these examples, but I think if you write them down, I think they'll end up being a part of the conversation later on during the cross-examination.

In Ephesians 3 .9, the KJV follows Erasmus, and the King James translators had the five editions of Erasmus, they had Stephanus, especially the 1550, and they primarily relied especially upon Bases' 1598 versions.

They were not examining manuscripts, they were examining printed editions of the Greek New Testament. Now, there were differences between all of those, and they made decisions between them, but they were primarily translating from printed editions of the Greek New Testament at that particular point in time.

And Erasmus, Desiderius Erasmus, the Dutch humanist scholar, he was the first one to print and publish a Greek New Testament, it was actually a diglot, Latin Greek, and he had had a very small number of manuscripts available to him, and he had access to a single one-off manuscript from around the 12th century, number 2817, that's its designation today, that stands opposed to nearly the entire manuscript tradition of the Greek New Testament.

So in Ephesians 3 .9, the KJV reads Fellowship, while the Greek manuscripts, Latin manuscripts, Coptic, Sahitic, Boheric, all other versions and all of the patristic citations read Administration. That is, the one manuscript, 2817, that Erasmus had, had Koinonia, whereas everybody else has Oikonomia.

Now you say, well they sound similar, yeah, but they're very different words, very different meanings between the two of them. Now this is a simple scribal error in a 12th century manuscript that, due to its use by Erasmus, became the textual reading of what is today called the Textus Receptus, the TR.

But remember, that Textus Receptus that people have today, the small little blue case-bound edition published by the Trinitarian Bible Society, for example, that Textus Receptus was actually created in the late 19th century by Scrivener, and how he did it is he looked at the King James.

So he took all of Erasmus and Stephanus and Beza, and when they differed, he looked at the King James translation to make a Greek New Testament. So it's a Greek New Testament based upon an English translation.

That's what we're talking about when we talk about the Textus Receptus. So one manuscript has a reading in it, and it goes against all the other manuscripts that were much, much older, and the sermons and the translations and everything.

And yet that ended up, because Erasmus was doing what he was doing, that ended up in the Textus Receptus, and that is the basis of the King James translation today. And so I think someone who has, and this is very, very important, we have to ask the question, what do you want?

What do you want? I want to know what Paul wrote. When Paul wrote that letter to the church at Ephesus, what did he want to communicate back then? And not what the described 1 ,200 years later think he should have said, what did he want to communicate at that time?

That has to be our standard. That has to be our goal. If we have anything other than that, then we're not really doing textual critical work any longer. I think it's very, very important. This is a simple error that is very clear and very easy to fix as well in light of the manuscript evidence.

Then we have another text, Revelation 16 .5. The reading of all known Greek manuscripts at Revelation 16 .5 is hosios, which means the Holy One, while the KJV following Baze's emendation from 1598, going against Erasmus and Stephanos, has and shall be from esaminos.

Now what are we talking about here? Well, the Greek manuscripts are united in saying that what is in Revelation 16 .5 should be the one who is and who was the Holy One. Every Christian that we can see for the first 1 ,600 years of this era read Revelation 16 .5 the same way.

But Baze, Calvin's successor at Geneva, in putting together his 1598, felt that the phrase who was and is should be finished off with what? And is to come. And looking at the term esaminos, thought that it was close enough in form to be the proper reading rather than hosios, which means the Holy One.

And there's a Latin comment that he made that some people understand to be saying that he had a manuscript or something that read that way. We don't have any today that have that reading. Revelation, by the way, is the book that has the fewest manuscripts of any New Testament book, probably because it fought for inclusion in the canon.

And there's lots of problems in the King James and the Textus Receptus in the book of Revelation because Erasmus didn't have a manuscript for Revelation. He had a commentary in Latin with the Greek text embedded in the Latin, and he had to extract it out of the commentary.

It's all he had. You might say, why didn't he fix it? I mean, if he was rushing in his first edition, which he was, why didn't he fix it later on? I wondered about that myself. Two reasons. First of all, Erasmus had a very low view of the book of Revelation.

He didn't really think it was scripture. And secondly, he thought he did fix it. When he did his second edition, he told his printer, he said, you know, others have put out a Greek New Testament since then.

There were some brothers who had put one out. Go get theirs and use their copy of Revelation and fix mine. There was only one problem. They had used Erasmus's for the book of Revelation. So it was the same thing.

And so it didn't get fixed. And there are numerous errors in Revelation, this just being one of them, that we can point to where the King James reads very, very differently than the Greek manuscripts themselves did.

Famously, the LSV contains the text of 1 John 5 as it was transmitted in the Greek manuscript tradition all the way to just before the Reformation itself. While the KJV has the famous edition, utterly unknown in the Greek manuscripts and clearly imported around the 6th century into the Latin tradition, called the Commiohonium, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.

Now, this is probably one of the most famous of the texts that we would deal with at this point, but I will simply make a rather bold statement at this point. If 1 John 5 -7 is found in the KJV in the Bible, is the original reading, then we have very little reason to believe that we can know with any certainty what the New Testament ever read from the start.

The reason being, that text, if it's original, disappeared in toto from the Greek manuscript tradition until it was restored via reference to the Latin in the third decade of the 16th.

Century.

That means for 1 ,500 years, the original language of 1 John was corrupted, and the proper reading, and a vitally important theological reading, was missing. I don't believe that. I believe God has preserved His text.

And if you believe 1 John 5 -7 should be there, then He didn't. He may have had to re-inspire it, but He didn't preserve it for century after century after century of Christians. Vitally important text, theologically speaking.

The LSV recognizes that and has the text as the Greek manuscript tradition would present it, not as it would be corrupted by an insertion, which was probably a marginal note, from the Latin, which eventually came in to the Textus Receptus.

Erasmus did not have it in his first two editions. He included it in his third, along with a lengthy note as to why he felt it was not.

Original.

But that's still what is in the basis of the King James Version of the Bible. So as I said, that's the first, textually. So there's three references. At least we can look at them. There are hundreds of others that we can look at.

So, lexically superior, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. The KJV was translated prior to the discovery of the vast majority of ancient texts in Ugaritic, Aramaic, Coptic, ancient Babylonian, etc.

As a result, they struggled with many terms, and they mention this in the preface, by the.

Way.

Especially in the Hebrew text, relating to flora, fauna, mineralogy, etc. Today, we have cognate language texts that cast vast light upon these words that the translators themselves admitted were difficult.

They talked about this in the preface, and would frequently put a note saying, we're not sure what this is making reference to. Well, we have found all sorts of things since then, which now help us to go, oh, he's talking about that particular kind of a gem, or that kind of a fish, or that kind of a bird, etc.

They did not have access to so much of what has been discovered since the beginning of the 17th century. And so, our lexicons today, whether we're talking about Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, have much broader, fuller foundations than they had at that particular point in time.

And so, the LSB is able to utilize that material and provide us with a better translation as a result. And finally, translationally superior. Starting a century ago, we began unearthing papyri texts that have provided us with the extra-biblical context of the New Testament in particular.

We have discovered that the Greek of the New Testament was not some holy ghost Greek, as some people thought it was, but the common Koine Greek of the first century. As a result, we are able to produce significantly more accurate translations of Koine Greek today, since we have so many more examples of how it functioned at that time.

There are hundreds of examples that could be given. The KJV uses a ton of archaic language that the KJV translators themselves would never think should be enforced upon people centuries later. Look at these terms from Jack Lewis's book.

Just a few of them that we have here in the KJV. Almug, Algum, Chod, Charashim, Chapt, Earing, Gat, Habergion, Hosen, Kab, Nob, Ligur, Lizing, well, Maranatha, we all know what that one means, Nard, Nesid, Pate, Pilled, Rabonai, Raca, Ringstrake, Stakta, Strake, and you can read the rest of them yourself.

In other words, there are all sorts of terms. Even my old Schofield, my new Schofield reference Bible changed all these and provided us with, well, it does say mufflers too, but I can guarantee you that's not the mufflers we have in our cars or anything like that today.

Massive numbers of terms that we would not utilize today. One of my favorites is, I think it's 1 Kings 11 when it says, Solomon married many strange women. Now, I'm sure he probably did, but that wasn't what I was referring to.

It was referring to foreign women. It was explaining why his heart was dragged away into idolatry because he married foreign women. The King James says he married strange women. Well, that's not what it means anymore.

And so, the LSB is superior in its translation at that time. Now, one simple error in translation that is easily recognized, but very hard to explain away is Acts 530. The King James Version says, the God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.

Think about what that's actually saying. Look at the LSB. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you put to death by hanging him on a tree. The participle there is the means by which he was slain was by being hung upon a tree.

They didn't kill him and then hang his body on a tree. The King James simply missed the translation of the participle. And so, you have to be able to admit, yeah, they missed a translation. The LSB is superior there, very clearly.

One clear and compelling example is we found in Titus 2 .13. And this one's theologically important. Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, LSB. Both terms, God and Savior, applying to the one person, Jesus Christ, is called the Granville Sharp construction.

The KJV has, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. That distinguishes between our great God and our Savior. It does not clearly communicate the fact that the underlying text is applying both God and Savior to Jesus.

Now, there's a reason for this. Granville Sharp didn't discover that rule until long after the King James was translated. That's where we've advanced in our understanding. So, the LSB has a more accurate translation because of the continuation of our understanding of the underlying languages themselves.

Another is found in Romans 9 .5. The LSB says, "...whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever, amen.". The King James says, "...whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all God blessed forever, amen.".

That's different. That's saying Jesus is blessed by God. LSB is saying Jesus is God. Now, I've heard lots of King James onlyists, you know, really go crazy on passages like that. Oh, those modern translators are trying to deny the deity of Christ.

You can do the same thing in the King James here. We won't because they weren't, but you could do that kind of thing at this point. So, why this debate? Well, the reality is the KJV-only movement is rooted in two equally dangerous mindsets.

One, a commitment to a traditional position and a modernistic idea of certainty. So, if you go back in the past, you will see situations where, for example, Jerome and Augustine argued about how to translate things, and when Jerome put out the Vulgate, people rioted in the streets because he changed what the Greek Septuagint said.

They had a traditional text, and even when he was accurate, they rebelled against that. But then the Vulgate became the traditional text for 1 ,100 years. And so, when Erasmus comes along and dares to challenge that, he's attacked.

But now you have the King James Version versus all modern translations, and that causes the same kind of thing where you have a traditional position. Christians recognize the existence of copyist errors in manuscripts as all people did from the beginning.

Perfection of copying did not exist until 1949. We invented the photocopier. It's very, very important that in this debate, we must come to the conclusion that we must never trade truth for a false sense of certainty.

Don't trade the truth for a false sense of certainty. We need to recognize with the King James translators that the process of translation is something that will continue on as long as the Church is here on this earth.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Thomas Ross’s Opening Response and Preservation Argument

Wonderful. Thank you, James White. We will now have Thomas Ross giving his opening presentation. I would like to remind everybody, as I did not open in this introduction with, please abstain from any recording equipment.

The pictures are fine, but please abstain from recording.

I'd like to begin this debate by thanking the one God, the Eternal Father, who adopted me in his everlasting love, his eternally begotten Son, who loved me and gave himself for me, and the Holy Spirit, who eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son, and who inspired, preserved, and led me to receive his self-attesting word in his free and glorious grace.

To him alone be the glory. I'd also like to thank this Baptist Church and its pastor for sponsoring this discussion with James, and I'd like to thank James here for taking the time to debate this important topic.

He's a great debater, and I'm confident that he will do a great job presenting as strong a case as can be made for his position as he's already started to do. I appreciate a great deal in many of James' books and debates, and they've been helpful to me in my gospel preaching, in my personal apologetics, and in several of the other public debates I've been privileged to do, so for the glory of the Triune God.

So thank you, Church. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you, James. Thank you, audience, for coming here to consider this topic at hand with, I trust, Open Bibles, Open Minds, and Open Hearts. Our topic today is whether the Legacy Standard Bible as representative of modern English translations based upon the UBSNA text is superior to the KJV as representative of TR-based translations.

James, in the affirmative, must prove the LSB and other modern English UBS-based Bibles are superior to the King James as representative of other TR-based Bibles. So he has the burden of proof. So if you were to sum that up, it would mean that this is a King James only debate.

I'm King James only. What does that mean? Well, James, in his book, The King James Only Controversy, Can You Trust Modern Translations, creates a KJVO spectrum encompassing those who believe the King James version is the best single English translation available today, those who believe that the underlying Hebrew and Greek texts used by the King James translators are superior to those used by modern translators, encompassing both majority text advocates and those who believe the printed editions of the TR should be preferred in some or all of the approximately 1 of instances where printed TR editions differ from what we believe is the currently extant majority of Greek manuscripts, and those who believe that the text's receptus or received text has been supernaturally preserved and is inerrant, demonstrating the validity of any of the positions on that spectrum would validate my position in the negative of the debate topic tonight.

Unfortunately, James' book goes on to claim that most King James only believers fall into the inspired KJV group, who James alleges in all bold letters make the association King James Bible alone equals the word of God alone.

This allegedly the largest group of KJVO believers bleeds into his next category, those who he says believes God re-inspired the Bible in 1611, rendering it in the English language a position he says predominates in many areas.

James says that one might well say such people worship the King James version. He then proceeds to claim that there are groups who claim that the KJV was written in eternity, and Abraham, Moses, and the prophets all read the 1611 KJV, including the New Testament.

These individuals believe that Hebrew is actually English. James provides no sources or any evidence or sources whatsoever on the alleged size of his KJVO extremist categories. No sources are provided to prove that people who think the Holy Spirit re-inspired the Bible in 1611 quote predominate in quote many areas or the movement, or that quote most KJVO people think that the King James is the word of God alone in the sense that you would need to translate the Bible from English into other languages, and I didn't see any source for people who believe that Abraham and Moses spoke 1611 King James English that even existing.

I didn't see any evidence there, unfortunately, that unabashedly King James only Bible colleges, seminaries, and institutes that reject these positions vastly outnumber those that even arguably take them, such as those on my slide there.

Those are some good ones that I think are worth checking out. So in any case, neither I nor any other King James only Baptist with whom my church is in fellowship believes that God re-inspired the Bible in 1611, or that original languages should be rejected, or that you should translate the Bibles into other languages from English, or such foolishness as that Abraham spoke King James English.

I hope that when James' book rightly points out that some outlandish claims are made by people like Peter Ruckman or Gail Ripplinger that he also considers whether some of these are maybe unintentionally outlandish claims.

So setting aside the small extremist minority in the King James only movement who James claims think the Bible was re-inspired in 1611, any position along the spectrum that he sets forth in his book would be sufficient to establish the negative that I'm defending in our debate today.

Anywhere within that spectrum will prove the superiority of the King James to what James calls such fine translations as the English Standard Version and New International Version. Now what does Scripture teach about its own preservation?

This is absolutely crucial to this debate, absolutely crucial. By far the most important source of information of what has happened to the text of Scripture is what God himself promises that he would do in preserving and protecting the canonical words and books that the Father gave his people through the Son by the Holy Spirit.