What's the Big Deal with King James Onlyism? Part 3

So, it comes from Antioch through the Texas Receptus into the King James Bible right here on this desk. It would be like this coffee, okay? This is the line of manuscripts, the vast, bigger than this one, because most of them come out of Antioch.

The other line of manuscripts, which officially is known as the critical text, which if you think about that, just the fact that it's critical should tell you there's a problem.

The Textual Lineage of the King James Bible

Okay, so many errors in such a small amount of time. As we've already pointed out, Texas Receptus, as it exists today, comes after King James, this one anyways, because it's based on the King James Translator's decisions.

The Greek manuscripts that are used for the King James, they don't use actual handwritten manuscripts. The King James Translators chose to use published editions of the Greek New Testament, seven of them, the five of Erasmus, the one of Stephanos, and the one of Beza.

And they have differences between them. And hence, the King James Translators have to do critical textual study to decide which reading they're going to include. When they make those decisions, then Scrivener, long after that, goes along, compares those seven and creates this based upon what they chose.

Now, what you might say is, from the Byzantine manuscripts, from wherever they came from, around the area of Byzantium, not necessarily Antioch, not necessarily in that area, but the Byzantine manuscripts, there's one portion of that that becomes the foundation of those seven printed Greek texts that the King James Translators used.

It doesn't represent the majority text, doesn't represent all the Byzantine text, and there are 1 ,800 differences between that and what would be called the majority text. So, it's not a Antioch, pure, good, godly manuscripts to the Texas Receptives to the King James.

That's just, it's just bogus. That just, it's untrue. You can't substantiate that. The facts are against you. Then we have this critical edition. The critical thing should tell you there's something wrong here.

Well, here's a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. This is, this is my dad's Greek New Testament from when he studied under Kenneth Wiest at Moody Bible Institute, and this is the 25th edition of the Nessie Island.

Here's, yeah, here's the 26th, and here is the 27th. These are the dreaded critical editions. You know why they're critical? Because they provide you with the information whereby you can actually see for yourself.

Now that TR, this TR, no notes. You can't, there are no, there are no notes at the bottom of the page, there's no manuscript evidence there, nothing like that. You just have to believe whatever's there, I guess, if this is all you use.

If you've got something like this, and I look at John 118, and I look at the text, and I go, oh, well there's manuscripts here that read one way, and there's manuscripts here that read another way, and I'm awful glad to find out that, well, look at that, the earliest manuscripts for John 118 used the term God of Jesus.

Well, I'm glad to know that. I'm glad to have that information. That's a good thing. That's an important thing, except for people who don't want you asking questions like that or having the information available to you to make those decisions.

We must remember, however, that Erasmus engaged in the critical examination of the manuscripts in front of him because they didn't agree with one another. He had to make choices between them, and so did Stephanos, and so did Beza, and Beza even made conjectural emanations where he put readings in that he had no manuscripts that read that way at all.

You see, to disrespect and to say, well, it's called the critical text, actually, it's called the Alexandrian text, so he's wrong about that, but even to talk about critical text in that way is unthinking.

It makes no sense because you're dependent upon a text where critical thought had to go into creating it, but you just ignore that part and show disrespect to these others because, well, it's different than your tradition.

This is what King James Onlyism is all about. There is the very identifying element of King James Onlyism is double standards. They will never apply the same standards as the King James that they apply to modern translations or modern Greek text, whatever else it might be.

That is the very essence of King James Onlyism, and Sam Gipps shows it to us pretty clearly right here.

Egypt, Antioch, and the Myth of Manuscript Philosophy

They went down to Alexandria, Egypt. Now, what do you know about Egypt from the Bible? Not a lot of good. It kind of represented the world. Israelites were in slavery. Absolutely. In fact, when God wanted to use a bad example in the book of Revelation, He wants to say something bad about Jerusalem.

He compares it to Sodom and Egypt. So the only good thing about Egypt is it can be used as a bad example. So good manuscripts went to Alexandria. Now, we not only get manuscripts, but we get something else from these two locations, and that's what I call a mentality or a philosophy, if you will, the Antiochian mentality and the Alexandrian mentality or philosophy or view of the Bible.

This one, Antiochian, the Bible is perfect and cannot be improved on. Alexandria, the Bible is not perfect and can be improved on.

Now, I personally would love to know where Sam Gipp gets this. It's straight out of mid-air, I guess. I guess we just have to believe the good Dr. Gipp. Why no quotations? Why not? You see, the discussion about Egypt, well, Egypt's a sign of evil things in the Bible.

Okay, so where does the Bible teach this mentality about Antioch and Egypt? Well, it doesn't. You'd have to go to early church writers because we're only, we're actually talking about the period of after the New Testament where manuscripts are being produced and written, right?

And so if we go to that period, then you can actually demonstrate that there is an Antiochian mindset, quote somebody, versus an Egyptian mindset, quote somebody. I can quote people down in Egypt that were weird, Clement of Alexandria origin, but I can also quote people in Egypt that were not weird, that were in fact very solid in their view of scripture.

So where is this mindset coming from? Given that there were different kinds of people in both locations, there were people with good theology in Antioch, and there were people with bad theology in Antioch, and good theology in Egypt, and bad theology in Egypt, and all of this is based upon the false idea that all the manuscripts came from one of these two places, which of course is not true.

I mean, there were, wherever there were Christians, there were manuscripts being produced. So, I mean, all of this is just this mishmash of dogmatic, authoritarian assertions that have no foundation at all.

They're just being made up and being presented as if they're facts, and they're not facts, and we need to understand that.

Now those two, what view of the Bible do you hold? Well this one right here, but these are both still coffee. So you accept the Bible is perfect, and it cannot be improved on, correct? Yeah. And you say they're both coffee.

The problem is that when some of these from Antioch came down into Alexandria, where they did not believe the Bible was perfect, they thought they could improve on it. And it's strange that people that think the Bible isn't perfect always think they're the ones that can improve on it.

And so they began to make changes. An example, they didn't believe in a trinity. They didn't believe in a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So they took that verse out, 1 John chapter 5 verse 7.

The Comma Johanneum and the Deity of Christ

Okay, here is where we get into science fiction. I mean, this is amazing to me. Sam Gipp cannot show you a single manuscript from anywhere in the Greek language that contains the Kamiohanium before, I'll be really generous here, the 14th century.

The idea that this was a part of the Greek manuscripts that were found in Antioch, when it's not a part of the majority text, it's not a part of the Byzantine text, it wasn't a part of the first two editions of Erasmus, it came in from the Latin Vulgate.

To say that that was sent down to Alexandria and they took it out because they didn't believe in the trinity is to turn church history on its head. You see, the Arians found a lot of followers in Antioch.

The Arians denied the deity of Christ. Where's the one guy who, even when the vast majority of the church, after the Council of Nicaea, actually embraced Arianism, and when the Bishop of Rome himself collapses on the subject, and as Jerome says later on, the whole world awoke and was surprised to find itself Arian, where was the one guy that gets kicked out of his church five times, believes the Bible is the word of God, defends the deity of Christ and the trinity, what's that guy's...

Oh, that's right, Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt. That's right. Oh, wow, I forgot. This is science fiction. This is upside... This is Dan Brown-level fiction being promoted by Sam Gibb. He could no more defend this in a meaningful debate, which is why these guys don't do meaningful debates, than the man on the moon, because he has absolutely, positively no evidence.

All he has is supposition. Oh, well, since it's in the King James Version, then it must have been in those Antiochian... Well, I can't show you any of those manuscripts. For some reason, yeah, okay, all the Byzantine manuscripts in Greek don't contain it either, but it must have been there, because you see, folks, this has nothing to do with Greek manuscripts.

This is all charade. I told you, you can go look at the Ankerberg... I thought about taking the time to go and grab it and throw it in here, but you can go look at it yourself. Look at John Ankerberg's YouTube channel and watch the eight-part series that we did.

Yeah, I had hair and big glasses back then, but hey, it was 1995. It took me a while to get out of the 1980s. Listen at the beginning of all the programs. Listen to Sam Gibb. John Ankerberg looks at him and says, what if I'm Russian, and I want to have the Word of God in my language?

You tell him I have to learn English. And he looks directly in the camera and says, God has promised us only one inspired and inerrant translation, one language at one time, and right now it's the King James Version of the Bible.

The Greek manuscripts really don't matter to him, because his final authority is not the Greek manuscripts. It's the English translation of the 1611 King James Bible, but it's not really the 1611 King James Bible.

It's the 1769 Planar Vision, and I'm not sure whether he takes the Oxford to Cambridge. If he follows Ruckman, then we can figure all that out, but be that as it may, this isn't really his final authority.

So I really don't know why he's wasting his time here, but in so doing, he's promoting science fiction, because to say that 1 John 5 -7 was removed in Alexandria. One simple challenge, Dr. Gibb, prove it.

Show me a manuscript. Here. Here's an S .C. Allen. I've got the CNTTS on the computer. Show me some manuscripts. Give us some evidence. Have you ever examined Codex Monfortianus, Dr. Gibb? I have, in the reading room at the Trinity College in Dublin, and that's the very manuscript that was probably, everybody seems to feel is the exact one, that was written to force Erasmus to insert the Kamiohonium in his 1522 edition of the Greek New Testament.

Show it to me in these ancient manuscripts that come from Antioch, Dr. Gibb. You can't do it. You know it. And I know it. And now everybody else knows it, too.