King James Controversy

Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing.

Of your mind.

Defining King James Onlyism

Hi, and welcome to Renewed Mind. I'm your host, Romuald Gossein, and today we have with us Dr. James White, who will be discussing with us the very interesting subject of the King James Controversy. First of all, welcome to the show, James.

Great to be with you.

It's a real pleasure to have you come here and share some of your insights with us. Now, what is, if we can start off by defining our terms, what is King James Onlyism?

There are lots of different styles of King James Onlyism. Fundamentally, it is the belief that the King James Bible is not just a good English translation, but it is, and not just the best English translation, but that it is the only English translation that a person should use, and in fact, to use any other translation is to dishonor God and in fact, maybe even engage in sin.

So there's obviously a range of views on this. There are many people who find the King James to be their favorite translation. I was raised on the King James. Many of my Bible verses still come out with these and thous, even though I don't read the King James any longer.

But there are many people who prefer that. But then, when someone will say that there is something special about this English translation, that there is something that God has done to give it a status unlike any others, that's when you start getting into the range of King James Onlyism.

Now within that range, there's the radical group and the more mainline group. The more mainline group will normally argue that the manuscripts from which the King James was translated are the best manuscripts, normally over against the manuscripts that are used in modern translations.

And so they will frequently argue from that perspective. The more radical group will go so far as to say that the King James corrects the original language manuscripts. So there has actually been, in essence, a re-inspiration of the Bible between 1604 and 1611 when the King James was translated during that seven year period of time.

And you can always detect a radical King James Onlyist by asking a simple question. Is there any verse in the King James version of the Bible that could be translated better than it is? Or is there any translation that contains a rendering of a verse that is better than that in the King James?

The radical King James Only person will always say, no, it can't be done.

I mean we've had this Bible, the King James, authorized for some 400 years, since 1611. Do we really need other translations? Is it necessary?

The King James translators thought we would. It's interesting, they wrote a preface to the reader and they recognized in their own writing, first of all, that the King James was not the first English translation.

In fact, the King James borrows the large majority of its language from translations that came before that. And so it itself had to defend the idea of providing a new translation, because there was the Bishop's Bible, there was the Geneva Bible, Wycliffe had translated long, long ago, and Tyndale, of course, is a primary source that even the King James translators themselves used.

And so they had to defend the idea that you need to continue to provide translations of the Bible in a language that people can understand. And obviously, we do not go around speaking the King's English as it was spoken in the 17th century any longer.

And so there is a need for modern Bible translations, but don't get me wrong, I do think we have too many today, modern translations that is, and we could go into the reasons for that. But I think there's been a glut of English translations for not necessarily the best reasons.

And so there's two ends to the spectrum. The one saying, who cares if no one can understand this anymore, just get over yourself and study a little bit harder. Over to the other side, where you have a new translation coming out every six months, which you really don't need.

We should be putting that effort into providing the Bible's translation into languages that haven't received one yet.

Translation, Inspiration, and the Original Languages

So is that a part of the position why a King James advocate would say such things as, you know, we should only stick to the one translation because you've got so many other translations and having too many basically obscures God's Word.

Because you've got so much variety, sometimes the meaning can be lost in the translation. Is that what's happening, especially today?

If they're good translations, you're not really going to lose the meaning because of having multiple translations. But it can be a problem in the church.

In what way?

Well, the preacher can be preaching on a particular term or word, and if you don't have that particular term or word in your translation, you're wondering what in the world is going on. So there can be issues like that, and I think a good argument can be made that it's good to have a standard translation in a particular congregation so that that type of thing doesn't.

Happen.

You don't have to be exclusive or absolute about it.

Exactly.

The issue is, for the King James onlyists, there's only one translation that could ever be chosen for that, and that is the 1611 King James Version of the Bible.

You call it a translation. Define what you mean by a translation. And second of all, when you use the word translation, does that mean that it's not inspired? So two questions.

Well, a translation, obviously, the New Testament was written in what's called Koine Greek, the common Greek of the first century. The Old Testament was written in two languages, biblical Hebrew, which over the 1500 years of its writing itself would change and develop, as well as Aramaic.

There are a certain number of chapters written in a language called Aramaic. And so for us to read this in the English language, this has to be translated into our language, and there are different translation methodologies we might be able to discuss later on, but there are different ways of doing this.

But you're taking, hopefully, an accurate rendering of the meaning in the original languages and bringing it into the English language and expressing it in that way. And so the question of inspiration takes us back to asking, what does it mean to say that the Bible is inspired?

Because we need to recognize that the only time that term is used, the Greek term theanoustos, which means God breathed, inspired actually isn't the best rendering of that because inspire comes from a Latin word inspiratu, to breathe into.

We're not saying that God took human words and breathed into them something special. The reality is the term that Paul uses when he writes to Timothy and he says, all scripture is theanoustos, is God breathed.

It's like when you hold your hand in front of your mouth while you're speaking, you cannot help but feel the breath or you could not pronounce the words. It's God's very speaking that is in view here, the same view that Jesus had, that Peter has when he says, men spoke from God as they're carried along by the Holy Spirit.

And so when we talk about inspiration, we're talking about the nature of scripture itself as coming directly from God. Now that then is when, it's interesting, we talk about, well, Paul was inspired to write this.

That's not what Paul himself said. He didn't say that the men were inspired. He said that their words, what was actually written is what is inspired. Now when we translate that, are we saying that the translators have to be inspired or is the revelation given in one language and then as long as it is accurately rendered, then that remains the word of God in whatever language it goes into.

We have to be careful that we do not come up with a concept of inspired translations. The main reason for this is the New Testament writers didn't believe in one. Why do I say that? Because the vast majority of the quotations of the Old Testament are not from the Hebrew.

Text.

They're from a translation of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament called the Greek Septuagint. And this is a very difficult area of study, but sometimes the Greek differs a little bit from the Hebrew and they quote that too.

So the point is the apostles themselves recognized that a translation can be rightly called the word of God, even if it's not written in the original language. That did not require some type of second inspiration or something like that to bring that about.

Even though later generations certainly elevated some of their translations to a position they really didn't deserve, that's something that mankind tends to do rather regularly.

Why the King James Was Not the First English Bible

So James, please tell me, you use the word translation. What is it that you mean by translation? And second of all, for the Bible to be a translation, does that mean that it's no longer inspired?

Right.

Well, the Bible itself was written in three different languages. The New Testament was written in what's called Koine Greek, the common Greek of the first century. The Old Testament was written in Biblical Hebrew, which even over 1 ,500 years changed a little bit and developed, and then in a language called Aramaic, which is directly related to Biblical Hebrew.

We have to translate these languages into the English language to be able to understand what it is God has given to us. Most people today don't read either Greek or Hebrew. And so it is our task to accurately bring the meaning of the original text into the English language.

There's different ways of doing this. There's arguments between scholars as to whether you should be very, very literal or whether you can be more functional or dynamic in translation. We can talk about that at a later time if we want to.

But these translations then are to be accurate representations of what the original intended to convey. Now, the question then comes up, well, can we still call the Bible inspired if it's been translated?

And I think most certainly we can. We have to avoid the idea that God has to, in essence, re-inspire the Bible every time a translation is made. Clearly, the apostles did not believe in anything like that because the apostles, in the majority of the times that they quote the Old Testament, which was written in Hebrew, they don't quote the Hebrew.

Since they're writing to Greek-speaking individuals, they want to quote to them from the Old Testament from a version that they would have and they would be reading. And so they quoted from the Greek version of the Old Testament called the Greek Septuagint.

And this is a very difficult area of study, but sometimes the Greek differs a little bit from the Hebrew and they quote that too. So the point is, the apostles themselves recognized that a translation can be rightly called the Word of God, even if it's not written in the original language.

That did not require some type of second inspiration or something like that to bring that about. Even though later generations certainly elevated some of their translations to a position they really didn't deserve, that's something that mankind tends to do rather regularly.

Would you say the agenda of the King James-only people would be to safeguard the Scripture? Is that what they're trying to do?

That's certainly the motivation. And I fully understand the desire to have one translation, no questions, no gray areas.

It'd be easy.

Yes.

It makes it nice and simple. The problem is that even the King James translators would stand opposed to anyone making their translation the final arbiter of all things. They would say this is not to be done at all.

Because they weren't doing that. I mean, they were fine. The Geneva translation, which the American pilgrims, for example, preferred over the King James by a long shot. The King James was the new modern translation of that day.

The Geneva Bible is a fine translation. So why not go with that? Why not make that the standard? Why do they get to change that? And of course, the main thing is that you can identify translational errors in the King James version of the Bible.

The translators never claim to be perfect. They never claim to be inspired.

That's a big word. But see, when you use the word error, that sounds off alarm bells with King James only advocates because now you're saying that there's error in God's Word.

Now, you're saying there's an error in an English translation of God's Word in a language that didn't exist when the Bible was first written. I mean, let's be honest. Remember, at the time of the Reformation, the Reformers were responding against Roman Catholicism.

And what was one of the things they criticized? The constant use of the Latin Vulgate as the only translation of the Bible that you could use, even over the Greek and the Hebrew. And they pointed to problems in the translation of the Latin Vulgate.

Well, every King James only advocate would agree that the Reformers were right to criticize the Latin Vulgate. All they've done is just done the same thing that had been done with the Latin Vulgate and established a new text as the uncriticizable thing.

It cannot be criticized. Look, every Bible translation is done by human beings and can be improved upon. That's just simply the reality. And so, if you can find places where the King James contains errors, for example, in Acts chapter 5 verse 30, the King James talking about Jesus, it says whom they crucified, whom they killed, and hung on a tree.

So they killed Jesus and then hung Him on a tree? No, they killed Him by hanging Him on the tree. It's a simple mistranslation that the King James was done by different groups at different places, and today we can have a committee that smooths everything out.

It was much more difficult to do back in that day to make sure that everything was consistent. It's just something they missed. Now, if you make that the standard, now you're stuck trying to explain how you can kill Jesus and then hang Him on a tree.

Even the new King James accurately renders that text, and it's no longer an issue. So you just can't make something a standard when its translators itself never made the claim to having inspiration.

I mean, it would be quite easy to turn around and say, look, let's just stick with the original languages, and then you could say everybody's got to be forced to learn that language, but how many people then would really come to the knowledge of God?

You're really limiting then the sovereignty and the gospel call to people that can only understand that language. And so that's a beautiful thing, isn't it, to have that liberty and freedom?

The early Christians not only wanted everybody to have the New Testament and hence let anyone copy it, but they were very early on translating it into other languages, too, because this is the message that's for the whole world.

And once you limit it to just one translation, so much so that I was on a television program once where a King James-only advocate was asked, well, if I want to have God's Word and I speak Russian, do I have to learn English?

And he looked right into that camera and said, God has promised us one inspired and inerrant translation in one language at one time, and right now it's the King James Version of the Bible, so yes. So that's the realm that you get into.

That's right, and it goes against even one of the gifts of the Spirit quite early on in Acts chapter 2. God was advocating different languages out there, the message out there. And so we can't now come back and limit it to one translation.

It seems ludicrous. What translation do you use yourself?

When I preach, I honestly try not to use a translation. My goal is, when I have sufficient time to really prepare, is to translate directly from the original languages. If I'm going to use an English translation, I will either use the New American Standard Bible or the English Standard Version.

I've always called the English Standard Version the NASB without semicolons, because it's very, very similar. It just has a slightly shorter sentence structure to it. But I've used the NASB for many, many years now.

Open disclosure, worked for the Lackaman Foundation as a critical consultant on the translations, so there is that. But I find it to be very, very accurate, especially in apologetic situations. Giving a defense for the word, it's much more easy to do that with a formal equivalency translation, which means a more literal translation, than sometimes it is with some of the freer dynamic translations.

What I mean by that is, for example, in John 12, there's this text I use in dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses. I can use the New American Standard because it literally translates the Greek. I can't use the NIV at that point, because it inserts the name Jesus, even though the word Jesus isn't in the original, because it's a pronoun, and they want you to know who the pronoun is referring to.

But I really can't use it because of that with Jehovah's Witnesses, because it's too free of a translation. So there's ways of evaluating any modern translation, and not all of them, by the way, are overly.

Good.

So you would say that there are some bad translations?

Yes, there are definitely bad translations. There are biased translations. There are translations where people are trying to insert whatever the new modern thing is.

Sometimes they're trying to push their own agenda. You mentioned the Jehovah's Witnesses. I mean, often when I do sit with them, I love to go to John 1, verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

A God, according to theirs.

In their translation, exactly. They put in that just one little letter, that one word, A, and you're turning now Jesus into another God, a secondary type of God, and that really does, it attacks the Trinity.

Inspiration of the Original Text, Not the Translation

So James, is there a difference between the inspiration of a text and the inspiration of a translation?

Most definitely. The text is inspired in its original writing. A translation, having worked as a Bible translator, I could wish to be inspired. I might pray for it. I certainly did on a number of Greek tests as a student, and as one who's taught Greek, I think I saw some of my students praying for inspiration as well.

It didn't really work for them over the well either. So we have to be careful that we don't identify a translation as inspired. It may be inspiring, but that's a very different thing than saying it is inspired, because now you are asserting a supernatural superintendence of the activity of a translation committee.

And I don't know of any translation committee, well, Joseph Smith and his translation, Mormonism, I suppose he claimed inspiration for that. But as far as meaningful Bible translations are concerned, I don't know of any translation committees that say we were inspired.

They would say we've done our level best to be accurate with the handling of the text.

Sure.

So what manuscripts do modern translators use and why?

This is why there are differences between the King James and the New King James, which was translated from the same Old Testament and New Testament texts. And I need to explain what this is. The King James translated in the New Testament for something called the Textus Receptus.

Now what does that mean? It's a Latin phrase that means the received text, which was just what it was called in 1633 in an advertisement. When someone was trying to sell some copies of it, they called it the Textus Receptus.

They even advertised in Latin back then, believe it or not. And that name stuck. That is what the King James is based upon. That is what the New King James is based upon.

And that was what was accepted?

Well, not in the sense of the church sitting down and going, well, we're going to look at these different texts and we accept this.

No.

It just happens to be what was produced. It wasn't that there was a process involved that said, well, this is the best text. This is just simply a series of texts going back to Desiderius Erasmus that became popular and remained popular for quite some time until the late 1800s, 19th century.

Then that text was based on between half a dozen and a dozen Greek manuscripts. As of today, we have about 5 ,765 cataloged Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. And so we have a lot more to be drawing from than they did in the days of the translation of the King James Version of the Bible.

And so modern translations are based upon a text that draws not only from those over 5 ,000 Greek manuscripts, but literally from about 20 ,000 other manuscripts in other languages, the Latin Vulgate, the Coptic, Sahitic, Boheric, et cetera, et cetera.

And so there is a much broader base that's drawn from. And we have much earlier texts today. About the earliest texts that Erasmus had was, in writing the TR initially, it was about from 1000 AD. We have scraps of papyri, such as P52, that date as early as 125 AD today.

And so we can go back to a much earlier text, which is much closer to the original as far as the number of generations of copying involved. And so the modern translations tend to be based upon these modern Greek texts that take into consideration all of this information that was simply not available at the time of the translation.

So what we're saying is that we have got better translations as a result of having a lot more resources being available.

Better in the sense of the sources that they're drawing from, getting closer to the original and things like that. And then, of course, the other issue is the English language has changed a lot in the past 400 years.

And as a result, we need to be translating in such a way that we are not confusing people. We're not going above them. But I also would have to admit that I am quite concerned about a tendency in a lot of modern translations to try to be so simple that you end up losing part of the message.

I mean, if the New Testament was written at level 10, if you translate at level 12, you have introduced complexities that you don't need to have. But if you translate at level 4, shooting for a real simplistic translation, what about all the information between 4 and 10?

It's lost. If the New Testament uses vocabulary in such a way as to communicate concepts, and you just flatten it all out by translating in a very simplistic fashion, I've read some translations where I honestly couldn't defend justification by faith, or I couldn't defend certain aspects of the atonement of Christ, because the translation just didn't use specific language enough to be able to do so.

So you need to translate the Bible at the level at which the authors wrote it. And I'm concerned about a modern trend that would sort of push people to simplify things and make it the smoothest reading.

Maybe the writer wasn't the smoothest writer on the planet, and there may be something to that and important in that.

Choosing a Bible Translation for Reading and Preaching

So a person who wants to acquire, wants to purchase a Bible, what would your recommendation be to them?

As far as an English translation is concerned, my two favorite translations are the New American Standard and the ESV. I think they're very, very accurate. They're based upon the best texts. I prefer a formal or more literal translation to what's called a dynamic translation.

Let me illustrate with just one verse, Luke 9, 44. In Luke 9, 44, Jesus says, Let these words sink deeply into your ears. That's not how we talk today. If you walk up to a little kid and say, Let these words sink deeply into your ears, they're going to go, No, something like that.

A formal equivalency translation will say, Let these words sink into your ears. A dynamic equivalency, a more free translation, like the NIV, will say, Now listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you.

Now that is what it means. That's not what it says. And so in a dynamic translation, you have an extra step of interpretation. I don't think there's anything wrong with that extra step of interpretation.

I just think it should happen in the pulpit in the church rather than in a scholar's office. So that's why I like the more formal translation. I will very frequently in my preaching say, That is, or here is another way of, but I think it's best to do that in the church.

So is there any question of large sections of the scriptures, God's Word going missing? Do we have entirely God's Word? I mean, because sometimes someone that looks outside onto some of the things that you're saying, they might get the impression, not directly from what you're saying, but it's all confusing and that there might be somehow all these different translations and they mean different things.

Is that what we're saying?

No, you know, when you look at good translations of the Bible, you will find that they're all saying the same thing. There might be differences in the style or something like that. They're saying the same thing.

And if they're translating the same in Greek and Hebrew texts, there's going to be great similarity between them. What you're actually touching on is a whole other area. And that is, how do we know that this has been transmitted to us accurately over time in the manuscripts that form the foundation of these translations?

And in answering that, I'll just basically make one statement. And that is, we have, in the New Testament especially, the largest amount of documentation for any work of antiquity known to man by a factor of about 80, if I recall.

And as far as the earliest attestation, it is far earlier attested. That is, we have manuscripts that are closer to the time of production than almost anything else. For example, Plato. The earliest manuscripts we have that go back to him, we only have seven manuscripts.

And the earliest is 1 ,300 years after it was written. We have a dozen manuscripts from the New Testament that go back to within the first 100 years. So there's nothing in antiquity that comes even close.

And there is no conspiracy with the new translators. Somehow they're trying to subvert or deceive people into believing something different?

There are liberal translators. For some translations, you might make an argument for that. But I can assure you that when you're looking at an NASV or an ESV or an NIV, these are conservative godly men who love the Word of God.

And there's not a conspiracy to try to hide something or anything. Besides that, once you put it out, there's so many of us that can read the original languages. And if you were trying to do that, it would be so obvious to identify it.

And point it out. It doesn't make any sense.

That's right. There'd be so many people raising their hand and saying, this is wrong. This is not true.

Well, any new translation comes out, gets scrutiny like you would not believe as soon as it appears.

The Message of Scripture and the Centrality of Christ

Essentially, what is the message of the Bible? I mean, we're talking about different translations. We're talking about the Word of God. What is the message of the Bible?

Well, the focus of the message of the Bible is the person of Jesus Christ and the fact that he has, by his self-giving, provided peace with God through his sacrifice. And all the Old Testament, the Apostle Paul expresses it this way.

The cross is, in essence, the center point of history. All of history before that points up to it. All of history afterwards points back to it. It is the center point of history. It is where God broke into his own creation, accomplished salvation, accomplished his own glory.

And it's all about Christ and who he is. And we live in a day where there is a tremendous amount of attack upon who Christ claimed to be, a rejection of that, a rejection of the Bible's teaching. And yet, Christ continues to build his church.

He continues to draw his people into himself. And I think part of that drawing also involves causing us to see in his Word the glory of Christ and the message that is his.

James, thank you for your time. Thank you for giving us these talks.

Thank you very much.

As you've been able to listen and hear, and I hope that this really difficult subject has been somewhat clear to you, we do have the Word of God. And the Word of God has been provided to us in the English language in so many different translations.

And I think it is a wonderful privilege to be able to pick up one of these books and be assured that, yes, you have God's Word. There are some recommendations there for you. And I hope that these will be helpful pointers which will help you to learn and encourage you to be able to appreciate the God who created you and wants you to be in a relationship with him.

May God bless you. Please stay in tune for the very next episode of Renewed Mind.