What's the Big Deal About KJV Onlyism? Response to Episode 4

Archaic Words in the Bible Are Usually Defined by Context

And yeah, there are archaic words in the Bible, but they're usually, in most cases, defined by the context. Like in Isaiah, the Lord says, I'll sweep them with the besom of destruction. Well, obvious from the context, a besom is a broom.

You don't need to retranslate the Bible to get that. But there are also archaic words that may be not defined by the context.

I'll show you.

Let me have your pad and I'll just show you a list of several of them. The word deride is not a word that we use very often. Odious is not something that people use every day. Trafficked with a K. Nobody spells that with a K.

That's an archaic spelling. Unto. Nobody says, I'm going unto them all. Nobody says that because it's archaic. Then there's the standards, like didst, doest, doth, gavest, thee, thine, bemoan, beggarly.

No one says paramours anymore. If your wife said, go get me some milk, M-I-L-C-H, you'd spend all day at the grocery store. You couldn't find it because nobody spells it that way. These are all archaic words.

You'd acknowledge that, correct?

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Okay, well, here's the problem. Though you may find those words in a King James Bible, I didn't get any of those from.

A King James Bible.

This first group right here is from the NIV of 1973. This second group is from the American Standard Version of 1901. This third group is from the New King James Version of 1982.

The Apostles Did Not Write in Unintelligible Language

So Dr. Gipp has put out the fourth, I believe, in the series of, again, very well-produced videos promoting King James-only-ism. And this one is about handling the objection that, well, the fact is that the English of the King James is rather badly out of date, about 400 years out of date, the archaic words.

And this is a very interesting one, a very interesting episode. And I think it will be useful for us to look at the arguments that are used here because once again, the fact that the King James-only-ist makes the King James, the actual form,.

The King James.

Now, I don't think Dr. Gipp has gotten around to explaining exactly which of the various King James versions we're talking about. Most people have the 1769 Blaney revision, but that's not, of course, what existed in 1611.

And there were various editions of the King James with changes made and so on and so forth. I think coming from the Ruckmanite camp that Gipp probably, I would assume, holds the same view that Ruckman himself does, that it's the Schofield reference edition somehow is the end of this process of purification.

But anyway, leaving that off the side, the argument basically is why we should use the King James and simply explain what archaic words are. Interestingly enough, he begins by discussing the reference in Isaiah of I will sweep them with the bism of destruction and says, see, you can just tell what that means.

You can. You can sweep with a lot of things. You could sweep somebody away with a wave of destruction. There's all sorts of possible meanings. The idea that, well, it just obviously means a broom actually doesn't really follow.

There could be a lot of misunderstanding here. The problem is that's not what the apostles wrote. The prophet Isaiah did not speak of a bism of destruction. And only by making the King James a standard and making the King James itself inspired, a new act of inspiration in the early decades of the 17th century, can you come up with the idea that, well, that's what God's word says.

No, that's what the Old Testament translation committee of the King James version of the Bible came up with somewhere between 1604 and 1611. And that may have made sense at that time, but we don't speak of bisms anymore.

And so it doesn't really communicate to us. And the real issue that I want to raise today is, is that how the apostles wrote the Bible? Did they speak in a language that no one can understand? Did they speak in such a way that when Paul's letter to the Corinthians arrived, they had to go, does anyone know what Paul's talking about here?

Anyone, an expert in ancient Greek, not current Koine Greek, because he's using language here we've never heard of before. We need to look it up in a dictionary. We'll get back to you, and we'll finish reading you this letter later on once we figure out what it's saying.

Now, the apostles didn't act that way, and there's no reason for us to do that as we translate the Bible into the English language today. The KJV translators used the formal English language that existed in their day.

They didn't produce the Ebonics version, and I'm not a fan of paraphrases. I'm not a fan of simplified versions. We'll talk a little bit more about that a little bit later on as we get into it. But they did not speak in a language that would leave someone going, what are they talking about?

What is that? Now, there's such a thing as the Tukwokwe fallacy, which is a, well, you do the same thing type fallacy, which is used right at the beginning of this video, where Gip goes through some words that he calls archaic that are found in modern translations of the Bible.

Even if that were the case, even if there were archaic words in modern translations of the Bible, that would not change the fact that King James places a stumbling block in the path of a person who wants to understand what the Word of God says.

It wouldn't change that in any way, shape, or form. But there is a difference between talking about archaic terms and talking about terms that are just not used all that much. And there's a rather ironic, interesting example of this in the list he gives.

He used the term paramour. No one says paramour anymore.

Really?

As I'm recording this, there is a great scandal. The head of the CIA has resigned because of an adulterous affair. And I went on Google and I put in the man's name plus paramour and came up with 5 .6 million hits.

So thousands of times just in the past week, people have used the term paramour to describe the woman that the head of the CIA had an illicit affair with. And so the term may not be common vocabulary, but it is certainly still in use.

So it's not an archaic term. That is very different than many of the terms that are used in the King James version of the Bible. I went through just a few in just the beginning of the alphabet. Let me read you some of these.

These are just from A through C. Just some terms that are used in the King James version of the Bible that your average person would have to look up, would have to get a dictionary out, and hopefully a dictionary that goes into an older form of English.

Because these simply are words that either we don't use at all any longer, or they have a different meaning than they did back then. We know the, you know, suffer little children to come unto me. Suffer doesn't mean what it meant back then.

Prevent, likewise. Those are words we still use, but they have a completely different meaning now. And hence to accurately translate the Greek, you wouldn't use those terms. But we have abjects, adjure, ado, ambassage, immerse, astonied, axeltrees, beeves, besom, bere, blanes, brae, brigandine, bruit, call, seal, chapiter, and choler.

Now I really doubt that almost anybody, unless they're an English major or something like that, would have any idea what call means. And if you're limited solely to context, then obviously you're introducing a degree of ambivalence and confusion to the text that simply doesn't need to be there if that confusion or lack of clarity does not exist in the original languages.

But remember, for Dr. Gipp, the original languages really don't matter. You have a new inspiration of the Bible. And as a result, we can just go ahead and keep these here.

So since modern translations aren't the answer, and they all have archaic words, when I come up to an archaic word, I should just change it myself?

No, see, that's your way of handling it. Man always gets in trouble, Justin, when he thinks he can handle something better than God can. You know, the Bible says salvation is by grace. And a man says, well, I can handle it better by being a church member or being good or getting baptized.

But that's man trying to handle it a different way than God does. No, you have to handle archaic words the way the Bible tells you to handle archaic words.

But note the truly dangerous element of Gipp's response here. The inquirer asks if he should simply change the archaic words when he encounters them. And Gipp's response is that to do this is akin to changing the very gospel itself, showing that for Gipp, the KJV is not just an English translation.

It is revelation itself. It is divine revelation itself, not an English translation. It's not what the King James translators said it was. It's something much more than that. Of course, which of the various editions of the KJV, as we've already noted, is another issue that maybe that will come up in a future edition of these well-done videos by Dr. Gipp.

In 1 Kings 9, there's an archaic word that appears in that passage. And in that passage, you've got Saul. We know he became king of Israel. His father, Kish, had lost some jackasses, and he sent his son Saul and one of his servants out to find him.

Well, they're gone for several days. They can't find him. And so Saul finally says, you know, we better go home. My dad's going to wonder what happened to us. Quit worrying about these animals that we've lost.

And the servant said, well, let's go talk to Samuel, the man of God. Maybe he can tell us where they are. So they didn't have anything to give to the man of God, and the servant did. And so it says this in verse 8.

And the servant answered Saul again and said, Behold, I have here at hand the fourth part of a shekel of silver. That will I give to the man of God to tell us our way. Now look at verse 9 and watch what it says.

Before time in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus he spake, Come, let us go to the seer. For he that is now called a prophet was before time called a seer. All right, when this took place, Justin, a man of God was called a seer.

But when this was written down, a man of God was no longer called a seer. He was called a prophet. Seer had become archaic. So what happens when we get to the archaic word? Look at verse 10. Then said Saul to his servant, Well said, come, let us go.

So they went into the city where the man of God was. And as they went up the hill to the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water and said unto them, Is the seer here? Now notice that God himself did not change the text.

God didn't take the word seer out and put prophet in. That's what they say they're going to do when they translate a modern translation. But that's not the Bible way of handling an archaic word. The Bible way of handling an archaic word is, before you come to that word, define it.

Shambles, Meat Market, and the Problem of Tradition

Now, Dr. Gipps' citation from 1 Samuel 9, not 1 Kings 9, maybe his King James has a different canonical order, I don't know, but the reference is in 1 Samuel 9, not 1 Kings, as he says. But his reference to seer and prophet is brilliant.

But it has absolutely nothing to do with archaic translations of the English language. The biblical writer was not translating Hebrew into, say, Greek, such as in the Greek Septuagint. He was talking about what specific terms were used amongst the people of Israel at a particular time, and all within the same language.

So he's not addressing anything that has to do with translation at all. It's a completely bogus application that he makes here. Unfortunately, a lot of people, when you start talking about languages and things like that, almost any type of this type of illustration will be accepted at face value, but it's just simply wrong on every possible level.

Seer was not a term that no one understood anymore. Everybody understood what a seer was. The word still had a meaning. But another meaning, prophet, had taken over from that and was used for the specific office of one who spoke for Yahweh.

And that could be a very appropriate change in language. But it is not relevant to how you would translate these words into another language. And that's what, allegedly, we're supposed to be talking about here.

A good example, 1 Corinthians 10, verse 25. The apostle Paul says, that which is sold in the shambles. Well, what they called a shambles, we call a grocery store or a marketplace. If a preacher's preaching and he says, folks, that word shambles, that's the word they used for grocery store.

There's nothing wrong with that. That's defining the word. If that same preacher says, scratch out that word shambles and write in marketplace. Now he has just said, I found a better way to handle it than God did.

Now here we have an excellent example, excellent example, of the misplaced dedication of the King James only-ist. Here, when Dr. Gibbs cites 1 Corinthians 10, verse 25, the King James' use of the term shambles for meat market illustrates clearly that this is a term that's not just archaic, but it no longer means what it once meant.

And so to insist on continuing using it, the only reason for this is dedication to a particular tradition. That's the only reason. You cannot come up with a logical or rational reason why you should have the term shambles in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 25, other than, well, they used it in the King James, and I say the King James is inspired, therefore we keep it there.

Even if that means that some new believer from Ethiopia that lives in Minneapolis, you give him a Bible, and he wants to understand what Paul's saying, but English is not his first language. Are you going to give him a translation that will actually communicate to him, or are you going to give him a translation that's going to leave him completely befuddled, and maybe even just dependent upon you?

It's a dedication to tradition that would cause you to continue to use a term in an English translation today, when it no longer has that meaning. I mean, saying my library was in a shambles today has nothing to do with how much meat is in my library.

It has a different meaning. Folks, it's tough enough to learn English. In fact, from my perspective, that's really the only reason that we should have these simplified English translations is for people who are just learning the language, because English is a tough language to learn.

I think children's Bibles and for new English speakers, that's one reason to have simplified translations, but the goal should always be to move them away from that. It's embarrassing when you find preachers using these kinds of things.

It really is.

The KJV Is a Translation, Not Inspired Revelation

Now, note as well that Gip betrays his KJV is inspired in English viewpoint when he says, quote, I found a better way to handle it than God did. Found a better way to handle it. In other words, if you come up with a better translation, if you say meat market, then you're doing it better than God did, as if God is responsible for the rendering of makelo from the Greek language as shambles.

God inspired makelo. Now, those King James translators, this would be a different group than did the Beesom translation elsewhere, because they were in different committees there for the King James, but the King James translators who looked at makelo and said, you know, shambles would be an acceptable term for this, had no way of knowing that that term would not mean meat market in just a few hundred years.

And likewise, they would be absolutely embarrassed out of their minds if they ever heard anyone making the kind of argument that Sam Gip makes today. They didn't believe that. They didn't believe they were inspired, and they'd be the first ones to refute Sam Gip and say, you've got to be kidding me, because they would recognize that if consistency has anything to do with anything, that would mean that they could not have changed the previous English translations that came before them, which God had blessed, etc., etc., etc.

Those translators, they gave their best effort. They used a term that made sense when they used it. It doesn't make any sense any longer. And no one is changing God's word when they render makelo as meat market.

Only the circular claim that the King James is the final authority, it is the one translation in English for all time, etc., etc., could substantiate such an argument as that. Now, Gip claims that we don't change the Bible to suit us.

Well, that's quite true, of course. No one believes that you do. But the King James Version is a translation of the Bible. It's not the Bible itself. If someone came along and said, you know what, we don't like the term makelo anymore.

At 1 Corinthians 10 .25, we're going to put a different term there. Okay, that's changing the Bible. But more accurately translating the term into the English language, a language which did not exist when the Bible was given by God, is not changing the Bible.

It is simply making it more understandable in the English language. Now, Gip says that we should call people to a higher standard by demanding that they learn the meanings of many dozens of words that they will never use at any other point in their entire adult life.

Now, there is everything right in decrying the dumbing down of Christianity. I, of course, would argue that King James Onlyism is one of the greatest examples of dumbing down Christianity. Because, you see, it panders to people who don't want to have to deal with how we actually got the Bible and the fact that God deals with man in messy situations.

So I would say one of the greatest examples of the dumbing down of Christianity is Sam Gip and King James Onlyism. It really is. But we do decry the simplification of things. And I do not think that we, A, I don't think we need any more English translations at all.

There's no reason for them. We have all of them that we could possibly need, first of all. But secondly, I don't believe that our goal should be to have everybody running around with an English translation that is readable by a first grader.

That's frightening to me. This is the illustration I've used many times before, and hopefully it will be useful to you as well. Let's say the New Testament was written at level 10. Now, the New Testament was written at different levels.

I mean, obviously, 1 John is much more simple syntax, grammar, form, etc. than the book of Hebrews is. About level 2, about level 10. Big difference. But let's just say that, in general, the New Testament is written at level 10.

And we come along and we decide we're going to produce a level 5 translation. A nice, simplified, smooth translation. Very easy vocabulary. Well, if you translate at level 5 and the original is at level 10, what do you do with what's in between?

I remember I was at the Christian Booksellers Association convention once many years ago, and I picked up some paraphrase.

I forget what it was.

I think it was the message. I think it had just come out, if I recall. And I remember taking it back to the booth, and I was looking at it, and I was looking at Romans, and I was looking at my Greek text, and I couldn't even figure out where I was.

There was so little connection between the two. So much of the specific information found in the original language was not found. I could not defend certain important biblical doctrines from this dumbed-down paraphrase in the language of translation.

I don't have much of a use for those things. Like I said, children, new English speakers, maybe. Get them started, but to encourage them toward maturity, not to just leave them there. So, dumbing down of translations, no reason to do it.

A good English translation will clearly communicate on the level in which the New Testament was written. We need to call people to that level. No problem at all. There's a vast difference between that and putting absolutely, positively, unnecessary barriers between a person and the meaning of the Word of God.

All because you have a tradition that you just absolutely demand that you hold on to. And a tradition normally based upon a whole lot of falsehoods. So, it's not a matter of trying to dumb things down.

It does not follow that a translation from 400 years ago is inspired of God and cannot be replaced, cannot be improved, cannot follow the evolution of the English language. We may not like where the English language is going, but if we want to communicate in it, we still have to communicate in it.

That's a very important thing. It hardly needs to be said. I've mentioned it, but I just want to emphasize. The King James Version translators themselves would find Sam Gipp and the entire King James Only movement laughable.

Absolutely laughable. These folks love to talk about how brilliant these men were. If you simply read what they themselves said, they never held this position. And would never hold it. And would be shocked and amazed that anyone actually does.

Now, if we want to communicate the scriptures clearly, we will not force the reader to carry around Oxford's unabridged dictionary of Old English in the process, or Middle English, or whatever else. Only a completely misplaced dedication to a tradition, a human tradition, an inconsistent human tradition, could lead us to such an action.

The apostles spoke in plain Greek to their audiences. Why should we break the apostolic example? Why should we introduce barriers to people's understanding of what the Word of God actually says? That's the question we really need to consider.

As we examine this aberrant movement of King James Onlyism, as we examine this modern, very nicely produced presentation of a human tradition that must be rejected by any thinking Christian. Thanks for listening.