Part 2: Answering King James Only w/ @WesHuff | Cultish

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Hey, what's up, everyone? This is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here at Cultish. And it's the Super Sleuth right here with him.

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01:23

So we believe that the

01:28

King James Bible is the perfect, pure word of God. Because if you don't believe that, then with all these hundreds of Bibles, they're going to contradict each other, and not only that, give wrong doctrine.

01:40

And not only that, you have to argue a perfect book. That's why we have to believe the King James Bible is the perfect, pure word of God.

01:48

Because there has to be a perfect book somewhere. Now, if you ask these scholars and critics, they're going to say, oh yeah,

01:56

I believe there's a perfect Bible. I believe there's a perfect Bible. And then you're like saying, show me, show me. And they'll say, it's all in the thousands of manuscripts.

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That's what they're going to say. So we do have a perfect Bible preserved today, and they're in the thousands of manuscripts.

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But you've got to realize this. The Bible never said that His words are found in thousands of different manuscripts, and you have to pick and choose collectively.

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No, God says that all of those right words have to be in one book.

02:25

All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to part two. Very super excited for this episode.

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Back, as always, with Andrew, the superstar of the show, in Riverton, Utah, in a super secret location out there somewhere.

02:42

How are you doing? How thou art doing.

02:48

I'm doing great. There's no super fluidity of naughtiness going on here.

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I am in Riverton, and I'm having a great day, and I'm excited for this second episode.

03:00

The first one with Wes was a blast. So much good information. So much great stuff.

03:06

Really good. Wes, thanks for coming back, man. Of course. Pleasure to be with you guys once again.

03:12

And just for the context of what Andrew was talking about, before we started recording,

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I opened up my 1611 KJV and read to them James chapter one, verse 2021, which says that wherefore lay apart all filthiness and super fluidity of naughtiness.

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I'm glad to hear that he is laying apart that to rescue with meekness, the encrafted word which is able to sue your soul.

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So I hope your soul is being sued, and there's no super fluidity of naughtiness going on.

03:44

Yeah. And just for the record, too, as we kind of jump into this second episode, is that I like the

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King James Bible. When I first went and started witnessing to my friends who are

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LDS at the time at this small charter school, I mean, all of them were like the

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King James Bible was their thing. They wouldn't listen to you if you had a different Bible translation. So all of the initial

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Bible verses that I memorized in Apologetics were all like the King James version of that.

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In fact, if I was to pull all the ring rust from all the verses back then, I still have a lot of them.

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I just still quote in my own mind and in the King James translation. So I just differ with saying that the

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King James Bible, that's the only perfect word of God, which we're going to unpack. So all that being said,

04:35

I really enjoyed the last conversation. So kind of continuing into part two. Andrew, you had a really good point during the break.

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Maybe something you thought Wes could expand on regarding this whole conversation about King James only translation.

04:47

Restate the question again. Yeah, he said it at the end of the last episode, and I think it would be really great for myself and for our listeners too if he expounded on it.

04:57

So if we have the earliest manuscripts, and there's not very much of them, right?

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But we have so much of the later manuscripts. In what instance would we go to the earliest manuscript to say that it's correct when there may be a majority that says something different?

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Yeah, and this is the case where we weigh manuscript readings. And we would do this for any document within the field of textual criticism.

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It's not limited to the Bible. But because of the just glut of manuscript evidence that we have with the

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Bible, we're able to do this at a much higher level, or at least at a much more complicated level because we just have more to go off of.

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And so because we have so many manuscripts and we can compare them, even though our earliest ones, I mean, the earliest ones are obviously going to be less in number because the earlier you go back,

05:59

I mean, some of these manuscripts are from the 2nd and 3rd centuries. An 1 ,800 -year -old copy of the

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Gospel of John is going to look more worse for wear than a 500 -year -old copy of the

06:10

Gospel of John. I mean, I have books on my shelf that are less than 100 years old and they're not looking great. So 1 ,800 years,

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I mean, I wouldn't look as good as some of these documents look at 1 ,800 years. So obviously there's going to be less the further you go back.

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But the question is, what do we do with the readings that we see in there?

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Because there's an aspect of those readings being closer to the original, that's true.

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However, we don't just trace manuscripts, we trace readings within those manuscripts.

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And actually we can see that there are certain manuscript traditions that kind of interlock with other manuscripts.

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So a famous example of this is there's a manuscript tradition that is encapsulated with a manuscript that's known as manuscript

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P75. And P75 is interesting because we mentioned

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Codex Vaticanus last time. There's a surprising connection between the text of P75, which comes from the late 2nd, early 3rd century, and Codex Vaticanus, which comes from the 4th century, because they share 85 % agreement with one another.

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Now we don't think that the scribe of Codex Vaticanus, or the scribes, plural, that copied that massive document, that is basically what we would think of as the entire

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Bible. P75 only includes sections of the Gospels of Luke and John, as we have them preserved today.

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But whatever the scribe of Codex Vaticanus had, it was in the same sort of vein of manuscript traditions that P75 came from.

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So what we discovered was that even though Codex Vaticanus, in its text of Luke and John, was from the 4th century, it agreed with text that came from the late 2nd century.

08:11

So actually its text was earlier than the manuscript itself. And this is why some later manuscripts can actually be more reliable than some earlier manuscripts.

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Because some later manuscripts, because of all of the manuscript evidence that we have, we can kind of map the text and see that they're coming from traditions, and exemplars, an exemplar is just a text that is sort of the one being copied before the one that we have, go earlier, and in this case, even 200 years earlier, than the one that's being recorded in the 4th century.

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And so there's this connection which kind of creates this map.

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And so this map that we can put together in the 21st century, traces readings back and traces the history of the text, not just of manuscripts, but of actual individual readings between the manuscripts themselves.

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So without getting too complicated and too nerdy, scholars have actually got the computers involved in this, and there's a process that's called

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CBGM, the coherence -based genealogical method, and they're actually doing that, which is they're tracing the readings, not just the manuscripts themselves.

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And so despite the fact that we have later manuscripts and a later tradition that seems to have a very steady text, we can see that certain readings are introduced at certain places, and we can map all of these readings.

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And that's where when there's accusations of, well, earlier is not necessarily better.

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I think all textual scholars believe that. And we're not just saying because it's from, say, the 3rd century, it's closer to the original, therefore, we're going to go with that as our reading.

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What we can do is we can map the readings, and that's where we weigh the readings rather than count the readings.

10:15

Does that make sense? I hope so. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

10:22

Okay. No, it's definitely like a lot, and like I said, I'm probably going to listen to this a couple of times, but it's just,

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I like the fact that, yeah, it does make sense, because I do like the fact that, you said some of these people are almost, they're just nerdy about it.

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So while usually a lot of the KJV argumentation tends to be like very conspiratorial, like the actual, when you look at academic scholarship, whatever people are into, they usually do it because they love it, not because they're trying to like to cover something up.

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They're actually trying to discover it. So I think that is something that, you know, sometimes can be put with a broad brush when it comes to sort of using like, oh, academia, like somehow it's just some sort of broad conspiracy or something like that.

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But let me ask you a question too. Are you familiar with someone by the name of, I'm talking about scholars, Dean Bergen, an

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Oxford scholar? Not off the top of my head, no. Well, so Gene Kim, he quotes

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Dean Bergen, and he talks about how he was criticizing the manuscripts that were used to make the first modern day

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Bible, as he calls it. And he quotes and he says, all four are discovered on careful scrutiny to differ essentially, not only from 99 out of the 100 of the whole body of extent manuscripts, but even from each other.

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And he goes on to say, like this is the quote from this guy named Dean Bergen. But he goes on to say, according to Dean Bergen, only 1 % of the manuscript evidence supports modern versions, and 99%, which is attributed to the majority text, supports the

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KJV. So it's 99 versus one. So you kind of touched on that at the end of part one.

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Maybe I kind of expand off of that, because he seems to try and, you know, picking the selective person. And he also says, seeing that this makes clear what

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Bible to choose, scholars, however, do not think so. They make it seem as if the

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KJV does not come from the majority of manuscripts, despite this, even the

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Nestle -Allen text and anti -KJV text, which is respected as the authority by manuscript scholars, admits that the majority text.

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And then in the quotes, he says the majority of manuscripts and a reading supported by a majority of all manuscripts, they also called a majority numerous times.

12:43

So just off the get -go, could you sort of like respond to that? Maybe just expand off of the end of what you said in part one.

12:52

Yeah. So it's interesting because what he's saying is not incorrect at face value.

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The problem is the way it's being presented, because if you say, well, only 1 % of the manuscripts support, say, reading

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A and 99 % of the manuscripts support reading B, we have to ask the question, when are those manuscripts for reading

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B coming? And can we reliably find where that reading can be traced?

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Now, what do I mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is that if we have a manuscript that says,

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Andrew appeared on Apologia Radio at five o 'clock, and that comes from the fifth century.

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Well, if someone is copying that later and they say, Andrew from the cultish podcast appeared on Apologia Radio at five o 'clock, and then that person's manuscripts are copied and copied and copied and copied and copied and copied until we get to the 21st century.

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And so there's only one manuscript that says, Andrew appeared on the Apologia Podcast at five, whatever

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I said originally. I can't even remember what I said. But that would be a case of the original falls into the 1%, whereas the 99 % is copying something that's being added.

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Now, that doesn't mean that the 99 % is more reliable. It just means that it's copied more. And so what

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I said in our previous episode was, it's a matter of weighing readings, not just counting noses.

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Because I grant, and I don't know any textual scholar who doesn't, that there are readings within the

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King James Bible that are supported by the majority texts, that are supported by the majority readings of the Bible. It's the wrong question.

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Of course, there are readings that are supported by the majority texts. However, if you're copying a, say, a scribal mistake or a scribal addition ad nauseam, then it doesn't matter if there are more copies if it's not what the original author wrote.

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And here's the question that modern translators want to get down to. And this is the question when I do textual research that I want to get down to.

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What did the original author say? Because I'm not concerned with what a scribe wrote in the 4th century, even if that becomes the majority text.

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If John didn't write it, then I don't care if it's added into the

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Gospel of John later. I want to know what John wrote in his Gospel so that I can get back to what the

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Word of God said. And, man, can we do that with incredible accuracy now?

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And it's not even that these additions are compromising. You know, that clip that you played at the beginning where the individual said, you know, there are all these translations and the translations have contradictions.

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I mean, I would want to know how he defines contradictions because I don't think that the majority of the faithful modern translations, the ones you think of the

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NIV, ESV, NASB, NET, NLT, you know, those ones, I don't think they contradict one another.

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I think they maybe use different wording, but I don't think they outright contradict one another. But nonetheless, what they're trying to do is faithfully render the text that the original author wrote.

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And so if a scribal addition gets copied ad nauseum, that's fine, but I'm less concerned with that than I am with what the original author wrote.

16:42

Yeah, Andrew, what question do you have? What's in your mind regarding this? Yeah, so I'm thinking in terms of the 1611

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King James Version, the people who translated it, were they using some form of textual criticism?

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I know it wouldn't be like the same modern form that we have today, but it seems to me like some of the fundamental presuppositions of the

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KGB -only crowd is that modern scholarly use of textual criticism is a bad thing in order to get to the, let's say, the original reading of the text.

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But wouldn't the people who translated the 1611 KJV, wouldn't they be using some similar type of technique that would have been a modern form for them of textual criticism in order to get the

17:30

KJV? Like, it seems like they would have done something similar if they could have back then.

17:37

Yes, I mean, that's exactly it. They were using textual criticism. And if they had the evidence that we have available to us today, they would have used that too.

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They were just using what they had. I mean, it's not like they discounted all the manuscript tradition that we have today and they chose to go a particular way.

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We've just discovered more because God has blessed us with being able to look back upon these manuscript discoveries from the 19th century and onward.

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And that's a true blessing. They didn't have that, so they couldn't deal with what they didn't have.

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They didn't know what they didn't know. But if they had what we have today, they would have certainly used it.

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And we know this because we have their notes. We have the preface to the reader. We have all of these things that the

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King James translators themselves wrote down and used and, you know, going back and forth in regards to how they should render the text.

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We know that they would have used the available data that we have today if they had it then.

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So this portrayal of, well, they chose this particular text because that's the purest.

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The King James translators would not be KJV only if they existed today.

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And we know from what they did say that they were very pro -updating the word of God to be able to be understood in clear and simple

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English. I mean, we don't say besom, chambering, and emerald today.

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We say broom, immorality, and tumor. So those were words that made sense in Elizabethan English.

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We use completely different words today. And so the King James translators, if they were alive today, would not insist that we used outdated usage of words and phraseology if they were around.

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They would have said, no, replace besom with broom. Replace chambering with immorality.

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Replace emerald with tumor. Those are words that have completely been made obsolete.

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We don't use those words anymore. And so in one sense, there's the textual argument, which I think is valid.

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But unfortunately, a lot of people don't know Hebrew and Greek. They're not aware of the complexity of the manuscript tradition.

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But they do understand the fact that there's usage of language within Elizabethan 17th century

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English that just doesn't make sense today. And in that sense, the King James translators, if they were alive in 2023, would say, hey, update those things because we want people to be able to understand the

20:26

Bible when they read it. Yeah. So Andrew, I think we're going to jump into some of the missing verses that I talk about.

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So Andrew, do you? I think I have a couple here. Did you want to throw out maybe the first one, the first sort of challenge when it comes to that?

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That's one of the big argumentations they're talking about. There's missing verses and not only there's just missing verses, but there's malicious intent behind the missing verses.

20:52

But also they will talk about how there's core doctrine, core essential doctrine that you are just not going to get if you use anything else besides the

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King James. So, Andrew, what do you see? What's the first on the Rolodex you want to throw out to Wes and see what he has to say?

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Why isn't the Comma Johannium 1 John 5, 7 through 8 in the most modern text?

21:17

I mean, it's one of the most clearest texts that's on the Trinity. Clearly, we have a device from the devil made to confuse us and think that God is not a

21:27

Trinitarian or, you know what I mean? I don't know why my brain is thrown off there. Yeah, that's a great example because that's an example that is found in almost no

21:43

Greek manuscripts and is actually not found in the majority text. So we referred to earlier the majority text.

21:51

The Jehoiachin Comma, which is 1 John 5, 7 is not found in the majority text.

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I'm just looking it up here on my computer. Actually, when

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Erasmus, who I mentioned previously, who made this edition of the Greek New Testament that was the basis translation or the basis text for the translation that the

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King James translators use, he had five editions. I mentioned that last time. The first two editions do not include it.

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In fact, on my bookshelf behind me, I have a facsimile of a 1522

22:31

Erasmus Greek -Latin New Testament. This is the first edition that the

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Comma Jehoiachin, the 1 John 5, 7, I believe I actually even might have it marked off.

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It's the first one that it appears in. And basically, there it is. I've marked it off.

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I have some sticky notes in there to talk about it. It's the first edition that includes it.

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And so if we read it, so basically, if you read the

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Nessie Alans, the critical edition of the Greek New Testament, and you read the Greek, it's going to say, for there are three that testify.

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That's going to be 1 John 5, 7. It's just going to say that, for there are three that testify. Now, this one says, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the

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Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. Now, what's going on there?

23:24

Well, that seems like a clear verse that talks about the doctrine of the Trinity, right? But what the problem with it is, is that the reason why

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Erasmus did not include it in his first two editions of the Greek New Testament was because he could not find it in any

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Greek manuscript. It did not exist. It did exist in the Latin Vulgate. And it does actually exist in a handful of manuscripts, but they're really coming from the 12th century in the

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Latin. The only ones that have it in the Greek, I believe, are from the 15th century.

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And it does appear in, I believe it's Codex Britannicus Montinfornianus.

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That's probably too nerdy for the audience to really have any context for.

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But the basic argument is that this reading appears nowhere in the manuscript tradition.

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It is what's probably a textual marginal note by a scribe in the

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Latin that gets introduced into the text. So this is a case of what

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I was saying before is where I'm interested in what John included in his original epistle.

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And I'm far less interested in when I'm doing my devotional study in what a scribe wrote in the

25:04

Latin Bible in later centuries that eventually made its way into the text because scribes were tenacious.

25:14

Scribes, in wanting to preserve the word of God, when they saw things that were written into the margin, and if they weren't sure whether the previous scribe forgot to put it into the text or whether it was a commentary on the text, would just put it in the text anyways to be safe because they were so careful that they didn't want to miss anything.

25:36

And in that sense, the word of God was preserved 100%. But I sometimes say we don't have 100 % of the text of the

25:44

Bible. We have 110 % because the scribes were so careful and wanted to preserve the text so much they added all the stuff in that was often written in the margins.

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And so, yes, that makes its way into the text, but that can give us confidence that the text is originally there.

26:00

We just have to figure out what that added 10 % is. And this is an example of that where you have this passage that is really an explanation of what might be going on there in 1

26:18

John. In 1 John 5, when John is making this argument, someone is writing into the margin what those three could be.

26:28

And so that's added eventually into the text, but John did not write that originally.

26:36

And we know that. We know that John did not write 1 John 5 -7.

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And actually, Erasmus was basically peer -pressured into putting it into the 1522 edition of the

26:49

Greek New Testament. And the King James translators, because they were primarily using the 1522 and then the subsequent two editions that Erasmus came up with, they included it in the

27:02

King James translation. However, what you basically have to argue is that Christians, throughout the vast majority of the history of the

27:11

Bible, who had never read that in 1 John 5, that they were just missing the

27:18

Word of God. Because often, the King James onlyists want to argue that what we're saying is that you can't have the

27:25

Word of God until, say, you have the critical edition of the Greek New Testament. Well, that's not true.

27:31

Because Christians didn't have the Commune Aureum, this expanded section of 1

27:39

John 5 -7, up until this point in time in history. So it's an addition.

27:45

We know it's an addition. In fact, individuals who I know who are majority text advocates even argue against this because it's not in the majority text.

27:56

It's in a particular stream of a couple of Greek manuscripts and the

28:04

Latin manuscripts. But it's simply not true that it was taken out. What we've done is we've retrieved the original text, what

28:13

John actually wrote, and it's because of the manuscript tradition that we've been able to trace back and find out, no, this was not original to 1

28:23

John 5. It was added in later, and it really should never have been there to begin with.

28:30

What's interesting to me is it reminds me of Proverbs 30, verse 5 through 6. And at the end of it, it says,

28:36

Add thou not unto these words, lest ye rebuke you, and thou shalt be found a liar. It seems like in the KJV only mindset, the fact that we have the ability now to go back and look through this manuscript tradition to see whether or not this could be a scribal insert, that God may use the ability that we can do that to take things out of the word that shouldn't be in there.

28:59

Right? So going to the word to say, well, no, it's going to be a book, it's going to be bound, it's going to be perfect, it's going to be holy, it's

29:05

God's word, but you're also forgetting that God says, Add thou not to them, and that we have the ability through the way that God preserves the text to actually see what could be additions, and that's a blessing, like you were saying.

29:16

And I'm using God's word to say that, you know, like Proverbs 35 through 6. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

29:25

All right. So next verse I have is, and here's another one too, and this is from his website.

29:31

And again, we're just giving just a cliff notes overview as always, but this is really good because this is the law for the average person is unsuspecting when something like this gets thrown their way.

29:40

It is a little bit of a stick in the bicycle spokes. So that being said, here's one. So this is

29:46

Matthew 18 .11 that says, For the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost.

29:54

And he says, quote, Matthew 18 .11 is not found in modern Bibles, or it is replaced with a note casting doubt upon its legitimacy.

30:03

But Matthew 18 .11 is a power and essential verse pertaining to salvation. This verse forms the basis of what we believe as Christians.

30:12

Tell me, why would anyone not under the influence of evil wish to remove such a verse from the

30:17

Bible? Floor is yours, West. Yeah, so a lot of these cases, particularly in the

30:25

Gospels, are not cases of something that's being taken out, but something that's being introduced in.

30:35

So if I go to Matthew 18 .11 in my in my

30:42

NIV or my ESV, it's going to be missing, but the question is not who took that verse out.

30:50

It's a question of who put that verse in and when. And so, if I look at this,

30:59

For the Son of Man came to save the lost, I can see that in the textual apparatus, it's missing from most of the earliest manuscripts.

31:07

It says it's almost certainly not original, but it's actually not taken out because it's a parallel from Luke 19 .10.

31:16

So what you have here is a case of a scribe who has is familiar with what

31:24

Jesus says and is importing Luke 19 .10 into Matthew 18.

31:31

So it's not it's not missing. It's still in Luke 19 .10 where it should be.

31:37

But the verse is omitted because we know that it's been transposed. And this happens a lot, particularly with the

31:43

Gospels, because we have similar stories that are being told. And I can see this very clearly in the textual apparatus.

31:49

When I open up the textual apparatus on my Bible software and I just put in Matthew 18 .11,

31:54

the first thing I see is that it's not included in the vast majority of our oldest manuscripts.

32:00

However, it does pop up later in the 5th and 6th centuries, but it's included in all the manuscripts in Luke 19 .10.

32:11

So if there is an intention to take this out, why did the scribe leave it in Luke 19 .10?

32:19

Well, it's because there's no nefarious intention here. You don't need to import a conspiracy.

32:27

What's going on is that a scribe previously has probably copied a section of the

32:32

Gospel of Luke, is familiar with Jesus saying very similar words in the Synoptic Gospels, and is importing similar wordage, verbiage, and phraseology from the mouth of Jesus into a separate

32:46

Gospel where he says something very similar. This happens a lot. And so, I would contend that a lot of, if not the vast majority of supposed quote -unquote missing verses in the

32:57

Gospels is just a case of this. It's a case of a scribe being aware of Jesus saying something in another

33:02

Gospel. You know, think about how long it would take to copy an entire, you know, let's pick the shortest

33:09

Gospel, the Gospel of Mark. That would take you a long time, right? And if you did that, you'd probably be well aware of the sayings of Jesus if you hand -wrote carefully the words of Jesus from the

33:20

Gospel of Mark. And then you went on to start copying Luke. Well, Luke includes a lot of the same stuff that Mark does.

33:29

And so you would have in your, sort of, mind's eye a lot of the sayings of Jesus.

33:34

And so it wouldn't be crazy for you to start filling in the gaps when you start copying

33:40

Luke. Because you're just, you're well aware of those things. And so what a scribe is doing is they're importing a verse.

33:48

And so now we can see that in the manuscript tradition. We can see where something is being imported.

33:53

And so what do we do? We take it out. Do we reverse the entire

33:59

Gospel of Matthew? Well, no. That's going to throw off every commentary that's ever been written since the verses came into standardization.

34:07

We're not going to do that. We're just going to, I mean, I'm looking at my NET, my

34:12

New English Translation. And it just has in double square brackets it says, empty. And so it just it just says, empty.

34:20

And then it goes on. And then there is a there's a citation note. Now what you read,

34:25

Jeremiah, said, well, cast doubt on this. Well, I don't think so. It still says it's in Luke 19, 1910.

34:31

It's still there. It's just saying, this belongs to another gospel. Matthew didn't write it. Luke did.

34:37

We don't have to import any type of nefarious intention. That's what's going on. So, yeah,

34:43

Wes, I appreciate that point. So you mentioned this is the great summary of specifically verses or proof texts that are used in the

34:50

Gospels. And again, I'm probably going to listen to this a couple times. But so when it comes to Pauline epistles,

34:58

I wonder if it would be the same thing. So he goes to Colossians 114. I love the book of Colossians, but he quotes

35:05

Colossians 114, which says, In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

35:13

And then he says, as Christians, the blood of Jesus is very important to us when since it is what washes away our sin.

35:21

Modern translations don't see the importance of Jesus' blood. So they demonstrate that by dropping through his blood out of this verse.

35:30

So again, there's assuming malicious intent by with how the King James translation of Colossians 114 differentiates from modern versions.

35:41

So I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Right. So I do see that actually here.

35:47

I do see so Colossians 114, In whom we have redemption for the forgiveness of sins.

35:54

Now, I do see in the textual apparatus that there are a number of minuscule manuscripts that have that addition that you mentioned die to him a toss out.

36:08

So through his blood. Now, I would actually argue.

36:13

So the this is appearing in the ninth century and onwards and only in a few manuscripts, one, two, three, four are listed.

36:24

It's missing in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 up until that point.

36:33

So it's missing in far more manuscripts than it's it's found in. However, it's it's found in much later manuscripts.

36:42

They're coming along after the 10th century. They're coming along at a time when they would have had access to it in the 17th century because these would have been in in much greater access because they were newer.

36:56

Now, I this is probably an example of what I mentioned with the expansion of piety.

37:02

I think I mentioned that in the in the previous episode. Yeah. So is it wrong to say in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sins?

37:09

No. If you added through his blood, would that be wrong either? No. Now, I think what probably happened is that scribes added that to the text to expand upon what was going on.

37:25

Now, did they do that nefariously? I don't think so. I think this is just this is what happens in handwritten documents, especially in religious documents when the scribes are trying to expand and and explain what's going on.

37:42

But the conviction that through his blood is not authentic in Colossians 114 is as strong as the conviction that those words are true.

37:53

Right? They're still true. They're just not authentic. So it's not a case of somebody trying to admit the fact that we find forgiveness of sins through Jesus's blood.

38:04

Because once again, if this was the intention, there are lots of other places in Colossians even where the blood of Christ and the atoning sacrifice of Christ is clearly communicated by Paul to the

38:19

Colossians, to the Christians at Colossi. So this is modern translators trying to take out something that is a clear and true and beautiful doctrine, then they're doing so very poorly because we have lots of other passages even in this book that communicate the atoning blood of the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross.

38:47

So what do we have here? Well, just to sum up, we have scribes in later centuries in really only a handful of manuscripts compared to the majority of manuscripts adding this kind of juncture into the manuscripts.

39:05

There's this phrase, diatu haematos auto through his blood into the manuscripts.

39:11

It's not a false thing. It's once again just not what Paul wrote. And so by looking at the textual apparatus

39:17

I can see, once again, no heinous intention, no conspiracy here.

39:23

This is added at a later point in time. We can clearly pinpoint that nobody's trying to erase

39:31

Christ's sacrifice on the cross. What we're trying to do is get back to the words of Paul, and I think that's what we do.

39:38

No, that's good. Andrew, so when it comes to any objections, this is the primary argumentation saying that this is the perfect version, what sticks out to you when it comes to objections that are made up.

39:54

I've knocked out a couple of them. I want to see what you're seeing. I really think that Wes is doing a very good job of showing us that most of these objections with the quote unquote what could be missing things, or things that we're finding that maybe were added that are being taken out because now we're getting closer to the original.

40:16

He's doing a great job of showing us that they all seem to be coming from the same place. For me, my mind is definitely satisfied in terms of some of these objections that are being brought up.

40:29

In terms of thinking about, what do you think is some of the things thought process behind someone when they go, well, we need to have a book that is the perfect book.

40:44

And regardless of all of the issues that many modern secular scholars may raise against some of the biblical text, we're just going to say that the

40:56

KJV is the inspired word of God. I think the phrase could be a double inspiration.

41:03

What is the draw to somebody you think so they wouldn't have to go back and do their research or have to go answer some tough hard questions about the biblical text.

41:14

You don't have to worry about anything else. Just set your mind and focus on the

41:20

KJV. I think for a lot of people it's tidier.

41:27

And I think in some sense it's the same response that I get from ultra skeptics.

41:33

Because both ultra skeptics and KJV only or sometimes

41:40

I think it's been put more accurately to call them textual absolutists, what they're looking for is certainty.

41:48

They want a tidy answer. So the ultra skeptic looks at all of these differences in the manuscript tradition and they say this obviously can't be the word of God so they run in the direction of any mistake means that inspiration is impossible.

42:03

And the textual absolutist, the KJV onlyist, they look at all of these differences in the manuscript tradition and they say well any difference in the manuscript tradition means it can't be the word of God so they run in the opposite direction to absolute certainty.

42:19

We have to have an understanding and the evidence appropriately

42:35

I think. But I think I can understand it in the sense that people are uncomfortable with these things because if you're told your entire life that this is the inspired inerrant word of God that may conjure up certain things that may not actually be true not because those statements aren't true but because you've created a narrative in your head of what that should be, not what it is but what it should be.

43:02

God has preserved his word. We have a doctrine of inerrancy. But it's only very recently in history where we've had the privilege to be able to say that we can hold up a printed

43:19

Bible and have it exactly the same as another printed Bible. Handwritten documents are far more simple and far more complex than we often realize.

43:31

So I think both the ultra skeptic and the textual absolutist are responding to similar things but they're responding in completely different ways.

43:45

That's what I would say. And I would also say that two can play at this game. There are texts in the modern translations that communicate certain doctrines far more clearly.

43:55

One of my favorite places to point this out is 1 John 3 1 where in the ESV it says what kind of love the father has given to us that we should be called children of God.

44:05

And so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

44:12

But if you go to a KJV it lacks the phrase and so we are. It says behold the manner of love the father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called sons of God.

44:23

Therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew him not. Could we weave some grand conspiracy and say those translators didn't want us to truly believe we are sons of God.

44:34

No. That's not the case. There's a simple explanation as to why the

44:50

KJV translators were using just lacked that certain clause.

44:57

So I think you know there are we can go back and forth and say well this is a place where the modern translations highlight the deity of Christ more accurately this is a place where this doctrine is communicated more clearly but in the end we are not doing a service to the text.

45:12

Because what modern translators are trying to do is render the text as accurately as possible to what we think the original author said without running to absolute certainty and without running to extreme skepticism.

45:30

I think we can land in a middle place of confidence in the text. We can be honest about the complexities of the text and we can be thankful that God has preserved his word and included the messiness of humanity in that process because God is a relational

45:48

God and includes humanity and the history of salvation as it pertains to all sorts of doctrinal issues.

45:57

And that's good. Can you go into a little more to the doctrine of inspiration for our listeners?

46:04

Like maybe some of the confusion that people have today is they're having also a confusion of the doctrine of inspiration.

46:10

They're thinking that holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit but they're thinking that the inspiration is that it will come from them and that we have no changes, nothing different.

46:20

You know what I mean? What is the doctrine of inspiration? I think a lot of people in this conversation

46:27

I mean we're looking at a like Dr. Gene Kim and people who are advocates of King James only.

46:33

They're saying inspiration lies only in this translation with again that that dogmatic you know push for that.

46:42

But what's the what would be the what would be like the level -headed more given what we talked about even in our previous episodes like what's the proper way to actually define that?

46:56

Yeah well I think simply put inspiration is we're led a little bit astray because the word we use inspiration inspiratus in the

47:08

Latin means to breathe in. But in in 1st

47:13

Timothy 316 Paul says all scripture is God breathed and that phrase in the

47:19

Greek means to breathe out and it's it's as if God it's as if you know when you hold your hand in front of your face and you feel that hot air that's what's being breathed out.

47:32

It's as if what scripture is is the breath of God and you quoted the passage from Peter men spoke as they were carried along by the

47:40

Holy Spirit. I mean what we understand of inspiration is not necessarily the mechanism of how

47:48

God exactly did it but that God did it. That God included humanity into this process and so when we talk about inspired all we mean is that it comes from God.

48:04

It comes from God and is authoritative. You know when when Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights.

48:15

He was hungry. The tempter came to him and said if you are the son of God tell us these stones to become bread.

48:24

It is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

48:32

You know Jesus quotes scripture as authoritative and we see this over and over again.

48:40

He uses this phrase it is written. But what we mean by that and what we mean when we talk about inspiration is that God's word is communicated to us in the way that God intends to communicate it to us.

48:59

There is this great passage in Matthew where Jesus is sparring with the

49:05

Pharisees. They come with this question about resurrection. The old joke that the

49:12

Sadducees are sad because they don't believe in the resurrection.

49:18

They come to him and they have this crazy story of this woman whose husbands are dying and she is marrying her brothers and they don't realize and catch on and stop marrying her.

49:31

Jesus makes this interesting statement regarding the resurrection of the dead have you not read what was spoken to you by God.

49:40

He doesn't say have you not read what was written to you. He says regarding the resurrection of the dead have you not read what was spoken to you.

49:50

As if they were at the base of Mount Sinai when Moses gave that command. I think that is what we are talking about when we talk about inspiration.

50:04

God includes humanity in that process in that many of the quotations of the

50:10

Old Testament that we find in the New Testament are the Greek translation of the

50:17

Old Testament. They have no problem calling that the word of God even though they are quoting the

50:23

Greek not the Hebrew. I think that should give us confidence today when we think about the idea of inspiration that the

50:31

New Testament authors have no qualms quoting a translation of God's word because God's word is applicable in every language despite the complexities of translation.

50:46

It is not the Koran. My Muslim friends when I read the

50:51

Koran because it only exists in the Hebrew that is not what we have with the Bible. The Bible is the Bible in English and in Mandarin and in Swahili and in Korean and in insert language here.

51:07

So God communicates to us and so when we use the word inspiration all we mean is that it comes from God.

51:15

That may not be as tidy as we want it to be. But that is the reality and like I said earlier the way that God preserved his word allowed it to be spread all over the ancient world very quickly revolutionized the

51:31

Roman empire and led us to be able down the road now to be able to compare those manuscripts and trace the original text back.

51:39

All right yeah Wes I appreciate you sharing that and that's such a great example and so what

51:45

I want to do real quick is just jump back in for a moment into some of the other objections that come up.

51:51

So again if you just type in KJV missing verses there's two different ones there's a couple ones that come up here there's a claim that this person's going after the

52:01

KJV says KJV no the New King James version so this meme says

52:07

KJV versus a New King James version and it says the New King James versions omits key

52:14

Christian words times omitted that the Lord is omitted 66 times

52:20

God is omitted 51 times heaven is omitted 50 times repent is removed 44 times blood is removed 23 times and so forth and so on and then it goes on and it says that Jehovah's moved entirely quote

52:36

New Testament entirely damnation entirely devil's plural entirely and it just and then it says the

52:44

New King James version ignore the KJV Greek Texas receptus over 1200 times mark and avoid so that's just an example you don't have to go over a single detail but what's the general synopsis of the thinking behind somebody behind that meme yeah well once again they're they're they're making their standard a 17th century

53:10

Elizabethan translation so at the expense of the

53:18

Greek and the Hebrew so if you make your standard the King James version then the modern translations are going to look very different so you're going to have

53:30

I think probably what's going on is those examples of Lord and God being taken out or what

53:36

I was talking about earlier with the expansion of piety the Lord Jesus Christ well if you realize that it may have just said

53:44

Jesus Christ or even just Jesus well then you omit the word Lord because it's not what the original author said it doesn't mean it's false it doesn't mean it's a denial of Christ Lordship it just means that we realize that the original author probably didn't write that devils was probably and I'm just you know spit balling

54:05

I'm just guessing here but it was probably replaced by something like demons like something the equivalent of a modern translation of what those words were so sometimes it may be just an update in language sometimes it may be a realization that the original text did not have those words or those phrases in there it could be any number of those things but what

54:31

I want to double down on here is the fact that modern translators are not sitting around nefariously trying to figure out how they can slowly and subtly degrade the authenticity and reliability and doctrinal credibility of the word of God I mean

54:51

I know Bible translators I know people who sit on a translation committees for you know

54:57

Zondervan and the Lockman foundation and Crossway and people who are godly men and women who are scholars who have devoted their lives to these things they're just trying to get down to the original that's honestly their intention and this is why you have translation committees of groups of people to the best of their ability weed out any one person's bias this is why you should never trust a translation that's done by a single person because their bias is going to come into effect if I ever publish a

55:34

Bible a Wesley Huff translation you probably shouldn't read it because my bias is going to creep into the text it's going to happen but you have translation committees to be able to weed that out whether that's you know the 46 to 48 translators of the

55:52

KJV or however many sit on the ESV translation the NIV translation the NSB translation now this is not me saying that all translations are created equal there are good translations there are bad translations there are heretical translations there are some terrible modern translations

56:06

I'm not defending every modern translation by any stretch but you know the standard ones that you think of ESV NASB you know the legacy standard

56:17

Bible that just came out these are excellent excellent translations but yeah so I think as I think back on your original question you know

56:29

I think this is this is stretching what we see in order to try to find nefarious intentions and I think realistically the nefarious intentions aren't there all what's being done is someone is wedded to a tradition that tradition is stating that the standard is being made of the

56:55

King James Bible but the King James Bible was not the Bible that was given by God in you know antiquity it is an excellent

57:07

Bible is an amazing Bible is a Bible that clearly did the work of God for 500 years that's

57:15

I mean that's an incredible feat but do we have to stick with that no and I don't think the

57:21

King James translators would be as I said before KJV only if they were around today yeah well

57:28

I think we covered a lot of really good ground Andrew do you have any do you have any final thoughts as we wrap up here no

57:35

I'm just wondering Wes if someone was happened to stumble upon these two episodes that was someone who adhered to the

57:43

KJV strictly modern translations are a device from the devil what what things could you have them think about like a rock in their shoe in terms of some final words or thoughts for them yeah

57:59

I think I would point out the fact that the King James translators were very transparent in that they wanted the

58:04

Word of God to be updated I mean in the preface to the reader in the original 1611

58:09

King James Bible they say that even the meekest translation of the Bible is the translation of the

58:15

Bible is the Bible is the Word of God they use this illustration of the King's speech being translated into German and even if it's translated poorly it's still the

58:23

King's speech so I think a lot of King James onlyists

58:30

I run into aren't aware that there were English translations before the King James Bible so I actually a couple of friends of mine

59:06

Mark Ward who wrote a book called Authorize the Use and Abuse of the King James Bible he has great work in what he calls

59:14

I think he calls them what are they called friendly foes he has false friends where he lists words that have changed meaning since the

59:28

King James translation and you'll be led astray by reading because there are words we use today that meant something completely different in 1611 so you may not know that you are reading the

59:46

Word of God thinking it's saying one thing and actually the King James translators meant something completely different I often use the example of awful if I woke up in the morning and said you look awful this morning she wouldn't take that as a compliment however in Elizabethan English awful meant full of awe it was a positive it meant wonderful glorious Yahweh is awful but today it means it's a negative right so words change in their meaning and that's just the natural progression and evolution of words and so if someone's listening to this and they're

01:00:25

KJV only I would say what you probably think is going on with the text of scripture is probably far more simpler than you realize and far more complicated than you realize and I wouldn't actually argue and this is what

01:00:44

I do in my video why I don't recommend the KJV I don't actually necessarily go to the textual stuff because it requires people to understand

01:00:52

Hebrew and Greek your average person they don't know Hebrew and Greek if you want to understand the word of God you should get a translation that you can actually read that actually makes sense that actually has an applicability because the language that it uses is a language that you can understand and so yeah

01:01:24

I hope that there are people who are listening to this who realize that maybe what they've been told about you know missing

01:01:33

Bible verses or something like that maybe it's not necessarily what they thought it was 1st

01:01:42

Corinthians 14 says if you don't speak intelligibly how will anyone know what is being said for you will be speaking into the air he's talking about speaking in tongues there but if we apply it to something like the modern translation of the

01:02:13

Bible to be able to understood and applied to your life is going to do wonders for you as the modern

01:02:21

Christian who is trying to live a faithful life in the word of word of Christ awesome well thank you

01:02:29

Wes I appreciate that's a perfect way to wrap it up of course as always where is the best home base where people can find you if they want to find out more about you yep so the standard place would be

01:02:40

Wesley Huff .com you can also go to apologetics Canada .com where I work and all of the relevant links and articles podcasts infographics are going to be there

01:02:54

Wesley Huff .com so that's that's the one stop shop excellent well if you guys enjoy this program definitely comment on our social media let us know what you thought we definitely would love to have you on again next week talk to you all soon hey guys thank you for listening to this episode if you want more content just like this on a weekly basis please go to the cultist show .com

01:03:23

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