King James Only-ism REFUTED

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today

I have a special guest with me, Dr. Steven Boyce, who is a, well,

I guess I would call him an apologist, but his focus in his studies, his

PhD is in the area of canonicity and textual criticism. If you are listening to this episode and you have no idea what canonicity and textual criticism is, don't worry.

I'll have Dr. Boyce define those for you, but this is a very, very important topic. It really is dealing with the issue of how the

Bible has been transmitted throughout the course of history, how it was copied throughout the generations.

And so we're gonna talk a little bit about the background of the Bible, how we got the Bible, and then really focus on the topic of this movement known popularly as the

King James Only Movement. And so that is an area that Dr.

Boyce is very knowledgeable in. Just right before going live, just a few seconds or a minute ago,

Dr. Boyce, I'm sorry, Steven, speaking to them for 10 minutes and all of a sudden we're on a first name basis.

But Dr. Boyce was expressing to me that he used to be part of the King James Only Church.

And so that was his position back in the day, but has obviously come out of that position.

And so we're really gonna pick his brain tonight to address this very important topic.

And hopefully, I wanna keep this discussion within the context of say the average believer.

How might the average believer who confronts a King James Onlyist, how might they navigate the sorts of issues that arise in those sorts of discussions?

And so hopefully we could, throughout the course of this discussion, make apologetic application.

So I'm very, very excited to have Dr. Boyce with us. In just a few moments, I'm going to invite him on the screen with me.

But before that, I just wanna let people know as well that this Friday, I'm going to be having

Dr. Paul Helm on to discuss his book, Reforming Free Will. So I'm super excited about that.

And we have a couple of other shows. I have a bunch of interesting things lined up, especially with regards to presuppositionalism for folks who are interested in that.

So I totally will update you guys on the specifics when I have everything in front of me.

Also, PresuppU, Presupp University, my online course that I teach, Presuppositional Apologetics, if folks are interested in signing up for that class,

I've been receiving signups this week and the previous week. The class where we're gonna be meeting together through a

Zoom call to discuss the content of the weekly videos, that's gonna start on June 1st.

And so folks, if folks are interested in signing up for that class, they can do so by going to revealedapologetics .com,

click the PresuppU option on the menu, and it walks you through that process.

And in signing up, you're also financially supporting Revealed Apologetics, which is very helpful and greatly appreciated.

Also, before we get started, and I invite Dr. Boyce on the screen with me, I just started a

Revealed Apologetics Instagram account. Now, I highly recommend folks, if you have

Instagram, follow Revealed Apologetics. What I'm gonna try to do there is I'm going to try to take snippets of key portions of some of my conversations with great scholars in apologetics.

I mean, I've had discussion with Dr. Scott Oliphant, we had Dr. James Anderson talking about presuppositionalism, we had

Dr. Frank Turek, Greg Kokel, a bunch of great guests that I've had in the past.

And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take short little snippets from my discussions and post them there on Instagram so you could have a little resource there to get some quick apologetic nuggets.

So please follow Revealed Apologetics on Instagram if you have Instagram. All right, well, without further ado,

I am very excited to invite on the screen with me, Dr. Stephen Boyce. How are you doing, Dr.

Boyce? Good, good to be with you, Eli. Appreciate the opportunity to discuss the subject.

Well, I am very, very excited that you are here and this is an area, textual criticism, canonicity, which

I'll ask you to define for folks, but this is an area that is so vitally important for believers in general, but apologetics in particular.

So perhaps we can get into that issue in just a moment. But why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, maybe something

I haven't mentioned since I've just kind of given a brief introduction and then we'll jump right into the content of this discussion.

Sure, sure. My name is Stephen Boyce. As you stated, I'm with City Light Ministries, which is a church planting group.

We currently have a church plant launching into Asheville, North Carolina, which is closest to me. The first church, the

Mother Church, is in Seattle, Washington. They've been there just over a year and a half now.

And then the newest as well is in the country of Malaysia. And then we also have partnering churches in the areas.

But our main focus is to get church plants going and church planting churches and training elders and leaders to go out, sending entire teams out to start churches.

But attached to our network is also an apologetics ministry. We recently have merged with Explain Apologetics, which

Samuel Neeson started in Malaysia. So we're one unit with multiple apologists on it.

My main focus is typically anything biblical reliability, Old Testament, New Testament, textual criticism, dealing with pseudo -apocryphal books, apocryphal books, any of the canonical books.

Early Church Fathers is another big one. Most of my doctoral work in my dissertation was on their referencing of the

New Testament and Old Testament. So those are typically where I find myself in debate. I do some fun theology debates from time to time, but mostly that's where my work has been recently.

And that's where I also did my PhD is focusing on canonicity, the study of the canon, collection in canon or those outside of the canon.

And then textual criticism is the manuscripts, both the Old and New, particularly the New Testament manuscripts in Greek, comparing them, looking at the differences, reconstructing what the original reading would have been.

So that's most of what my work has been in. And that's typically where I do most of my research and apologetics and defend the faith from that standpoint.

Hmm. So your specific area of focus is canonicity and textual criticism, and that's where your

PhD is in. Now, folks, you gotta understand what this means. Dr. Boyce has a black belt in the Bible, okay?

So he knows his stuff. And this is a very important topic, as I mentioned before.

So my first question to you, Dr. Boyce, is what is the apologetic value of knowing how we got the

Bible, issues of canonicity and textual criticism? Why don't you define what those are and then tell us why is this valuable for folks to know within the context of defending the faith?

Yeah, and I think it's a great question, Eli, because at this point, we have been able to fight in the fight in the apologetic side of looking at doctrine and theology, doctrine and theology, systematic theology, looking at these different isms at the end of terms.

And there was a time where there was quite the neutrality to be able to say, this is what we believe and why, here's our support passages, this is what

God said, this is the argument. We live in a day and age of high skepticism, where everything is questioned.

There was a time where Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were at least acknowledged from a historical perspective, those days are over.

They're dismissed, they're not seen as reliable, even from a historical standpoint. There are forgeries, there are conspiracies of works to invent a

Jesus. Some would say to invent a physical Jesus who didn't exist, to fabricate a resurrection that never happened, to cover up a massive conspiracy of apostles.

The entire debate has switched to, your theology is irrelevant because your texts are broken and they're fake.

I recently, with Jonathan Sheffield, did a debate on the reliability of the book of Daniel, where modern scholarship places it now at the second century

BC, which is really an old argument from pro -freer, but now it's a resurgence and they're taking it to another level.

And their point of that is, is it's not accurate prophecy. And it didn't predict Jesus correctly and it was error -ridden and all these other things.

So the debate platform has shifted where our arguments mean nothing if we don't have substantial documents behind it.

So my burden and my goal is to take all of those, for guys like yourself who want to focus on the theology, is provide the data that says, you know what, we have substantial documents.

They're historically accurate at minimum. We obviously, you and I would hold to an inerrance.

I hold to inerrancy, not everybody does, but I hold to inerrancy, I hold to infallibility of scripture.

And, but we want to be able to not just say that because that was accepted once, it's not accepted anymore.

So we need to make sure our apologists are really supported with good material, good argumentation, good data, that will take them into a argument against an atheist or a

Muslim. And they're able to say, you know what, I'm making this claim, but it's not weak, it's not empty.

It's not a faith and faith thing. There's actually substantial reasoning behind this and provide that data there.

So that's mostly where I believe this is important. Our foundation is the scripture, our foundation for theology, faith and practice is the scripture.

But if our scripture is dismissed, then all that's dismissed with it. So we need to be able to start on a firm foundation and that's defend the scripture.

Okay, very good. So obviously we need to know how the history, we need to know the history of the Bible and how it comes to us so that we could understand how to combat various objections that question the integrity of the transmission of the texts and all that other sorts of stuff.

Okay, well, very good. Well, let's define our terms real quick. So you said that your area of focus is canonicity and textual criticism.

Why don't we define those terms and then we wanna jump right into this issue of the

King James only controversy. I'll ask you to define what that is, you know, the variation within it, and then we can jump into how you would go about refuting or discrediting the particular stance that those folks take, you know, and we can take it from there.

So what is canonicity? What is textual criticism? Sure, so canonicity is going back to anything canonical as a collection of authorized books or literature of any sort.

So it's bringing together, these are authorized. These are a collection of various authorized works that are put together into a book, which we have 66 in our

English Bibles when we're looking at the Old and New Testament collectively. These are collections of authorized works.

I often use the illustration and people get tired of it, but I do because we like to use modern illustrations,

Star Wars. I'm a big Star Wars fan. You hear people, my brother's a bigger one than I, and he always talked about, well, that's canonical.

That's canonical. And, or you, yeah, that's a really cool theory about, you know, Darth Vader, but that's not canon, you know, and what is he saying when he would say that?

Well, there's multiple aspects of the Star Wars series. You have Lucas, who is the creator of this, and he authorized people to manage his work.

So whether it's a movie, a comic, a book, if it doesn't have Lucas Films, it's not an authorized story.

It may be a cool theory, but it's not authorized. There's a lot of fanboys on YouTube who have theories about Star Wars characters, but they're not authorized by Lucas Films.

So it's cool, but it's not authorized. So it's not canonical. Once Lucas Films puts their stamp on it, it's a part of the canon of Star Wars.

And the same thing is true of the New Testament, Old Testament. I typically use Hebrews 1 as a starting point.

God spoke, theos lelesos, God uttered words, at many times in many ways, to our fathers by the prophets and in these last days through his sons.

So the authorized personnels of the Lord himself were the prophets of old, and even

Zacharias said, God does nothing except speaks through his prophets. And then even in the

New Testament, that's really just re -expressed over and over again. And then

Christ himself was the fulfillment of that, and he authorized his apostles and those that heard and saw and experienced his ministry, his death, his burial, his resurrection, he authorized him to carry that message into the world.

So if they're not an apostle or an authorized personnel of Jesus himself or not a part of the prophets, then it's not authorized.

And so when you're looking at canonical works, you're looking at what has the attributes of something authorized by God, what qualifies a prophet, what qualifies an apostle, what qualifies this text to fit that criteria, and why not these?

What is in these that dismisses them from those qualifications? That's pretty much what you do in the work of canon.

Okay, and textual criticism is what? What is textual criticism and what is the purpose of that specific discipline?

Yeah, so textual criticism is attempting to actually reconstruct original wording of a text.

Over time, transmission takes place, scribal errors take place, words were left out or added or biasness was put in.

So you're looking at a various amount of text of the same work, and you're comparing and looking at them, you're going through qualifications of what's the date of the writing, do we know the scribe?

Do we know the area? What would lead this reading compared to this one?

Which one would give rise to the other? And you're doing comparative work. How did other ancient translations view this reading?

And so you're comparing those things to reconstruct or the attempt to bring back the original wording of what the original text would have had, the original source.

So you're doing the attempting of reconstructing really at the end of the day, for lack of better terms.

So that's what textual criticism is. It's taking these canonical books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all the way to the end of our

New Testament. It's looking at the different manuscripts of them. It's looking at the difference, it's comparing those differences, and then it's bringing it back and bringing the evidence forward to do your best work to bring back an original wording.

And so the value there is when we do textual criticism with respect to the Bible, we're trying to get to the original words of the

Bible or the autographs, if you will. This is a question I wanna ask real quick, and then we could jump into the

King James only stuff. By the way, I wanna let folks know, I don't know if I asked you if this was okay, but towards the backend of the episode,

Dr. Boyce, would you be okay taking some questions from the audience there who are watching? Sure, yeah, absolutely.

All right, cool. So if anyone has any questions about textual issues and canonicity issues, please send your questions in through the comments and preface your question with the letter

Q or the word question, so that I could differentiate your question from just the random debates and discussions that are going on in the comments.

So I'd appreciate that. But okay, so when we're doing textual criticism, we're trying to work our way back to the original text.

And so the doctrine of inspiration deals with the autographs, right? The books of the

Bible as originally written. And so the common, and folks who are involved in apologetics often hear this sort of objection, right?

How can you believe that the Bible is the word of God when you don't have the original autographs? And so how does the practice of textual criticism speak to that?

I mean, they're right. I mean, this is not a secret. Christians don't hide the fact that we don't have the original autographs.

By the way, we don't call them original copies, right? We call them the autographs, right? How would you speak to that?

I mean, someone says you don't have the original, so you don't have the word of God. All you have are early copies.

And when you get to the earliest, the earliest, the earliest all you have is a very early copy. How do you get back to the original?

And those things have been really exaggerated. And I think that the recent book, and I don't think

I have it with me, but my good friend, Elijah Hickson and Peter Gurry, co -authored a book with various writers,

Timothy Mitchell, John Mead, did a book, Myths and Mistakes of New Testament Textual Criticism.

And they did a good job of dismissing both from the Christian and the atheistic side, the exaggeration that takes place.

So what we do is if the standard is original autograph, then we have no history of anything because we don't have original autographs of most

Greco -Roman. In fact, the New Testament has more data and more influence than any writing of antiquity at that time.

I did recently a debate discussing the historicity of Jesus. And I did a comparison by historical criteria between Jesus and Socrates.

Going back from the fact that both of them were people who were martyred for what they believed, they did not write themselves, but their followers wrote for them, did autobiographies on them, biographies and so forth, and wrote, quoted them and did their expressions.

But when you're looking at, for example, Xenophon, who I use as an example, one of the earliest manuscripts we have of Xenophon is almost 1500 years after him.

We're talking about John, who was an eyewitness. You're talking about manuscripts at the end of the second century, which

I believe John was written at the end of the first century, around 80 to 90 AD. And if that's the case, we have manuscripts within 100 years of, and not just a fragment like P52, which is the size of a credit card, but we have

P75, depending on where people date that, P66, covering large portions of John's gospel within 100 years.

No other work of antiquity can be able to do that. And looking at two different manuscripts around the same time, looking at other manuscripts that spread in different regions, looking at how the church fathers quoted those same passages of scripture, which was most of what

I did in 1 Clement, taking the manuscripts in the ancient languages like Coptic and Syriac and say, how did they translate it?

We're able to do more with the New Testament than any work of antiquity at that time.

So if we're going to dismiss the New Testament as unreliable on the basis of transmission and differences or the fact that it was copied and copied and copied and copied, we have nothing.

We have nothing in any part of history. We're right back in the dark ages again. But I will say this, and I actually, when

I had submitted a discussion with Dr. Ehrman about this, because I think he's the one that predominantly exaggerated this the most, is he had made the comment, well, we don't have copies and copies.

We have copies of copies of copies of copies of copies. And he exaggerates every single time he does that. And I questioned him off the epistle that Polycarp wrote to the

Philippians, which I've written on quite a bit and have done all the data for as well.

And it's short, it's about the size of our Philippians. And Polycarp was trained by John the

Apostle. He was commissioned and left there as a Bishop of Smyrna. And in there, he writes to the

Philippians and he reminds them of the letter that Paul had wrote to them and he tells them to read the letter that Paul had wrote to them.

And in doing so, their faith would increase. So there's two elements to Polycarp. He believed, one, they still had the letter.

Whether it was the original or not, who knows? We know this, papyri lasted anywhere from 100 to 150 years, depending on how much it was used, the weather.

So it is possible they had the original, but if not, they had a very close second or third to it.

And they were transmitting it constantly into their communities and they were protecting it in their communities enough to where Polycarp, who knew the

Apostle John, would write and say, you have Paul's letter, pull it out, read it, and it will increase your faith.

So it had a spiritual authority behind that letter too. So he recognized that in there.

And actually, Dr. Ehrman actually said, you know, that it's a good question, but I think you're looking at this wrong.

And then he gave an expression about, if I told my students at Chapel Hill, go into your

Bibles and turn to Romans, obviously they believe it's Romans. It's like, yeah, but the difference is, is you're talking about your students in the year 2021.

We're talking about Polycarp, who was trained and commissioned by the apostles, writing to a legitimate church that was started by Paul just a few years before that.

Big difference in time and space here. The fact is, is they had the word of God, they were transmitting the word of God.

And when we do the comparison of the different manuscripts, we have a really incredible New Testament that's been preserved.

Because when you look at the main essential textual variances, less than 2 % of all textual variances are truly irrelevant to Christian doctrine.

They're not unimportant, but they don't change our doctrine and faith. So I do believe that they're important to look at, but there's none that are,

Christian faith is hanging on a thread. Based on a single cardinal doctrine of some sort on a textual variant.

And even Dr. Ehrman has admitted that in numerous debates. All right, very good. Well, I see a lot of questions in the comments there.

We're gonna address them at the back end of the show. So keep them coming. I see a couple for Dr. Boyce and a couple for me with respect to how this topic, interestingly relates to presuppositionalism.

Perhaps I can briefly address that later. So that'll be fun. I welcome it. I mean, it's good stuff.

So, all right. Well, let's jump right into the main topic for today.

King James only -ism. So what is King James only -ism, okay?

And well, actually let's start with this. What is the King James Bible translation? What are the virtues and the, can

I say, not the virtues and vices, but what are some good things about the King James translation?

And what are some issues that you think make it a warranted thing to have a more updated translations of the

Bible? Well, the King James is a tremendous translation. I know that people hear me talk about the

King James. They think I'm like anti -King James. Like, actually, I'm really not. I think it was probably one of the greatest translations of our day and age, our

English language. And God has used it far more than most translations we have.

Some of that's not fair by comparison. Some of ours are only a few years old and that one's over 400.

But it is a tremendous translation that God has used for hundreds of years.

Many have come to know him and believe in him and grow in their faith through the work of the

King James translators. The King James translation was beautifully done. It was well -organized and it was done by some of the top scholars in England.

And so when we're talking about the King James version, it should not be conflated with King James only -ism because the

King James translators were not King James only -ists. And that needs to be understood.

And we can talk more in depth about that as we go through this. But if the King James translators were alive today, they would be embarrassed,

I believe, by many of those who carry their name and banner in the manner that it is being done today because they were not

King James only -ists. They had a high respect for translations that were not theirs.

And they tried to maintain tradition and keep certain, like whether it's the

Matthews or Tyndale, or Tyndale had a major influence in the King James translators.

In fact, most of the words they chose were done by one single man. They preserved elements of the

Geneva in the Bishop's Bible. In fact, most of their work was supposed to be a revision of the

Bishop's. So this was a work, a collective work, where they were trying to keep tradition of many good

English translations and keep those legacies going in this ultimate translation. So the

King James translation is a brilliant work of art, really, to come together and choose the best words for the

English -speaking people. It was meant to be for the common man. It wasn't meant to be, well, in the sense of like the

Bishop's Bible, although it got criticized as being too high church. And that's why so many people stuck with the

Geneva Bible as long as they did, because they thought the church, because it was done by the Anglican Church, the

Church of England, that it was too high church. They used terms like bishop instead of overseer.

It was too high church for some people. They're like, eh. So they stuck with Geneva instead of the

King James. I didn't know that. But it's a beautiful translation, and I think everybody should own a copy. It's a part of our history. Okay, very good.

So now what is King James -only -ism, and what are the problems there? Why don't you lay out maybe perhaps,

I know that there are different flavors of King James -only -ism. Why don't you lay out what is the view in general?

What are some of the variants within that view? And then after that, I'll ask you about, why do you disagree with it?

What are the problems with it? Maybe you can go about, we'll put this in quotes, refuting that position.

Stay consistent with the thumbnail. We can't finish the show without refuting it. So we'll get there.

But what is King James -only -ism, and why is it an issue? Yeah, I think it's an important question.

And I think that we need to be careful with our answers, because unfortunately, there is an attempt to conflate all in that camp to the same.

And they're just not. I break it into three camps. I know that Dr. White and his book has broke it down into more.

I break it down in three camps. The King James -only -ist, there you go,

King James -only -controversy, yeah, by Dr. White. So when you're talking about, for example,

Peter Ruckman was probably one of the front runners of King James -only -ism, or Sam Gipp was the next after Ruckman.

These guys are saying things to the extent of, God almost breathed again in 1604 to 1611, like that God was doing something supernatural, equal to that of looking at the

Greek or the Hebrew when those original writers, again, which goes back to a major issue, who are authorized, not by a king, but the king of kings, who authorized the writing?

And it was not the King of England that commissioned these guys to bring

God's words to human beings the way that people say they were. Now, the King James translators didn't believe that either.

However, they were translating the words of God. But these people believe it was perfect and errant and fallible, there was no mistakes because they were under a work of the spirit that preserved and protected them from mistake.

They never claimed that. In fact, they said the opposite of that. But at the same time, there is a crowd that pushes for the fact that the

King James is equal and more accurate than the Greek and the

Hebrew, so much so that I've seen videos of guys say, the Greek is garbage, it's error -ridden, there's too many mistakes.

So what God did in 1604 to 1611, fixed all the textual variances, settled it in the

English language. So there's that crowd. There's no mistakes under any circumstance.

I would even put guys, though he doesn't like Sam Gibb, I would even put guys - One second, I do apologize for interrupting.

I just wanted to, what you just said there, when they say that, okay, so God settled it, how do they know that God is active in the

King James specifically? I mean, it seems like when the Bible was written, you know, originally, it was accompanied with a miraculous validation.

I mean, that's what I appreciate about the Gospel of John is that when it refers to miracles, it doesn't refer to miracles as miracles, it refers to them as signs.

So signs usually validate or vindicate the claims of the person. So in the New Testament, we have miracles accompanying the ministry of the apostles, you know,

Peter and Paul. With respect to the King James Version, what makes them say, yes,

God is in this specifically so that we can know that God is in this process? So what they'll do, and I mean, honestly,

Peter Ruckman's the guy to read on this. I've watched him do seminars before from Ecclesiastes 8 .4,

where the word of the king is, there is power. And who may say unto him, what doest thou? And he'll say, there's only one

English translation that was authorized under a king. And so he'll use

Ecclesiastes 8 .4. So where the word of a king is, there's power. And so that's like the basis.

So this translation is a biblical criteria translation. It's under the word of a king.

And so therefore it's supreme or powerful. So he'll start there. They'll say things like, even though the

King James translators may not have known this was happening, their product turned out perfect. And so they're kind of like Sam Gip will use the illustration of John the

Baptist. Like for example, he'll say, well, John the Baptist was asked, are you

Elijah? And he said, no, I'm not Elijah. But when they asked Jesus, Jesus said, if you can accept this, he was

Elijah. So he thought he was one thing, but he wasn't or was something, but he wasn't.

But really later on, it was validated that he was. And then so he'll use that as an example of, no, they didn't think they were perfect.

But when you look at the product, it's definitely perfect. So even though they didn't know that about themselves, they really were.

So he'll use that parallel. So when you're looking at those guys, that's the depth that they'll go to defend a perfect translation.

Very interesting. Okay, so what's up with it? Why would someone be inclined to say, okay, fine.

You hold to King James only perspective. What is wrong with that position? And how would you go about instructing people who are encountering folks like this, who say, hey, if you're using a different translation, that's heresy.

How would you equip a believer to respond to that? And perhaps from there, you kind of build perhaps a refutation or pointing out various problems with that perspective.

Well, and again, this is typically that crowd. And again, there's three crowds.

So I wanna cover the other two in a minute. That crowd typically has no interest in the historical layout of scripture.

How we got our Bible, they can't really walk you through it. Peter Ruckman should have known better.

Ruckman was an educated man. He was well -versed in the Greek language. There was no reason for him to come to the conclusions that he did.

I think what happens, Eli, is that guys and girls are, in the

Christian faith, we are prone to go to an absolute. It's safer, it's less problem.

And listen, I mean, if we could just accept that God did something so miraculous in 1604 to 1611, all of the textual variances go away.

All the different readings in the ancient languages, the church fathers, it all goes away.

Our problems are solved. We don't have to do critical apparatuses. We don't have to show differences.

We don't have to put asterisks after verses that appear in 10th century manuscripts.

We don't have to do any criteria if they got it right in 1604 to 1611.

We have nothing to worry about anymore. Everything is solved. It's less problematic just to believe that the word of God was perfectly preserved without an explanation, just a supernatural act in a period of time to protect from all the contamination that came from the other languages,

Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. It's easier. I wish that we had a scripture that was just, you know, floated down from heaven, and on one side was the

Hebrew text, the other side's the Greek text, and the middle was the King James. And that's, and people think

I'm being a jerk. I'm serious. I wish it was that simple, but it's not.

And so it's more of a safety thing. We want to believe in a perfect word of God because people have a hard time believing this.

I believe God has preserved his word, every bit of it. I just don't think you can go to one single book and just go, every single one of it is right here in this translation or in this

Greek text, particularly. I don't believe that we can look at the collection of manuscripts that survived antiquity and put them all there in an apparatus and know that within it,

God has preserved for the ages these words. We got to do work. But if we have a King James only perspective, the way that they do the

King James only or the Rachmanite crowd, we don't have to do any of that work. It's just, they got it right.

It's easier to be that position. I think that's one of the things. So the struggle is getting them to say, all right, let's talk about this, not blind faith.

Our faith has substance. Can we follow this trend starting with the

King James translators position? Most of these groups have never read the preface to the

King James. And if they would, they would not come to those conclusions because that was not the conclusions the

King James translators had themselves. They have a higher view of the King James translators than the translators have for themselves.

And I think that, and that doesn't mean we belittle them. They were top scholars in England. They were the highest in their class.

Many of them were presidents of the local seminaries of training and institutes at that time.

Many of them knew multiple languages, far beyond anything that I could ever do, that's for sure.

And they should be honored for their skill. But even them knowing their skillset still recognize they were humans doing the work.

And so I think we should just be as honest about their work as they were honest about their own work.

So I would say that's one way for that crowd specifically in King James only. Now, is that the most extreme crowd?

Is that, if you were going to address any crowd worth addressing, would that be the main crowd?

What's like, well, if we're gonna focus in on really the negative aspect of this movement, there is where we need to focus our apologetic to this specific crowd.

Oh yeah, that is the most extreme crowd in the group. They're a short and well,

I say they're a small minority but that movement, it's kind of confusing because people don't want to be in that crowd.

There's people that are King James only in the category too that don't want to be that crowd because they have a stigma.

They have an arrogance and they have a statement and a genre about themselves that is repulsive.

And so they don't want to be in that crowd. But when you sit down and listen to them, hear their explanation, they're concluding the same things.

They just don't want the association with that crowd. But that crowd is truly the most extremist. And Dr.

White calls them cultic King James only. And I know people in that crowd take that offensive, but in a lot of ways they are because they're elevating a translation higher than Christ himself.

And I know they will not admit that. They can deny it all they want. I lived amongst them for years.

I was educated under their systems. By the way, my parents were not that way. They were not part of that cultic

King James onlyism. And I did not grow up in that group. Although I was around them, I went to church with them because a lot of those groups are blended.

You could have a church where you have a Ruckmanite and a balanced guy. They're all preaching and teaching from the

King James, but why they're teaching and preaching from it could be on two different planets. So you are a

King James onlyist light. I was in the second category. I was in the second category.

Okay. The second category is particularly more so attached to the

TR, the Texas Receptus of the New Testament. Which at that time,

I had no clue there was more than one. They didn't tell you that kind of stuff. But it really didn't matter anyway.

It wasn't about the Greek. They used the Greek as an excuse. But at the end of the day, the

King James is perfect. Now that crowd believes that both the TR and the King James and the

Masoretic Tex, all three are perfect. They don't like to be associated with Ruckman.

Now, I left that belief system pretty quickly. I believe the TR and the Masoretic were perfect far longer than I believe the

King James. And so they believe that all three are perfect, which they have a hard time reconciling some translational issues between them.

But nonetheless, it's more of an acceptance of faith. They'll make it an argument of faith, even though you can't reconcile why they would choose to translate things the way that they did.

And I can give us some examples later on if you'd like, but there are places in the

King James that just don't align with the Hebrew or align with the Greek. And people will go through great lengths to make sure that they say that's true.

That's just okay. So why is it false? Like if you were to say, I'm gonna say you're,

I mean, I know this takes longer than five minutes, but you're in a room for five minutes with a

King James only as he wants to hear what you have to say. He holds firmly, but he holds firmly to his position, but he's kind of like, all right,

I'm in a closed room here with Dr. Stephen Boyce. I wanna hear what you have to say. In five minutes or shorter, how would you go about saying here is why it is not reasonable to hold to this position?

Go ahead, lay it on me. If you're taking it down to looking at the Hebrew or the

Greek or in the few places Aramaic, and you look at the translation itself, they did not get every single word correct.

And you have a translational difference. It is difficult to take a meaning from one language into a meaning of another language, especially when you're talking about Koine Greek or when you're talking about ancient

Hebrew, the dialects of those change. You're trying to take thoughts from that group into your modern language for your crowd, which 400 years ago

English crowd is different from 2021 English crowd. So they believed in revision.

The King James translation was revised over and over. Nobody today that is practicing in church the

King James version of reading is reading a 1611. If they are, please,

I will apologize because you deserve tremendous credit for being able to stick with it this long.

Most people are using a 1769 Benjamin Blaney edition. And if you just look at the

Blaney edition and revision, it is not identical to the 1611 edition in places.

There were multiple updates. People say, well, they're mostly spelling, not in every place. And again, if you want to, we can get into some of those examples of where the 1611 and the 1769 do not read the same.

So when we're talking about the King James being perfect in the Greek and Hebrew, which King James am

I dealing with? So let's rest there. Give us an example where there's a change there.

Okay, so I'll give you a few. Okay. Let's see if I can pull up Jeremiah.

Let's see, cause there was a few. All right, Joshua 311, for example.

You have, and I wish people could see it, but it's spelled different in 1611. The spelling was very different.

Like for example, Ark of the Covenant is A -R -K -E, of the covenant, C -O -U -E -N -A -N -T.

So keep that in mind. Ark of the Covenant, even the Lord. Even the

Lord is 1611. 1769, Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. Not a major difference.

Here's a big one. 2 Kings 11 .10, in the temple, 1611. 1769, in the temple of the

Lord, the additional of the Lord is there. Isaiah 49 .13, for God, 1611.

In the 1769, for the Lord. Which one is it? And then you have in like,

Ezekiel has quite a few actually. Ezekiel 6 .8, that he may, or that ye may in 1769.

Is it he or ye being somebody else? Third person. Ezekiel 24 .5, let him see.

Let them see. Ezekiel 24 .7, poured it on the ground, upon the ground.

1769, poured it not upon the ground. So did he pour it on the ground or did he not pour it on the ground?

1611 says he poured it on the ground. 1769 said he did not. Benjamin Blaney revision had more than just spelling updates.

Although that was fair, the predominant changes. So again, when we're talking about a perfect translation, did the translators who finished and completed their first edition in 1611 have the perfect one?

Or did Benjamin Blaney do it? And if it's not Blaney, then stop using the 1769, go back to the 1611.

If your position is I have to have that perfect one. And so for folks who are not sure, why this is significant.

So these little changes, I would understand that you're demonstrating through showing these kind of differences is that it is not a perfect translation.

Is that the point of what you're getting at? That there are changes. And the King James translator said it wasn't.

In fact, they used an illustration of a beautiful translation. I loved their imaginations.

They mentioned a handsome young man. He's like, they were saying, we wouldn't say he's no longer handsome if he had a few warts on his hands.

And so what they were saying is, we can't just dismiss a Bible translation because it has a few warts in it.

They even recognized and acknowledged that there were certain animals and locations and words that they did not know the meanings of and they had searched all these other languages to find them and that their work would need revision as these words were explored and defined.

They recognized that they did all they could and came up with the best explanation of certain things. And that when those words were clearly understood historically, because they were ancient terms that were lost or still being discovered, they were like, hey, whenever we can find the explanation, let's do a revision here.

They were all for revision. They were never against revision. They believed in revision. So the

King James translators didn't believe their work was perfect. They stated they didn't know what certain words meant. And we see examples like this, where in the revisions of time, men updated the translation of the

King James because of whatever reasoning they had, language change, word change, or they felt like they should have changed it to not on the ground instead of on the ground because they thought the textual data was better.

So these things are like, so you're either gonna say that they didn't know it. The evidence is you gotta come up with one of them's a standard, which one's the standard, because they're not identical.

They said they didn't know certain words. Are you saying they guessed every one of those right and didn't know that?

I mean, there's so many problems that are just outside. You literally have to have a faith and faith approach because you're saying everything different from them.

And they didn't believe that about them. They believe they did a good job. They didn't think they did a terrible word.

They believe they did a superior work, but they didn't believe they were doing a perfect work. So, okay.

So with respect to the King James only position with this specific camp, you're not just saying that the

King James only position has problems. It's a problematic position to hold.

You think it's demonstrably false because of the obvious points that you just pointed out there, that what you pointed out actually is evidence against the nature of the claim they're making for the

King James translation. Am I correct? Yeah. And the King James translation, they're making an assertion that was not made by the

King James translators themselves. They're taking their work to be far more superior than they believed it was themselves.

And that argument will not last in the arena of testing.

And because you're no longer arguing facts, you're arguing feelings, and you're arguing a position of desire more than reality.

And that's over. I mean, at that point, that position cannot substantiate itself in the public forum.

You can't take that to the streets in apologetics against an atheist. So let's touch on that then, okay?

And I hope you don't mind me interjecting every now and then. I know it's not like I have questions like on a document or something, kind of having this organic conversation.

What you just touched there is really important. What are some of the disadvantages and problems a

Christian who holds to the King James version, King James only, sorry, perspective, what sort of apologetic problems could they run into when they're talking to an informed atheist?

Let's try to make some apologetic application. I hold to King James only. I'm talking to a knowledgeable unbeliever who knows how, you know, the history of the

Bible and textual critical issues. What problems might I run into and how does my position express its own deficiencies throughout the course of kind of that sort of conversation?

Sure, and the third camp can do this. They can actually keep the

King James in the mix and do apologetic work that's effective. The third camp can do that.

And that's a camp that pretty much holds more to the TR. They don't believe the King James is perfect per se.

They believe it's the best or something like that. Sure, sure. And honestly, one of my professors growing up in my undergrad,

I remember him saying at one point, he said, now, don't forget, we don't believe in a perfect translation.

We believe in a perfect text. And he's King James only. But he didn't believe the

King James was perfect. He believed that the text behind the King James was perfect and they did the best job with it.

And I have respect for him. He can take an argument into the public forum because he's a little bit more into reality.

The crowds that believe that there's no mistakes in it, and again, they think they're going in valiantly.

And again, it's an admirable task for them to want to defend the word of God. You asked about positives about King James movement.

The positives are they have a high respect for God's word. I appreciate the upbringing that I had.

And again, my mom, my dad, they're more in that third crowd than the other. Now, of course,

I would say that some of my family believes that the King James has no errors in it, but they definitely would reprove the extreme crowd and say, you're making our lives miserable and you're making our job harder.

But as a whole, I appreciate the upbringing that I was given that had a high value of scripture, a high value of inspiration, a high value of inerrancy.

That's not the issue with that crowd. It's how are you gonna defend inerrancy and infallibility of scripture on a translation when the translators of that translation are telling you they have things that are error -ridden in their own work, and then go to a person who's actually gonna be attacking the origination of your scripture, that it was not inspired, that these were just fabricated stories, conspiracies and forgeries.

You can't even get into that conversation when you don't even accept your own translations, editors and translators' statements about their own work, much less what a skeptic or critic is gonna say about the overall work of the

Bible as a whole. So we can't even get into that discussion if we're gonna defend a perfect translation.

All they have to do in the debate is say, but the King James translators didn't say that. They said the opposite.

Here's the proof. And you'll never even get into a debate about the Hebrew or the Greek. You'll never get into the discussion about inspiration because the whole debate's gonna turn into why don't you just believe the translators?

So it can't substantiate. You'll never leave that realm. You'll never get to get into the main substance.

Now, a person that is like Dr. Surrett, who wrote which

Greek text was his first book, and his second book was Certainty of the

Words, he was defending the certainty of the words in the text, not the King James. And again, he wasn't very public about that.

He didn't go around saying there's errors in it, but his main point was we have a great and excellent translation of the

King James, but we have a perfect text. Although I differ with him on that, and I have actually dialogue debated him on it, but that would be the main issue is he can actually take the argument into the forums because he's a realist.

He's dealing with reality. Okay, all right, very good. Now, what about those other groups there?

So let's leave aside that more extreme perspective. How about you briefly summarize those other groups?

Now, what has happened here is I think I've gotten more questions in the comments than I've ever gotten questions on any show, so.

This is not, they didn't tell you ahead of time this was a hot button subject. Well, I did know it was a hot button subject, but I did not know that my listeners and people who just started to listen or hear when

I share the thumbnail or whatever, I have no idea who's gonna watch. So there are a lot of questions here, and if it's okay with you,

I mean, if we end and after you summarize this point, we can go through these and take the time to address these, because I think this is really where it's gonna hit.

A lot of folks, I mean, there are folks who I think are King James only asking questions, so that might actually be very useful.

Sure, yeah, you know, I've gone into hiding for about a year now on this subject, and we can hit the questions if you don't mind me grabbing a few ibuprofen before we start, but -

That's totally fine. I, man, I'm so used to it. And honestly, they, a lot, and I would challenge your audience, make sure you're listening, not reacting, because again,

I'm very sympathetic because I was in that crowd my entire life up to the age of 24 years old.

I understand, you believe you're defending God's word, I get it, you have my sympathy, but there's a side where it's time to, in the nicest way, be quiet and listen before you react.

And so, and I haven't seen, like, I don't know, like, what's being said. Yeah, there's some questions that, there are questions and comments that seem very reactionary, so -

Yeah, of course, I mean, and I wouldn't expect otherwise. Again, I was in that, I did the same thing.

I get it, like, I get it, I was there, I was in that movement,

I understand the gears that are rotating in the brain, the reaction, the impulse, I gotta defend scripture.

Listen to reasoning. If you're not gonna listen to me, listen to the King James translators themselves, and we'll call it even.

If you use your, listen, if somebody wants to sit back and read the King James, study it, memorize from it, exegete it, preach it, teach it, you will live a victorious

Christian life if you live by it. I mean, there's no doubt about it in my mind. Good translation, yeah. The issue that I have with King James -only -ism is that they downgrade the spirituality and even question the salvation of those who do not hold to the

King James. My question, my salvation has been in question quite a bit because I don't use the

King James -only. When I first used the new King James, second year into pastoring,

I was quickly questioned if I was heading down toward apostasy or the slippery slope was the statement.

You're on the slippery slope to apostasy. So when I ever preached my first sermon out of the

ESB or CSB, I mean, I was full -blown, you know, committed the unpardonable sin.

I mean, so, I mean, my salvation has certainly been in question since leaving King James -only -ism.

I have people in that movement that think I'm lost because I am a hater of God's word.

I'm an instrument and tool of the devil. I mean, I've been told that. There is a side of this that is extremely divisive and cultic, and that's why

James White says what he says about it. But again, this is an issue of, there are different crowds in that movement and they cannot be put together.

You know, again, my dad and I have a good relationship. We do not agree on this issue.

We still do birthdays and Christmas, and I go to their house every week and eat dinner on Thursday night.

It doesn't take over. Oh, wait a minute. Well, is there any awkward moment where you kind of just chill in the living room watching the kids play and your dad's kind of just like, you know, so you're still on that, you know, he awkwardly brings up the conversation.

Every now and then, we'll nudge the other person in gist, but -

Are you still a heretic? Oh, okay, fine. I still love you anyway. And we have had harsh conversations and we just had to agree like, hey, let's not ruin our family time with this.

I don't think less of my dad and I don't think he thinks less of me. We love each other.

My dad's a wonderful saint of God who's going to spend an eternity with Christ and he has worked greatly for the kingdom of God.

He was miraculously saved out of drugs and alcohol early in his life. I have no doubt about his spirituality or my family that holds to the same position.

It doesn't bother me one bit. They will, I will make sure. I will make sure that when my dad is buried, if I'm still alive after him, that he has his

King James in his hand. I will make sure that happens. I'll make sure that scripture reading at his funeral is out of the

King James. I don't have, I want the King James read at my funeral. I told multiple people, if you're going to do the

Psalm 23 burial, do it out of the King James. Please do not do it out of the NIV. So it's just more majestic.

It's more beautiful. And I'm a little traditional at times. When I preach,

I'm quoting scripture. It's King James, man. I mean, like I spent my whole life. I still quote from the

King James when I'm quoting scripture. So yeah, I mean, this is a subject that doesn't require the amount of division that it does.

And the thing is, is that a lot of people in that crowd cannot cope with maintaining relationships.

Not everybody cannot cope with maintaining relationships with people who hold to a position that they believe holds to an error -ridden

Bible and a corrupt Bible that was corrupted and manipulated by the work of Satan. And so since they believe that, you can't have fellowship and your salvation is in question.

So that crowd is the extreme and they have to be careful. But yeah, I mean, these are discussions that have to be, it's a hot topic,

Eli, and we're probably going to have to - Well, here's just the flavor.

And I don't understand this. I understand the passion behind it. I don't have a lot of experience interacting with King James only advocates, but what

I do see a lot of them do is kind of try to suggest that there's this evil motive on the part of the person who doesn't hold to their perspective.

So when you just said that you needed to get some ibuprofen, someone, I thought this was fun.

They said, Mr. Boyce, don't you know ibuprofen won't help a holy ghost headache?

So there you go. Their best defense is ad hominem. I mean, I'm used to that.

Many of them don't know the history of their own translation. They don't know how it was transmitted and translated.

Again, I'm not saying that person doesn't, I don't know them, but I'm not speaking as an outsider.

I grew up in that, I know what I'm talking about. We were not taught the history of the scripture.

We were not taught the history in a very fair and open and balanced position.

We were not taught the fullness of the scripture passed down through the ages. We were taught a very small window and that anything outside that window was wrong, wrong, wrong.

So again, when people revert to ad hominem, they've admitted they don't know what they're saying.

And so, I mean, again, we're used to that. We've experienced that for years now.

And I understand it because I dished out the same kind of comments. So you have my sympathy once more.

Okay. All right, well, I hope you don't mind since we're at the top of the hour, if we could just move into the

Q &A, if that's okay. I know it's a huge topic, but there are a lot of questions here and I wanna make sure that folks who really do have questions, they can get them addressed.

And so I think that might be more fruitful than providing that broader view. And maybe we could address that broader view if any questions reflect those other flavors of the

King James only perspective. How does that sound? Sure. Sounds good. Okay. All right, so let me see here.

I will give the guy props that he spelled ibuprofen right. Kudos to him. Okay, very good.

I thought this was fun. I thought this was fun. Thankfully, God is unchanging. So unlike Disney, he will never change the canon.

It's in reference to Star Wars. I thought that was a fun one. Okay, so let's see here.

This is a statement here. So let's see, maybe you could address this statement here. The statement says, this is just dishonest.

So I guess based upon what you were saying, Stephen Boyce says he holds to infallibility of the word, but he means only the originals that we no longer have.

How would you speak to that, Dr. Boyce? Well, again, infallibility side of things, every translation has mistakes.

Every text has mistakes. But if we understand what preservation means,

God never promised to preserve it on one single papyri, one single scroll, one single text, or one single translation.

He promised to preserve his word. And there were times where God's people were without a perfect word.

I mean, for years, the churches were using error -ridden translations like the

Septuagint, and were quoting from it and calling it scripture.

But it does not read identical to the Hebrew in places. But they held it and called it

God's word because it was God's word. What I believe personally is that God has preserved his word in its fullness.

I love the example. I think Dr. Boyce - Let me interrupt you there because you said something that might be taken the wrong way.

You're not saying that God's word has error. What you're saying is in these imperfect, I guess, versions of the

Bible, the word of God in these manuscripts, they were still preserved, just not in one place.

And they were preserved in the midst of error, but you still have what we need to know what God has revealed, right?

It kind of sounded like you suggested that God's word makes errors. The errors are in the transmitted copies and the translations.

But for example, the illustration that's always used is the 10 ,000 -piece jigsaw puzzle.

The Bible's like a 10 ,000 -piece jigsaw puzzle. What we have found through the manuscripts that have come to us is that the

Bible in its transmitted form has 10 ,100 pieces.

And what textual criticism is doing is not trying to figure out where is God's word, is which one is more likely to fit into the puzzle, to being the

God of word. The issue isn't did God preserve his word, it's that we have more. We have extra that's come down to us in history.

And so what textual criticism is doing is seeking to weed out which ones don't fit and which ones actually do.

So I'm not questioning whether we have the word of God, whether we have the 10 ,000 pieces. What we're doing is working through the extras that have come down through tradition, oral tradition, or just scribal mistake or scribal biasness, whatever the situation is, and it's looking at the bigger picture to say, this doesn't fit the style, this doesn't fit through the evidence of these manuscripts that have come down to us at this timeframe.

That is the difference that we're making. So I can't just go, oh yeah, this is it.

But what we can do is say that any accurate and reliable translation or text of the word of God is scripture.

That is why you look at the New Testament writers and they're quoting not from an original language text, they're quoting from a translation, they're quoting from the

Septuagint, even in places where it differs in the Hebrew. And they're calling it the word of God, they're calling it the graphe, they're calling it scripture because it is the word of God.

God has spoken and he has used translations, he has used donkeys, he has used multiple means to carry out his word.

He's used the whirlwind, he's written on a wall. God has used various methods of doing it and he has used imperfect people and imperfect translations to carry out the message of truth, even people that are in error.

But the actual original writings themselves, and even in some ways the oral tradition, I believe that that was lost.

God had superseded over the writers of scripture to give us a perfect word that was given from the heart of God into the hand of man and that in his providential preservation through the ages, he did not allow those original words to be lost.

But there are areas where it dispersed and was added to or people in transmission left out a phrase and where textual criticism comes in is to really show the fullness of God did preserve his word and then some.

So we have the obligation to work through that. By the way, that's the King James translators position.

That was all of the TR editors, whether you're talking about Erasmus or Stephanus or Beza or Cardinal Jimenez and the polyglot, whether you're looking at any of those works, what were those guys doing?

Editing, looking at manuscripts, making choices where there were differences, and they updated and updated.

Erasmus had five editions, Stephanus had four editions. Beza had multiple editions. Even after he died, editors were doing additions for him.

There was multiple updates, why? Because they were discovering new readings, they were looking at different manuscripts.

Everybody up to the time of the King James was doing exactly what we're doing. We just have more to deal with than they did because we have technology.

We can look at manuscripts while sitting at your kitchen table that are in Jerusalem or in Europe. They couldn't do that.

They would love to have what we have today. So we're believing the same thing that they did. It's just that that crowd has a hard time believing that that was their position.

But again, read what they said. That's what they were doing. Okay, very good.

Thank you for that. Joel asks, is there such a thing as a Bible in any language that is the complete 66 books in a single volume, inspired and 100 % true and inerrant words of God that we can hold in our hands?

Is there a thing as a Bible in any language that is complete, 66

Bible? So, I mean, there are - Do you understand what he's asking? There's complete

Bibles. There are 66 books in those Bibles. They are the words of the inspired word of God.

They are true. They teach truth. Again, unless you're reading the

Jehovah Witness translation that purposely changes doctrine because they don't like it, like John 1, calling him a

God. No, you can, I know this is hard for him to believe.

You can have all of those things without saying every single word is right.

Right. You can have all of those things without saying every single word is right.

I guess he expanded on his question. I guess he's asking, is it impossible for there to be a translation that we can consider

God's perfect word? Yeah, there are no perfect translations. And again, read the

King James translators. They are saying what I am saying. If you don't believe me, believe them. There are no perfect translations.

But that doesn't mean we don't have God's word because the manner in which he's preserved it is not through one volume of something, but it's dispersed through the textual tradition.

Yes, but it's so much easier not to have to do that. Like, it's like, ugh, why can't we just have something flow down and just be all right?

I mean, that'd be great. Life would be easier that way. But again, that's not how God gave us his word.

And again, these guys want absolute truth. They want something that is completely without problem and there's no work behind it.

And they're willing to make claims beyond the men who did the work themselves. It's astonishing that they still argue this when they don't even believe the translator's own words.

But next question. All right, thank you for that. The Sire asks, Dr. Boyce, what are the methods or principles of textual criticism that are utilized in this area?

And what are the major differences among scholars that are debated? Now, that's a big question, but go ahead.

Yeah, that's loaded. Oh, man, I guess I can give the most simplistic manner.

And it really starts at your, there's different men that are phenomenal scholars that differ on this.

For example, Maurice Robinson, he's retired now, but he was a tremendous, he did tremendous work in textual criticism, but he's what's called a majority text.

Him and Pierpont did a text together in the 90s, 95, I believe it was. And they hold to what's called a

Byzantine majority text, which actually started with Arthur Farrstad and Zane Hodges from Dallas Theological Seminary.

In fact, Farrstad was the executive editor of the New King James. And the

New King James is one of the few translations that actually footnotes majority text readings, because they're the one that started that.

So basically it's an examination of all the manuscripts and they would say, all right, what does it read in the majority?

Whatever the majority is, that's gonna be the more likely reading. And Maurice Robinson was a brilliant scholar and has good explanation to a lot of his readings.

I don't know of anybody in the textual critical world that is not on his team, that is a critical text or an eclectic text position that would look at Maurice Robinson and say, he's not a scholar.

There's a high level of respect for Maurice Robinson. There's hardly anybody I know that is in textual criticism, and I'm not saying they're not out there, that actually holds a

TR position. No serious scholar in that field would hold that position.

And there's guys that are in that movement that lean that way, that do really good work.

I mean, there's guys that I don't necessarily get along with that well, but they're very smart.

They know what they're talking about and they would lean very close more to an ecclesiastical or similar to a majority text.

In the critical text world, they don't just count manuscripts because not all manuscripts are equal.

You're looking at manuscripts, most of the manuscripts that we have are later. In the

Byzantine, you're talking, the oldest Byzantine manuscript is fifth century and it's in Alexandrinus.

It's Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are Byzantine. Paul's epistles and beyond are actually

Alexandrian more so. But even then the earliest stage of the Byzantine is not the same as the later stage of the

Byzantine manuscripts. Most Byzantine manuscripts are eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th century.

So they're not given equality to something that's in the second, third or fourth century.

You're looking at, okay, there's more time for error. Although there's a faulty belief system that older is better.

And that's kind of been, that movement says, well, they believe anything that's older is better. Well, no, that's not true.

In fact, I know many of these sexual critics and I know for a fact that they would argue against that methodology.

I was talking to Elijah Hickson the other day and he was talking about how we have a, because we know the scribe and he was using an older manuscript would completely refute the earliest manuscripts of Paul.

And he's like ninth or 10th century. And it's a better manuscript because we know the source, we know the scribe, and he was using something very early.

And that is considered more reliable than an older. Just because it's older doesn't mean it's better. Do we know the scribe, do we know where it came from?

So there's multiple, so you're comparing what's the date, what's the age, how consistent is it with other manuscripts at that time and in different regions?

How consistent is it with the Coptic, the Armenian, or the Syriac, or the

Georgian language, the Latin? There's multitudes of Latin manuscripts.

How did the church fathers use it? There's a multiple scale of comparison when you're doing textual criticism.

And it's a lot more complex than that, but in the simplest way, that's how most eclectic text position guys, eclectic guys would use criteria.

And now it's computer database, which is a lot more precise than human. And much of that's coming out.

And Peter Gurry's done a lot of good work on that. If you want to read more about that, check out Peter Gurry and John Mead.

But yeah, that's a simple explanation of how - It's a big topic.

So that's a big question. You could probably do a whole separate show on the ins and outs of the methods and principles of textual criticism.

And won't leave me doing it. I'll send one of those other guys out there. They can do it. All right, sounds good. Thank you for that.

Here's a question by Bookborne. If you use the science of textual criticism and archeology to arrive at the

Bible, aren't you subjugating the Bible to empiricist philosophy in an evidentialist fashion, betraying your own precept?

Oh, I don't know if that's for you or for me. I think it's for you. Okay, all right. No, evaluating things and testing things doesn't undermine a presuppositional methodology because when we do those things, we are doing it within the context of the authority of God's revelation.

Now, the God of the Bible who provides the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience is the

God who provides those preconditions even prior to the writing of the Bible. Because while the Bible wasn't written from the beginning of time,

God's revelation was always present and always provided that interpretive context right there at the garden.

So there was always an intellectual framework, if you will, or a worldview perspective in which there was a

God who revealed and gave cogency, meaning, and intelligibility to all of our rational endeavors.

So I don't think that that is the issue here. Now, when you say arrive at the Bible, again, when we, as presuppositionalists, argue, for example, transcendentally, we're not arriving at the

Bible. So as the conclusion of the truth of the Bible, for example, is a result of a line of reasoning.

We start with God's revelation and argue that in light of God's revelation, if you reject what

God has revealed, you lose the preconditions for intelligible experience in proving or arriving at anything with any rational coherency.

So again, that again is another big topic to get into the nature of the relationship between natural and special revelation and things like that.

So I'm not gonna go into too much detail here since that's not the topic of this live stream, but thank you for the question.

I hope that somewhat answers it. All right, let's move on. Let's see here.

That's kind of a rehash here. Okay, here's a question here.

How are you presuppositionally committed to the God of Christian theism as revealed in the Bible when you don't have a perfect Bible in hand?

Let's forget about the presuppositional stuff because that's more pertaining to what I do and I don't wanna steal your thunder, but let's address this here.

I think you addressed it before, but why don't you just briefly address it again, this issue of having a perfect Bible in your hand. It seems to be presupposing that God's word must be preserved under this one cover, this one kind of item, instead of considering God preserving his word through the textual tradition.

It's looking through a very thin and small and narrow glass. It's not looking at the bigger picture.

They're looking for preservation where you can just grab it and say, it's right here.

It's right here. It's this published. That's what they're doing. And they're not looking at the fact that God miraculously allowed his word to be transmitted thousands and thousands of times in the hands of people who rode on horseback, on ships, who traveled across the

East and the West, down into Egypt, down into Caesarea, into Antioch, into the

Western parts of Europe and Rome, going into the Eastern regions of Ephesus and areas of Thessalonica and looking at all these locations and how we were able to, over hundreds of years, see the word of God spread out across the world, bring those back and look at them in one setting and say, whoa, they were using the same books of the scripture that we're using.

And whoa, we don't see anything different than what we are using today. And that the churches in the

East were using the same teachings and documents that they were using in the

West. Yeah, there was differences in the manuscripts, but they were defending the same faith. They were living by the same principles.

They were defending the same scriptures. But yeah, there were differences in their manuscripts, but none of those manuscripts amounted to any cardinal doctrine being lost.

And they spread out without cooperating, without any kind of conspiracies, without any kind of, let's get on a

Zoom call and talk about this and let's conspire to make sure our words are right. We should be extremely concerned if everybody controlled the text.

If one group, one church, one person controlled the reading, we should be concerned.

That's the problem that the Quran has. We don't have that problem. The Quran was controlled by one group and destroyed any differing groups.

And so to say that they have the pure word that's perfect because Uthman published it, that's the standard.

There's no right Quran, but that one, hey, that's easy. But what did the other stream say?

Because those men knew Muhammad too and they heard Muhammad too. Why was that one wrong? So we don't have that problem.

If all we had was manuscripts that agreed with each other all the time, it would be a conspiracy.

We don't want to control text. We want a text that organically moved into the world as the great commission was given.

And it spread into these other regions and other languages. And at the end of it, it came out true.

That's what we want. Yeah, we got to work through some of the transmissional mistakes and things like that in the process, but we've lost nothing.

That's the miracle. But we can't look at it that way because we're thinking, whoa, I need it in one book.

I need it in one book. And nowhere did God say he would do that to the extent that they want it to be done.

It'd be great, but that's not the case. He preserves his word, but not in the way that they think that he should have preserved it.

Yes, they can't accept preservation by any other methodology but that one. And it's unfortunate. All right, here's a question from Joel again.

When you considered yourself KJV only, what did that mean to you? And what changed? Well, I believed, again,

I was more of a TR only. I believe the TR was perfect. I believe the Masoretic text was perfect.

The King James for a while, I believed was perfect too until I actually started working through the original languages as I learned

Greek and I learned. So when you're sitting down and you're actually looking side by side, you see differences. All of a sudden,

I was like, yeah, it's not perfect, but it is the best.

And I would always make sure, like, this is the best. There's none better. There's none comparable to it.

It's reached the pinnacle of height, the superiority of English translations. So that was my position after that.

So when I considered myself that, I considered myself to be a part of that middle group that I mentioned.

And then for a while, I moved over to that third group where it was more King James preferred, where I believe there's errors in it, like my professor.

Like, yeah, it's not perfect, but the text is perfect and we have an excellent translation better than the subpar ones.

That was my mentality. And again, Eli, for example, I want your audience that may be struggling with this to see examples in the

King James where it's not consistent with itself. See where a Hebrew text was translated and then the

New Testament writers quoting a Greek translation versus a Hebrew, and it's not the same.

You have to deal with this too. Even if you're King James onlyist, you have to deal with realities. For example, when we're talking about Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 32,

God talked about how the children of Israel broke the covenant with him. And he says in the

King James wording, although I was a husband unto them, says the Lord.

Now in the writer of Hebrews, he is quoting that passage in Jeremiah 31, 32 in Hebrews 8, 9, and he's using the

Septuagint, not the Hebrew reading, the Greek reading, which is not the same as the

Hebrew reading to make a point to his audience. And he says this,

I took them by the hand, led them out of the land of Egypt because they continue not in my covenant. I regarded them not, says the

Lord. Literally, I disregarded them. The Hebrew text in the King James says that he was a husband to them.

And in the Septuagint, they translated as I disregarded them or I regarded them not.

And in the King James, if we're going to use apologetics here, what is your explanation when you have a

Hebrew text translating one way, you're translating the book of Hebrews that quotes that same passage, not from the original, but from a translation and goes with the translation over the original reading.

What do you do in a situation like that? Now, I have an explanation for that.

But what does the King James only is that believes the Hebrew's right, the Greek is right and the

King James is right. What do you do when there's a huge difference Eli between being a husband to somebody and being disregarded by somebody?

What do we do? These happen often in the King James. These are arguments in the apologetic world that will not survive.

It cannot survive the public form of scrutiny. And these are issues that they're acting like, well, we've got this perfect translation.

How do you deal with this? That's not perfect. That contradicts itself. It's a problem in King James only even if they don't want to admit it.

And I also find with respect to what you just said there, it's kind of an indefensible position, but then you have some of the more staunch folks say, well, it doesn't matter.

They're unregenerate unbelievers. They would reject God's word and they'll kind of retreat into their perspective and just say, this is because they're blind, right?

You hear people argue along those lines. Yeah, and they'll say, oh, here's the explanation to that, but it's illogical and full of fallacy and a lot of assumption.

The issue is that one guy was quoting from a translation. And some King James only, by the way, will go so far as to say that the

Septuagint didn't even exist until after Jesus. So they deny that there was a

Septuagint or a legitimate Septuagint even before the time of Jesus, which is, again, in scholarship is laughable.

But these guys were quoting, the difference is, is the New Testament writer was quoting from a translation, not from the

Hebrew. The writer of Hebrews was always quoting from the Septuagint, almost verbatim of the

Septuagint. Simple explanation of the fact is that it's probable. There are places where the

Septuagint agrees with the, say, Dead Sea Scrolls or in the

Old Testament Torah, you have the Samaritan Pentateuch, where they agree and it differs from Masoretic.

Once more, I don't think the Masoretic's a perfect text. In fact, most people don't realize the Masoretic text is 8th to 10th century

AD. And since the Dead Sea Scrolls have been discovered much, much earlier, and they agree with an ancient translation like the

Septuagint, we find that, hey, the Masoretic text has similar issues.

It's based on later down in history issues. And that could be an explanation here where this was a actually better reading than the

Masoretic's got wrong later. We don't know. The fact of the matter is if you hold that they're all perfect, you got to deal with it and you got to excuse it away.

Okay, all right. Thank you very much for that. Here's another question here. You don't have to address it quickly because it's the same line of reasoning.

So we can kind of bypass this, but just real quick, how do you extract perfect doctrines from an imperfect source, seeing that you do not have a perfect Bible in hand?

Again, it seems to be a recurring presupposition that a perfect Bible must be this specific individual thing not considering that God's preserved his word through the textual tradition.

How in the world could the apostles teach a perfect doctrine to the churches using an imperfect translation like Septuagint, period?

If we're doing that, then the apostles are making the same error. They did most of the...

Some of them probably didn't even know Hebrew, Eli. They were probably speaking Aramaic and only knew Greek.

They use an imperfect translation to build the foundation and doctrines of Christ and the fullness of the churches off of an error -ridden translation.

Again, it's unhistorical, borderline ignorant. I won't go so far as to full -fledge it.

It's ignorant. It's unhistorical. We're not looking at this clear -headed. We're looking at this narrowly.

If we do this, we don't have a foundation of a church that's based on the scripture and on the apostles and on the prophets, because they were building a church off of an error -ridden translation.

All of them were. The fact of the matter is is you can have perfect teaching from...

If that's the case, then you should stop preaching on Sunday. Unless you're up there and you're infallible, you should not be preaching

God's word because you're capable of making an error and you can't teach good doctrine if you're preaching a message while making mistakes in your message.

What do we say to this, Eli? If somebody is up there preaching on Sunday and they accidentally get Noah and Moses backward, or they're preaching a profound truth from the teaching...

We've all done it. I mean, you're preaching a strong truth from Ephesians and you're nailing the doctrine of grace in Ephesians and you are accurate and you accidentally call

Paul Peter. Is your sermon ruined? I mean, we just...

Well, there it went. We just don't have the teaching of grace. It's error -ridden. The jerk up there behind the pulpit accidentally said

Peter instead of Paul. I mean, do we hear the ignorance in this? Like, do we just... Can we no longer say our pastor preaches good doctrine and we don't know what

God said because he made a mistake with Peter and Paul? And by the way, that's how most manuscripts are.

It's ridiculous errors. It's like dumb mistakes or doubling lines over.

Or accidentally... They're easily identified as such. Easily identified. It's not even... Right. It's not an issue that comes up with it.

Anybody reading this is gonna go, oh, that was a mistake. Just like if you're listening to your pastor and they said Peter when they're quoting

Paul from Ephesians, you're gonna go, oh, well, he screwed that up. Or Noah, you know, Moses built the ark and put all the animals in it and they really meant

Noah. We all know what they meant. It was a mistake. But we're not gonna sit there and say, you know, pastor, your sermon today was just...

It was untrustworthy. And I'm skeptical about you and your doctrine because you don't even get

Moses and Noah right. We wouldn't do that. We would say that was a great sermon and we've let it slide because God has always used imperfect instruments to give us his truth.

Right. This is a simple concept that I... Unfortunately, that crowd just can't get and it's unfortunate.

All right. Well, thank you for that. It goes on to say, well, I guess a book born again. How do you account for the fact that the first verse of the

King James Bible and the last verse of the King James Bible both have 44 letters, 17 vowels and 27 consonants?

I guess this somehow suggests that there's something divine behind the

King James there. Again, I'm assuming this is coming out to accumulate the number of books.

I mean, what are we going with? Because there's 27 consonants. Is that equal to the 27

New Testament books? Is that where we're going with this? Because there's 69 or there's 66 total.

I mean, is that where we're going? Here's the problem with that. The Hebrew Bible didn't have the same amount of books our

Bible has today. And can anybody in the crowd tell me where we got the number of books that we follow in our

English translations today? Because the Tanakh did not have the same amount of books.

Though, Eli, it was the same books. You understand, 1st, 2nd

Samuel were not split. 1st and 2nd Kings were not split. Can anybody tell me where we got the separation tendency, not exact, but where that pattern started?

It was out of a translation, not the original. So again, and I'm going to go ahead and assume that this dear brother is a part of the first group.

We're going to the English translation and creating conspiracy theories when the

English translation is the standard. When God did not give his word under inspiration to the

King James translators, he gave it to Paul and Peter, and they were not writing in English.

They weren't writing English letters. They weren't writing English consonants. They were not writing

English vows. English didn't exist when God moved the hand of Paul and Peter and Moses and Jeremiah and Isaiah.

They didn't exist. These are conspiracies that are born out of unhistorical arguments.

They're not based on history. They're based on a, this is right. I found this word count.

Listen, the King James translators played with this. And even the new King James produced in the book,

Arthur Farrstad, you should read his work of the new King James. He claims there's a conspiracy about fitting the name of William Shakespeare into the

Psalms because you had William Shakespeare help with really the fluidity of the text of the

Psalmist poetry. And that there's a Psalm that if you count, it was his birthday.

And if you count the words in from the beginning, and then the words from the very end in based on his age and the birthday that it was, it spells shake is the word in the

King James and spear in there. And it's Shakespeare. And it was this shout out to William Shakespeare for his helping them with their, like we can do this all day with conspiracies.

And some of them may be like intentional, like William Shakespeare's name being put into the text of Psalm.

That's not the point. God did not speak in English to the original writers. And when we talked about canonical situations,

Eli, I made the point that they're authorized as prophets or apostles.

And here's the translators were neither. Listen to very carefully what the translator said because they did not believe themselves to be these men.

They did not believe themselves to be a part of this. And I actually have a quote from me here. Whatever was perfect under the sun were the apostles or apostolic men.

That is men endued with the extraordinary measure of God's spirit and privileged with the privilege of infallibility.

That's not them. They're saying the only perfect people at that time or under that circumstance, not the people themselves, but the perfection under the sun that took place were apostolic men or apostles that were endued extraordinary measures of God's spirit with the privilege of infallibility.

They did not include themselves in that group because they did not call themselves apostles. Again, are they liars?

Do they know what they're talking about? Are they ignorant? They recognize that that ability was given to them and they're merely doing their best attempt to translate those words.

And they do an excellent job. Exactly. They did a phenomenal job. Here's a question here again,

Bookborne. I'm just going in order. So that's why people ask the same people ask the questions on the line. Mr.

Boyce, Dr. Boyce, actually. Dr. Boyce, do you know English, Greek and or Hebrew better than the 47

King James translators that checked each other's work? Now, before you answer that question, it's interesting that this question appeals to the expertise of the 47

King James translators when those 47 King James translators would agree with you that they're not doing inspired work.

Again, so it seems as though they're admitting that what they're doing is not what these,

I mean, it's obviously not what the King James only think that the King James translation is. I think that's interesting to appeal to their expertise, but then disagree with what they said about their own work.

But go ahead. Well, when it comes to the area of, it's funny that he thinks that the

King James translators all agreed. That's hilarious. And again, that goes to show, and I'm not trying to be unkind, that this person has not read the

King James translators or knows the history. In fact, you can find images,

Eli, of the bishops. They took a bishop's, the bishop's Bible, because that's all the King James was, was a revision originally to update the bishop's

Bible. And they took that bishop's Bible, went through and changed things like her purification and Luke two.

And the original, all 47 guys did not sit down and pick words.

They broke up into groups. And people that were working on the Torah were not working on the book of Revelation.

The people that were working on the Minor Prophets were not working on the Gospels. I don't know the history of these people that are asking your questions, but it shows to me that they're a part of that error -ridden movement that does not understand how the

King James actually came into existence. Once more, they certainly don't believe what they believed about their own work, but it goes to show that they believe that 47 men actually sat down and picked every single word in the translation.

That is not how this went. They broke up into groups and they had final editors who went behind them and made revisions if need be, or change things if need be.

They did not have 47, there was more than 47. They did not have all of these guys sit in a big room and say, what word, are we all in agreement?

All 47 of us think this should be the word? Okay, let's go with that word. That's not how this went.

And you can see where the original committees who spent years on Luke's gospel and the other gospels who went with a reading and they put what they believed the reading should be and marginalized what the alternative reading was and the executive editors, so to speak, came behind them and they got the final say -so.

Not the ones who spent years on it, the guys that spent months on it were the final decision -makers.

They had specific instructions. The king told them it had to be certain ways. They could not translate any other word but bishop, for example.

You had to go with bishop and baptizo had to be baptized. There is no immersion

William Tyndale style. It had to be baptized. There were criteria that these editors had to make sure were in place.

And you can see places in the changes where the executive editors, so and that's what

I'm calling them, overrode the translation committees on readings.

They changed, the bishop said, no, we don't think that's right. We think it should be this reading. They went behind and said, nah, we're gonna go, we're gonna stick with this reading and they marginalized and footnoted the other reading.

And by the way, read the 1611, they footnoted differences all over the place.

They questioned the authenticity. Luke 1736, they questioned it.

They put a note that they didn't have any good support in the original language for the verse.

They questioned verses. People need to understand that. They did not agree with each other at times.

You had editors that disagreed with the entire groups that were actually doing the work of translation and were changing things back to be compliant to what they believed the standard protocol was.

This notion that they all just sat there, Eli, and agreed with each other, it never happened.

To answer the question, no, I would not place myself in the scholastic world that these men had, like Andrews, and there was a guy actually named

John Boyce, which is my dad's name, it's B -O -I -C -E. He was a phenomenal scholar.

No, I'm not gonna put myself in his category. I will say I know modern English better than them because they didn't live in the time of modern

English, but they definitely knew Elizabethan English better than I did, but it doesn't mean, just because somebody is good at something and better than somebody else doesn't mean they're right every time.

That's a fallacy. Oh, if you don't have the knowledge of Greek that they had, then you have no right to say they made a mistake.

That's not how that works, nor was that their approach, nor is that their attitude towards people who chose different English words from them.

Whether that be Tyndale, whether that be the bishops or the Matthews Bible or the Coverdale or the

Geneva, that was not their attitude towards them either. They honored and respected people who had a different choice or different perspective.

If the King James only could just maintain the attitude of the King James translators, we would have more peace in our churches, but we don't because we have too many jerks for Jesus.

And unfortunately that crowd is with it. Jerks for Jesus. That sounds like something that can go on a coffee mug.

All right, tightest question. Why can't the King James Bible be the perfect word of God due to the impossibility of the contrary?

I see what they're doing there. So I guess this is probably a question for me. The impossibility of the contrary is a reference to the transcendental argument.

So you prove the Christian worldview by the impossibility of the contrary, showing that it is transcendentally necessary.

I think the faulty assumption there is that when we argue presuppositionally and we argue for the authority of the

Christian, of God, of the Bible, is that it's just a blanket claim. And so you can kind of just remove that and substitute it with any authority.

So like, well, the Muslim could say, well, Allah provides the, Allah is true by the impossibility of the contrary.

The Quran is true by the impossibility of the contrary. It's not an empty claim. Not only do we posit the

Christian worldview as being true by the impossibility of the contrary, but it could actually pay the bills on that claim once you actually internally evaluate its own claims about itself.

With respect to the King James Bible perspective, if you're gonna try to argue transcendentally of the truth of the

King James only as position, the problem is that when you hypothetically grant the truth of its position, it doesn't meet its own requirements for the reasons that Dr.

Boyce pointed out with the inconsistencies with respect to the obvious changes, through the transmission process.

And so he, Dr. Boyce listed a bunch of variants, if you will, that demonstrated that the claim of the

King James only as perspective is demonstrably false. And so when you argue presuppositionally and engage in an internal critique within one's perspective, hypothetically granting its truth, and if that perspective in the internal critique on its own grounds does not meet its own requirements, then it is considered to be successfully self refuted.

So you can't just say it's true by the impossibility of the contrary and just think that that's just a bare authority claim. And that's just the end of the story.

That's not how it works. All right. So Kuyperion Burian asks, not sure if this is related, but why do you think

God ordained textual variants? Why don't you speak to that? You're a Calvinist and you talk about textual variants.

So how do you relate this to your Calvinism with respect to God decreeing everything that comes up? Well, I go back to the fact that this was, textual variants are not a horrible thing.

It goes back to what I said earlier, Eli. If we had a text that was always right and in every place under multiple jurisdictions, under multiple life circumstances, weather conditions, and churches, we should be overly concerned that there was a massive conspiracy to get it right without any differing.

We are right in the same boat with the Quran. We're in the same boat with Uthman who destroyed any differences from his text, who put an edict out to destroy any differences from his text.

And there was a standardized work of what the words of Muhammad were. If we do not have textual variances and yet all over the world, everything's identical and the same.

In an ancient world without technology, without Zoom, without email, without text messages, without any kind of ability that we can do today, we should be overly concerned that a group of people across the world came together, sat down and made sure they got everything right.

And that's conspiracy. That is an attempt at deception. And we're in the same boat that the

Muslims are in. So textual variances actually show us that the word of God was transmitted authentically and organically because humans took it into different parts of the world under different circumstances, different guidelines, different weather conditions.

And in doing so, mistakes happened. But what's the miracle is that within human mistake,

God did not allow anything that he has preserved to be lost utterly.

That's the miracle here. We should be overly concerned if we had texts all over the world that were identical.

Overly concerned. Textual variance actually prove the fact that God preserved his word organically, not through manipulation.

All right, very good. Now this next one is very interesting to me, okay? Let's take a look at this one.

The King James Bible destroys Calvinism. And that's why both these guys need to doubt the

Bible so they can justify their false beliefs. I am unaware personally,

Dr. Boyce, that a reading on the King James Bible conflicted with anything with respect to my

Calvinism. So that can't be my motivation, as this person seems to suggest is at least one of our motivations is to avoid the refutational nature, the refutation of Calvinism in the

King James translation. So why don't you speak to that? I mean, what position did the translators of the

King James Bible hold to? They were all Calvinists. Oh, oh, they were all Calvinists, okay.

They were Anglicans. They were Calvinists. Did they deconvert from Calvinism once they produced their

King James Bible? No, they were, oh man. That's interesting. This is what

I was talking about, Dr. Boyce, is the trying to read the motivations of people. Listen, I became a

Calvinist studying the King James, all right? I mean, Charles Spurgeon was a

Calvinist from studying the King James. Many men of God who spoke the

English language in Europe and in the US from the Puritans and the

Pilgrims. Now many of them, now many of the Pilgrims didn't like the King James, to be fair, many of them were more of the

Geneva guy, but the great Calvinists of the ancient past of our timeline up to the

Reformation and forward were Calvinists studying, reading, teaching, preaching in the

King James. You wanna know why? Because it originated with a group of Calvinists who got together in 1604 and translated the translation in England called the

King James Version. The King James was translated by Calvinists. I mean, listen, I could pull my friend

Jonathan Sheffield in here and he would have laughed because he's an Anglican. In fact, it's quite fascinating that many of them have a disregard.

They almost have that high church mentality where Anglicans were right, everybody's wrong. And Jonathan would admit that because he has that same attitude.

But three guys like Dean Burgon who wrote the Revision Revised, who was, by the way, not opposed to revising the

King James, nor is he against revising texts in areas.

Guys like that, and you look at their work, they said that people that were non -Anglicans were not even qualified to discuss this matter.

Pretty much said that we're sectarians. He definitely would not care what a Baptist had to say about it.

They didn't like Baptists, they didn't like the sectarians, and they believed they had no place in the discussion of the

King James translation. Why? Because the people that were either in opposition or defending it wrongly were not

Anglican. So we're sectarians, I get told that all the time,

I'm a sectarian. So they would say with pious attitudes, you have no input in the matter of the

King James, you're not an Anglican, you're not a part of this work, this isn't your heritage, stay out of it.

That's the mentality. So when somebody in that camp hears a comment like that, they're gonna go, whoa, whoa, whoa, the translators were

Calvinists, they were Anglicans. So it's an interesting statement to read, and I'm sorry if it sounded bad laughing when

I read that, because it was like, what? These guys were Calvinists. And great men of England going back to men like Spurgeon or Whitefield, for example, or Jonathan Edwards, who were the great

Calvinist revivalist speakers were using the King James in doing it. So that's just astonishing to read,

Eli, to be honest with you. I agree. Here's a question here. And this is, again, interesting, the nature of the questions.

Why do you use the term the Greek in Hebrew text when there are many Greek Hebrew texts, plural?

Is this not dishonest? Now, before you answer, suppose you misspoke or suppose you held to a position contrary to this person, why does it have to be dishonest?

There seems to be kind of just this, projecting kind of a motive in people who go to this perspective, which

I find very interesting. The answer is, is because that crowd believes in the text of the Greek, the

TR, the final edition, which I just recently learned from some is Scribner. Others don't hold that.

And that it is the Hebrew text, the Masoretic text. They believe in the Greek text, the

TR, the Hebrew text, the Masoretic, and the King James translation. I understand that there are multiple texts.

The King James translators understood there are multiple texts. So when I'm using the Greek text as if there's one,

I'm speaking in their terminology, not mine. The King James translators made distinctions.

They made choices. They looked at Erasmus, predominantly Baez and Stephanas. And when they differed, they made decisions.

They went with one over the other. I have an entire list and I even have sent this list out to numerous people of where they picked

Stephanas over Baeza. And then later it was published by Scribner.

And I actually took Scribner's notes and I actually reconstructed it and did a little bit more detail on his section there because the

King James translators chose not between manuscripts, between published texts.

They didn't make choices off manuscripts. So yeah, I understand that more probably than anybody.

I'm using the word the text or the Greek text or the Hebrew text in definition of the fact that that crowd believes there's only one perfect Greek text, one perfect Hebrew text, one perfect English text.

I believe there are multiple texts in English that are good, God -fearing translations of good

Orthodox men and women who came together to put them together. I believe good men and women have come together to do works of modern translation.

I believe men in the past had a great job of compiling manuscripts, still compiling manuscripts, giving us a database of efficiency, showing us where history has lied with different readings at places.

I recognize there's many, many texts, but I don't have a problem with multiple texts.

They're the ones that have the problem with multiple texts. All right, very good. Mr. C says, so can we safely say that God is the author of confusion?

Assuming that this topic has produced so much confusion, that is assuming that the Bible isn't merely man -made, but rather inspired.

Why don't you talk, again, I think he's going off the Bible passage, which speaks of God is not a

God of confusion, which has a particular context, which I don't think this is related to it.

I mean, God confused the languages of the folks at the Tower of Babel. So obviously he can create confusion.

So this is an interesting take on it. But do you wanna address that? I was actually just about to say that.

So I guess the Tower of Babel needs to be eliminated from our Bibles. He purposely confused people.

He sent spirits of deception to go and lie to Ahab to go into battle, to believe he was following the word of God, but he was actually following deception to go in and get killed by God.

I mean, that's obviously, there's a context to that statement.

Where do we go with God? It doesn't seem confusing that the writer of Hebrews would quote the book of Jeremiah differently than Jeremiah in the

English, the way it reads in the English. That's confusing. Where do we draw the line there?

There's a lot of, is it not confusing that God is three, but yet one God, but yet he's expressing three persons, but he's one

God. Isn't that confusing? The standard is endless. Without any merit, if that's what that text means.

There's obviously a distinction in the proper exegetical understanding of that verse where God does many things that's confusing.

His ways are not our ways. They're higher above the heavens. Man cannot understand them. They'll search them.

The writer of Ecclesiastes says, you'll spend your whole time searching out the work of God and only find yourself empty and confused because we don't understand

God. So obviously that's the same writer who wrote that is the same writer who wrote the verse.

Right, and that's not admitting contradiction. Those are qualifications. I mean, we believe in a sense, the incomprehensibility of God.

There's a sense in which he's incomprehensible and there's a sense in which he is comprehended in that he's revealed certain things about himself, but not everything.

So there's gonna be elements of, we're not really sure what's going on here and elements where we have good grounds for believing that we understand correctly what

God is conveying to us. So here's an ongoing discussion going on. I think we're almost done, by the way, you're doing an excellent job and I appreciate you've been going really long.

I think I have to like pay you or something, send you a check for your time. All right, I'm broke.

So hopefully you won't actually charge. Okay, all right.

So someone was defending you and myself,

I suppose, since I share your perspective, but the conversation was within this context. So they reject, you and I reject the

King James version of the Bible. Someone came to your defense and said, no, he rejects

King James only -ism. And so the person says, no, no, they do reject KJV since they say it's got all these errors while they don't give us an alternative.

Now, I don't understand how someone could be listening to this discussion and take from this discussion that no alternative has been provided.

If I heard you correctly, you gave us a wonderful alternative that God has preserved his word through the textual tradition.

Am I wrong -headed on this? What's going on here? No, I mean, any translation that actually represents that is the word of God.

I mean, this translation right here is the CSB. I mean, if you want an alternative, read,

I mean, read the CSB, this is the word of God. It's got translation errors in it.

I've got an ESV, I've got the King James, I've got the new King James, NIV, the

NASB, I've got the 2020 edition of the NASB. I mean, you want an alternative, pick a translation.

They're all great, wonderful, and we are blessed to have the riches of,

I think we have too many, we need to stop. And take that money, just keep revising the ones we have.

But we are a blessed people in the English -speaking world. And we are a blessed people to have

God's word in our language in so many different ways. We have multiple translations to pick from.

Some nations don't even have certain copies of John and Romans. So what we need to do is work on getting the word of God to them in their language, not the

King James, in their language, that they can understand and that they can read and know who

God is and grow in their faith. You know, nobody looks down on, and I've always noticed this, even when

I was in that movement, we support these missionaries that go into remote areas of Africa and places like that that don't have a full

Bible. And we just get them John and Romans. And we send them error -ridden copies of John and Romans in their language because the missionaries, you know, decent in their language, or he's got somebody helping him and he's doing his best to send the words.

But their goal is not to get them a perfect translation. Their goal is, how can we relay this message of John and Romans to these people as best as we can in their language?

We're not like, you know what? Until you get it perfect, don't send John and Romans. It needs to be perfect.

Don't get them the message of John and Romans unless it's perfect. We don't do that. We say, what do you need?

How much money? Can we support you monthly? Let's get them John and Romans and then work ourselves into the epistles and get them

Acts. And, you know, that's what we do. We're not looking at, why is the standard different for people in remote countries than what it is for the

English speaking people? We're okay with giving them error -ridden translations because the desperate need is that they have the message of the gospel first and foremost.

So it's really not about that, is it? It's a double standard. We are an arrogant people in the

English speaking world that think that we deserve a perfect translation and the rest of the world doesn't get one.

They got to use ours and learn. I mean, I've heard Sam Gibbs say it numerous times that if somebody wants a perfect translation of the word of God, they need to learn

English. That's not the heartbeat of the gospel. That was not the heartbeat of the great commission.

That was not the heartbeat of the King James translators. We need to get the word of God to the people of God.

And if it's an error -ridden translation that gets the word of God to people and it's the message that brings them to saving faith, then praise the

Lord. We don't need to sit around and try to work through this perfection issue. Get them the message. And if they're consistent, they don't believe that either because they send error -ridden translations and fund them to foreign nations all the time because they're more interested in getting the gospel than a perfect translation to them.

We do not have perfect translations. We have excellent translations. You want to read the King James? Read the

King James. It's an excellent translation. You want something a little bit more modern from the same text? Read the new

King James. Some people like the modern English version. I don't care for it. Knock yourself out. It's a great translation.

You like the CSB, ESV, NASB? They're accurate translations of the word of God. You read it.

If you read an ESV and somebody reads a King James and they follow its doctrine and its teaching, and I know people disagree with this, if you follow its doctrine and teachings and you exegete the passages accurately in both, you'll come to the same doctrines.

You will. There's errors in the modern translations that lead to error in this and that.

It's like, you study it and you exegete it properly. You'll come to the same essential doctrines of the faith.

You will. Agreed, agreed. Now, this is the final question. It might lead to our deconversion from Calvinism, okay?

So I'm gonna warn you now because we hold on to the precious doctrines of grace and if something is going to present itself to move us away from this, we need to prepare ourselves, all right?

So here we go. It's the last question. Since Calvinism teaches that everything is God's will, that needs to be clarified, and all things are pre -decreed, then you must admit that the

King James Bible is sovereignly ordained exactly how God wanted it. No?

How would you address that? It seems to be kind of saying, well, if God ordained it, so there seems to be this idea of, well, as a

Calvinist, you have a problem because God ordains everything. But then he also ordained this translation of the Bible that you seem to be having issues with.

How would you speak to that? I don't think that's a good representation of Calvinism's beliefs, first of all.

Agreed. Secondly, again, which transmitted form of the

King James are we talking about? 1611, 1769, the one that says don't spill it on the ground, the one that says does spill it on the ground?

Which one? So did God sovereignly produce the

King James translators to go one way and Blaney to go another way later? Seems that way. I don't believe that's how

Calvinism works, first of all, in how this is described. Maybe we could hit the theology side of that first.

What would you say to somebody who thinks that's how Calvinism works? Because I don't think that's exactly how

Calvinism works. Well, I guess he's thinking in terms of like a Calvinistic understanding of determinism.

So if God determined all things, you hear someone like Leighton Flowers say, well, I guess God determined me to not be a

Calvinist. It's gonna suggest that there's kind of a reductio there, kind of showing the absurdity of the view that God determines everything that comes to pass.

So I would say that's probably the purpose of the question. Yeah, I'm a compatibilist for one.

I hold to more of a compatibilist side of this. But again, we're talking about the

King James Bible is exactly how God wanted it. Which edition?

Don't say they're the same. They're not the same. Don't say they're updated spellings. I gave you just seven or eight examples of dozens and dozens of Old Testament alone of where the 1611 is not identical from the 1769.

Which King James? Which King James are we talking about? We're talking about 1769.

Is that the conclusion? Is that the one that God sovereignly ordained exactly how he wanted it? Or was it the 1611 translators while they were still alive or many, many years after they died?

We have a problem because we can't identify which King James we should go by. And I'd love to hear some people read.

And I think, you know, people say, well, and I, by the way, I just realized I could read comments.

I was on private chat this whole time. Okay. I did skip over a lot of questions.

I know someone here is, oh, not that one. So someone asked, why on earth did the book born guy get so much question time?

A lot of the questions, you might think your question is unique and maybe touches on something. A lot of them basically had the same gist of like a perfect Bible, or can we trust them?

Can we hold some, you know, the perfect Bible in our hand or where, you know, those sorts of questions. I kind of skipped over and we're already at two hours.

So I can't get to every question and I'm just kind of going as I see them. So I do apologize. And there is a, there was a statement about how they did have modern

English and I think it was the same guy. It's like, well, no, they used Elizabethan English.

If you think we're all using the same style in the sense of at their time, it was modern. But I mean, the

Q -dance translators would not understand our lingo today when we're talking the way that we would understand their lingo, the way they're talking.

For example, we say, oh man, that is so cool. Like that's cool. Cool has a different meaning today than it did back in that time.

Or I mean, even vulgarity, you know, you're reading Peter talking about Balaam, Balak, the dumb ass spoke.

I mean, that's what it says in the King James. We would use that as a slanderous term towards somebody derogatory.

We would say that somebody was born illegitimate. We wouldn't call them a bastard, but that's what the

King James says. Why? Because our lingo has changed. We don't use words the same way.

When years ago, even in our modern times where people growing up, like my grandparents, the word gay meant happy.

Old Christmas carols talk about it, being a happy just, that new meaning today.

I remember sitting in British English years ago in my senior year in high school.

We got to a, I don't remember what story it was, and I blushed. We read that something about, the word was, and forgive me, you can kick me off your show forever.

The word was faggot. That was the word, and it meant a bundle of sticks, but I didn't know that. I'm sitting there in my modern mind reading

British Lit going, what are we reading in this book?

And my teacher paused and said, I see some of you chuckling in the back over there.

Let's take a minute to define what this word meant back in the time of England and the old world.

She had to sit there and define it because we didn't speak that language anymore. So for somebody to go, oh, that was modern

English back then. Yeah. No, our English language has drastically changed over time.

Sure, we could understand them for the most part, but languages change. I mean, look at classical

Greek and Koine Greek. Different levels of Aramaic have proceeded from the time of Daniel up to the time of Jesus.

Words change, dialects change. So no, yeah, they were speaking modern

English, but they were not speaking our English in the fullness of how we speak today.

They would have a hard time following our wording, and we would have a very hard time following theirs.

Things have changed. So just kind of throwing an extra comment in there. All right, well,

I think you did an excellent job. I apologize that we went two hours and six minutes. I don't know if that's too long for you.

You look a little tired. He's like, I'm never coming back on again. No, no, it's fine.

I knew this would be a hot, I've been in hiding for a year because these people find me, and it's all right.

Again, I'm used to it. I've grown up in and around it. I get where they're coming from.

I applaud their desire to defend the scripture. They just need to do it from a better perspective.

They need to look at it from a broader world, from reality, from the actual data, and from exegeting those passages properly, like the author of confusion, or what does it mean when

God said he'd preserve his word, or his word is settled in heaven? What does that actually mean?

Not what you want it to mean. What does that actually mean? What did the translators themselves say?

What did they believe about their translation? What did they say about the translation work?

What did they say about the English Bibles of their day, and how they utilized them in their own translation?

These are things that need to be examined when we're talking about this subject. And if somebody lands in a

King James Only crowd, the third category, or somebody like family members of mine, hey, great.

I mean, it's like, I'm not looking to turn people away from the

King James. I'm looking to get people to look at it realistically, not in a way that was beyond anything they ever believed.

It's just, don't look at people lesser, as they're lesser Christians, because they used a different translation.

You wanna use the King James? Feel free. I mean, like, nobody's mad about it. I mean, just don't be mad at us when we don't, because we have good reasoning for why we don't.

That's the point of the matter. All right, well, I think you did an excellent job. There's a lot of content here, and I'm definitely gonna listen to this again.

I, as I say on every show, I'm the kind of guy who listens to his own show. So there's a lot of things to learn in this discussion.

So I very much appreciate. I think you did an excellent job. You hit it out of the park, and I think you've given folks a lot to think about.

For those who asked questions and you didn't get your questions answered, I do apologize. I literally can't go through all of them.

And so I do apologize if I missed your question. Guys, thank you so much for listening in.

If you want to support Revealed Apologetics, there are ways to do that. If you go to revealedapologetics .com,

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So thank you, listeners. Thank you so much, Dr. Boyce. You did an excellent job, and I really appreciate your time.