King James Only-ism REFUTED

Introduction to Canonicity, Textual Criticism, and the King James Only Debate

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, a 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, you know, 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.

Dr. Boyce's Background and Ministry Work

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. I 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 and canon, or those outside of the canon.

And then textual criticism is the manuscripts, both the Old and New, particularly the New Testament manuscripts and 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?

Why Canonicity and Textual Criticism Matter for Apologetics

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 Propheter, but now it's a resurgence and they're taking it to another level.

And their point of that 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 son. 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 back end 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 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.

The Reliability of the New Testament and the Autographs

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?

And 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?

The Three Camps of King James Onlyism

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.

Why the King James Only Position Fails

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.