Texe Marrs: Part IV

The Failure of the King James Only Debate

So, we've seen that the entire conspiracy-laden John Ankerberg is a mean, terrible, nasty.

Person.

God struck Don Wilkins mute, even though just a little drink of water took care of that. Story is typical Tex-Mars. But why would people want to believe this? Why would Calcium Boy want to believe this?

Why do King James Only folks, why do they behave the way they do? Why do they want to believe things that are just so utterly fantastic? Well, there's a lot of reasons, but I can give you one in regards to the John Ankerberg.

Debate series.

That was an eight-part series. And I believe they still make it available. I think you can order it. And I rarely say this about something that I was involved with, but this just has to be said. That wasn't even a contest.

The King James Only side was thoroughly embarrassed. It was exposed for the circular reasoning that is inherent to the entirety of the system. It's as plain as day. And so they had to come up with something to try to, in essence, save face.

And that's what Tex-Mars does. As an illustration, I just want to play one clip. It's from the same fourth program that we saw a clip from in the last video. And it has just a small amount of interaction between myself and Dr. Strauss, who I thought was by far the best of the three as far as being at least fair and not being into all the conspiratorial stuff that is so common with Dr. Gipp and especially Dr. Chambers.

Circular Reasoning and the Doctrine of Preservation

But even with that, I think this clip speaks for itself. Dr. Strauss is not able to answer the questions that I ask him. You just have to rely on faith. Well, biblical faith is not faith in falsehoods.

Biblical faith is not faith in that which is indefensible. And so I really think that's why people who adopt this position, they're willing to believe almost anything because their position really is indefensible.

You cannot come up with a meaningful defense of this kind of a system. And so I'm not going to comment on it. I'm just going to play this clip from that fourth program. I really think it speaks for itself.

The King James Translators and Marginal Notes

All of this is extremely circular. And I think we need to, in fairness, point out the fact that what you're saying is not what Dr. Strauss has said in regards to the preservation of the text. Dr. Strauss has said earlier on that Christians in mass have always believed this traditional text, and that's where the basis of it lies.

But the problem is there are a number of places in the King James text. Luke 2 .22, to give you an example. You just said that those men who gathered in that room and were involved in the translation of the King James Version, that God somehow was doing something there.

They didn't say that. Their contemporaries didn't say that. This is something that's come along a lot later. And I think it's very circular to just get into that argument. But to Dr. Strauss, what about places where those King James translators followed conjectural emanations?

Theodore Beza, for example, in Revelation 16 .5, looked at the Greek text, and all the Greek texts say the same thing, but he didn't like the way it went. And so he changed the word holy to the future form of the verb to be, sort of make it nice and poetic and rhythmic.

And your King James this day reads that way, even though there's not a question, I think, on anyone's part as to what that passage actually reads. Why should I take Theodore Beza's conjectural emanation, where he decides a reading on the basis of what he likes, and say that the mass of Christians believed this when nobody before Theodore Beza ever had the idea that Revelation 16 .5 read that way?

Why should I believe that?

Well, I believe it gets back to faith in the doctrine of preservation, actually. And the scripture verses that speak to this issue, Matthew 4 .4, as I said before, where are the every words? Believers have felt that the every words have been preserved to them in every generation, and that God has used various means to give that preserved word.

Take, for instance, Johannine Common doesn't have much textual support.

Let me just say what, you know, I actually have the preface here to the 1611, and I've got the 1611 sitting next to me here. And let me just read what they said here about, this was a note to the reader right in the.

Front.

They said, first of all, neither did we think much to consult the translators or commentators, the Chaldean, the Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, or Latin, nor the Spanish, French, Italian, or.

Dutch.

Neither did we disdain to revise that which we had done, and to bring back to the anvil that which we had hammered. In other words, when they consulted these things, the thing that they had written, if they said, in consulting all these others, if that wasn't right, they went back and they changed it.

Then they went on and they said something about this thing of certainty. There may be many words in the scripture which be never found there but once, so that we cannot be helping by conference of places.

In other words, the context doesn't help us out, and we still don't know what the word.

Means.

So what are we supposed to do? He says, there can be rare names of certain birds, beasts, precious stones. There can be all kinds of things that they list here. He says, now in such a case, doth not a margin do well to admonish the reader to seek further and not to conclude or dogmatize upon this or that peremptorily?

For as it is a fault of incredulity to doubt of those things that are evident, so to determine of such things as the Spirit of God hath left questionable can be no less than presumption. So these guys said, their stuff, even after we've checked all these sources, we don't.

Know.

What do they do?

They put it in the margin. Okay? Now that's what Art's done over here, and you guys have said he's wrong for doing what the guys who wrote the 1611 did.

There's 8 ,422 marginal notes in the King James, and that indicates that they realize exactly what they've said there.

I agree with you, Tom, and the fact is that if they did it, why isn't it okay for these guys to do it?

I'm not complaining about that. I'm complaining about their translation.

Excuse me, Dr. Strauss, if you represent the same type of position as taken by D .A. Waite, he said in regards to the New King James, he said the diabolical nature of the New King James version, diabolical is a strong term, shows itself in their printing all the various readings of the Greek text in the footnotes.

They print all sides and take their stand in favor of none of them. By so doing, they confuse the readers. The editors have made no decisions as to what God's words really are. If that isn't confusing, you think about it.

Is that not the position that is expressed by a number of King James-only advocates? That's Dr. Waite.

That's Dr. Waite's position, but I believe some of the footnotes there represent the Nestle-Allen text, and I think that's what he's alluding to.

It represents Greek manuscript.