Part 1: Answering King James Only w/ @WesHuff | Cultish

Welcome back to cultish everybody. It is me, the super sleuth here along with Jeremiah Roberts, one of the cohosts here.

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So we believe that the King James Bible is the word of God, because if you don't believe every word in the

King James Bible is perfect, how do you not know what it says is going to teach you the right doctrine?

See, so all our right doctrines comes from God's words, right? So if God's words have mistakes, how do you know what it's teaching you is the right thing?

So that's why we believe and demand a perfect Bible. All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to cultish entering the kingdom of the cults.

My name is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here as always enjoying with my trusty friend, co -host ministry partners and all around super sleuth whole litany of jack of all trades.

Good to have you join me in your super secret headquarters in Riverton, Utah. It's not quite Rivendale, but we'll stick with Riverton.

It's good to have you back with me, man. Thank you. I'm doing pretty good, and I don't know if saying

Riverton is giving too much information for our super secret headquarters going on, but that's OK. We'll give people just little bits and pieces, but they'll never know fully where I'm at.

But I'm excited for today's episode. We're going to be going through some pretty interesting stuff that people need to know.

Yeah. So we are going to be talking about King James only. There are just certain broad variety of different groups who believe that the only translation that you should use is the

King James version. It's a very emotionally charged conversation, usually other Bible translations like the

New America Standard English Standard Version. They don't see those as quote unquote authorized versions.

And Andrew, have you ever had interactions with those who have had who adhere to this? I've actually never interacted with any person who adhered to the fact that the

KJV is the only divinely inspired word of God and that some modern translations now have corruptions or they're missing plain and precious parts.

I don't know. Does an LDS person count? I mean, they're KJV only in a sense. But no, no,

I haven't. I haven't. Yeah. Yeah. We could look into that. I have some interesting questions. Maybe we can ask about that. But we are joined back by the one and only the man,

Wes Hough, the all around adventure. Well, what's that show? And what's the movie Uncharted?

It was it was the guy character's name. Nathan Drake, Nathan Drake. So I think I think

Wes is the Nathan Drake of cultish. If you look on his videos, he's you're always you're always good to have you back, man.

It feels like you're always adventuring out and about some way, whether it's Egypt or somewhere else or sometimes you're just out there just chopping wood.

It just seems like you've got that you got that aesthetic to you. So, man, it's great to have you back. Well, it's a pleasure to be here.

It's the it's living up to my Canadian heritage, right? Right. Being up here in the sticks.

So, yeah, fooling everybody. I live in the city in Toronto. But if I can convince people that I'm really more masculine and testosterone driven than I am being a city dweller, then then

I'll take it. Yeah. Well, I feel like there could be even even that video. Maybe we'll post these on our social media.

But the video if you're chopping wood, I feel like that should be a meme like that. The block of wood should be some sort of textual argumentation or some sort of claim.

And you just cut that argument in half. I feel like that's very that video could be very, very meme worthy. In see if I can do some magic work on there.

But yeah, man, I just so we're gonna be talking about King James only. And before we get to that,

I think we just interesting is because we've done some serious with you before. And just so you know, everyone, this is the first part of a it's gonna be a two part conversation.

So if you actually want to listen to both episodes right now, commercial free, you can go to cultish all access dot com with link in our social media.

If you become an all access member, you can join us, we have a bunch of other bonus content, but you can view both episodes commercial free, we actually have several episodes right now, they're unreleased that you can check out and been through for free.

But and that's just a nice way to support our ministry. But also, it's kind of like a give and get. Just that way, you can bless us, we can also bless you some extra content.

So go to cultish all access .com. But I'm Wes. And one of our previous episodes, we were talking about, you know,

Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. And what I just find fascinating, and let me get unravel this is that there's so much misunderstanding about what actually took place.

If you look at that Joe Rogan clip back when we played it about him talking about Constantine. And in this case, you know, we played a clip by Dr.

Gene Kim, who's very making some very, he's very passionate about this subject, he very firmly believes it.

So we talked about how the New Testament was sort of put together as far as how believers came to acknowledge what books were inspired, what books should be in the canon, which one shouldn't.

But where does the starting point begin like after Nicaea? Because I feel like there's this gap between Nicaea and 1611, when the

King James needs to be published, because I feel like that's maybe some areas that we can kind of fill in, just so we can kind of get under just a good historical foundation.

What's the best place to start in all this? That's a really interesting question to pose it, bridging the gap of the, you know, arguably over 1000 years between 325,

Council of Nicaea, 1604, when they start translating the King James Bible. I wonder, as you were talking,

I was trying to think, you know, what would be a good place to pinpoint in between that. And there actually is a date in the 4th century, just after the

Council of Nicaea, when Jerome, the church father and sort of contemporary of Augustine, is commissioned to translate the

Bible out of the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and the Greek New Testament into the

Latin. And that's eventually what is referred to as the Latin Vulgate. And that's an interesting place to kind of bridge the gap.

Because actually, if you look at King James only arguments, and you look at some of the ways they're articulated, specifically individuals who like to say, you know, well, you know, the

King James Bible has been the Bible of the church for 500 years. Why would you try to overturn 500 years of clear divine direction?

That was almost the exact same argument that Jerome had to field when he translated the

Bible into Latin. They said, you know, why would you translate the Bible into Latin, the

Greek Old Testament, and the Greek New Testament? That's the Bible of the church. That's been the

Bible of the church for 400 years. And guess what happened when, you know, during the

Reformation, when this individual named Desiderius Erasmus, who was really a sparring partner of Martin Luther, but he went back and tried to publish a

Greek New Testament. The argument against him was, well, the Bible of the church, the

Latin Vulgate, well, that's been the Bible for over 1000 years. You know, why would you overturn the

Bible of over 1000 years? So there actually is an interesting development in the sense that the same objection, or at least one of the main objections that the

King James only us like to invoke in that the King James is clearly, it was the

Bible. I mean, since about 1680 to about, you know, 1840, it was the

Bible in English. It really was when people referred to the Bible, they're referring to the King James. Well, when you referred to the

Bible during the middle ages, it was the Latin Vulgate. And when you referred to the Bible during the days of the

Council of Nicaea, it was the Greek Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. So in that sense, there is actually some kind of continuity between those things.

When you go from the Greek Bible to the Latin Bible, to at least in the English speaking world, the

English Bibles, and then the subsequent modern translations, you do see kind of similar arguments against, if you want to call it change.

Right. So in other words, you have somewhat of a just sort of consensus over time that this is just sort of the go -to translation.

That's pretty much you're seeing over time up until, if you look at a very, like just a couple of skipping stones,

I guess you would say that that was sort of the consensus. Yeah. I mean, tradition holds weight.

And I think for a good reason, right? Like tradition holds weight. And so when people see the tradition of, well, this is the

Greek, this is the Bible in Greek. And that's what was given to the apostles and the apostles quote, the

Greek translation of the Old Testament. Why would you want to translate it into Latin? Nevermind the fact that more people are speaking

Latin than they're speaking Greek at that point. Why would you want to do that, Jerome? And likewise, when

Erasmus comes out with his Greek New Testament, them saying, well, what are you doing?

The Bible of the church is in Latin. And then similar kind of arguments with the

King James translation of the Bible, although certainly not the only ones. And we'll talk about those, but I think pushing against what is a very impressive history of God's work through translation and God's work through a

Bible that people could read, because that's what the Latin Vulgate was.

It was a Bible that people could read in their own language. And that's what the King James translation was. It was a Bible that was in the language of the people in Elizabethan English.

And that's, I would argue, if you read the preface to the reader from the translators of the

King James, the preface in the original King James translation, that's what they argue, that it should be updated in its language so that people can read it.

Andrew, what do you think about this conversation or with just what you looked at? What question do you have in mind as far as anything, the history of the

King James Bible or specifically kind of like this gap that we're talking about? What are you thinking,

Andrew? Yeah, what exactly is the history of the first English translation,

Wes? Yeah, that's a good question because the King James Bible was not the first English translation.

It's probably the most famous English translation. But I actually put up today, knowing that we're going to record this,

I updated an infographic that I did a couple of years ago, and I put it out on social media, which was a history of a few major English translations before the

King James Bible. Because there are some major English Bibles that played a key role in the

English -speaking world. The name Wycliffe might be familiar to a lot of people. Wycliffe, between 1382 and 1395, translated what's known as the

Wycliffe Bible, which was translated from the Latin. He didn't have access to the Greek or the Hebrew at that time.

But in the 14th century, the late 14th century, he translated a Bible from the

Latin into the English. And then just after Wycliffe came William Tyndale in 1492 to 1536.

And Tyndale was the first Bible in English to translate not from the Latin, but from the

Hebrew and Greek. And it ended up leading to his death. Tyndale was martyred for translating the

Bible into English. He was martyred in October of 1536.

And then you had major other translations like the Miles Cloverdale Bible, the

Thomas Matthew Bible. The Great Bible was actually in 1539 to 1540, was the first state -sponsored

Bible translation. It was a pulpit Bible that would be preached from. And the

Great Bible was produced by Miles Cloverdale, who was working under the commission of Thomas Cromwell.

And so that was, if you walked into a church in the early 16th century, and you heard a sermon being preached, it would have been preached in England from a

Great Bible. That was the major one. And then there were updates with the

Bishop's Bible in 1568 and the Geneva Bible in 1557 and 1560.

And then in 1611 came the King James Bible. And there was actually a battle between the

Geneva Bible and the King James Bible when it was originally published, because the

King James Bible was commissioned by King James. And the Puritans actually preferred the

Geneva Bible because they saw it less of a kind of government -sponsored

Bible. They were a little bit skeptical of the government, even the head of the, the defender of the faith, which is the position in the

Anglican church that the King holds or Queen. But the Puritans were a little bit skeptical of that.

And they actually, if you look at the Bibles that they brought over to the new world, they were

Geneva Bibles and Bishop's Bibles. They weren't King James Bibles, although there were a few that came over.

The vast majority of the ones that the Puritans brought over into the new world were not King James Bibles. They were

Bishop's Bibles and Geneva Bibles. So there certainly were English translations before the

King James, but the King James became so prolific that it kind of eclipsed all the others.

And that became true right up until we started doing updates in the 19th century. Wow. Let me ask a follow -up question too.

So with the 14th century up into the 17th century, what type of manuscript tradition was there in terms of the evidence for the text in which they were translating from?

That's a great question. The texts that they were using, if it wasn't,

I mentioned that Wycliffe was translating from the Latin and there were a number of what are referred to as Wycliffean Bibles that are translations that are done from the

Latin just because that was what they had greater access to. There were Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts that were in certain places.

In fact, the Codex Vaticanus, which is in the Vatican Library, there was some access to it in the sense that we have during the

Reformation period, Erasmus communicating with Bombassius in Rome to consult Codex Vaticanus on particular textual variances.

But the amount of the manuscript tradition that was accessible, it's certainly not even close to what we have today, but it was there.

There were manuscripts that were floating around. But realistically, when you get to the time of the 17th century, when the

King James translators are using the resources that are available to them at that time, they're not translating from manuscripts as much as they're translating from printed editions of the

Greek New Testament and printed editions of particularly the 1545

Hebrew Blomberg text. So they have with them printed editions of the

Greek New Testament, which are based on manuscripts, but a lot of those are the work of scholars during the

Reformational era, like Erasmus that I mentioned, Desiderius Erasmus.

So they're not necessarily translating from manuscripts as much as they're translating from those.

And a lot of these English Bibles were just updates of one another. In fact, it's just as accurate to say that the

King James Bible was an update of the previous versions that existed as it was to say that it was translated from the

Greek and the Hebrew. In fact, some have done studies and seen as much as 80 % of the 1611

KJV's New Testament being William Tyndale's Bible and 75 % of the

KJV's Old Testament being near identical to Tyndale's sort of usage of words.

There was a great respect for the previous English translations that were available at the time.

Mmm. So a question I have just as far as like context sort of laying a foundation here.

So one of the things that does come up when it comes to translations surrounding the

King James version of the Bible is, and also the other translations, is the quote -unquote

Texas Receptus. Now, what's funny just because that's obviously in Latin, like what came to my mind, and you're going to crap up about this, is

I was thinking like Roadrunner and Coyote, you know how they always change, like they're running and all of a sudden it pauses and there's something in Latin that describes them, you know what

I'm talking about? Oh yeah. Yeah, so I'm thinking like Roadrunner, but yeah, Texas Receptus.

So that has come up, and there's a lot of even Christian groups today, even people who are not King James, who are not in the

King James only camp, who are very rigid as far as adhering to the text.

I've just seen a lot of sort of debate in that area. So what is the Texas Receptus and how does that fit into the whole discussion regarding translations, the

King James Bible, all that? Yeah, that's a really good clarification, because that term

Texas Receptus is thrown around a lot, the received text. I like to say that it's more like they're texty recepty, which would be the plural in Latin, because there isn't just one received text, which is what

Texas Receptus means in Latin. There isn't just one received text. In fact, the

King James translators, when they refer to the Texas Receptus, what they're referring to is just the versions of the

Greek New Testament that they had in their possession. So they received it. This was the received text.

But they were dealing with not one received text, but they were using the five editions of Erasmus.

And then there was an update by a guy named Stephanus and an update by a guy named Beza, which Beza was actually, he was the individual who kind of was, he succeeded

John Calvin in Geneva. And they did updates. And then as I mentioned, the 1545

Hebrew Blomberg text. But these were the texty recepti. When I hear

King James refer to the Texas Receptus, what they're really talking about is a

Greek version of the Bible, which is based on an English version of the Bible, which is based on a

Greek version of the Bible. Now, what do I mean by that? Because that sounds confusing. Well, the King James translators were using printed editions of the

Greek New Testament. And then what they did is they chose certain readings. They took liberties and did things like practice the art and science of textual criticism to develop the text that they eventually ended up with and looking on previous

English translations as sort of a guide. And then they produced their English version, which was what we know of the 1611

King James Bible. And then in 1894, there was a guy named

Scrivener who came along and he backtracked the readings that the

King James translators used and ended up printing all of the readings from the

Greek that were the readings that the King James translators chose for the basis of their

English New Testament. So in that sense, you can actually buy one.

I have one on my bookshelf over here. So this is a

Textus Receptus. It's done by the Trinitarian Bible Society, TBS, and you can buy them.

But this is in one sense, a Greek version of the

New Testament based on a Greek version of the New Testament, if that makes any sense.

In fact, if I open it up right here, it says the Greek text underlying the English authorized version of 1611.

That's what it says on the first page. And that's really what it is. It's the Greek text that's underlying the

English version of the 1611 King James Bible. But it's not like the

King James translators had single text in front of them that they were translating from. They had a few texts and they debated back and forth quite a bit.

We have their translator's notes. They're all written in Latin because for some reason, academics at that time, even though they're translating in English, all their translator's notes are in Latin, which seems crazy to me, but it's just what they did.

And we know that they were going back and forth on certain readings and they did what basically every translation committee for modern translations today does.

They weighed the readings in order to best render to the best of their ability for what they had at their time, what they thought the original text looked like.

Yeah. Andrew, do you have any additional questions or what's on your mind? Yeah. What's the difference between the

Textus Receptus and Codex Sinaiticus and the critical text? What's the difference there? Yeah.

Good question. So the critical text is a text that is produced.

So there are two major ones. Sorry, I'm blanking for a second.

There's the Nessie -Aland text and then there's the UBS, United Bible Society's text.

The Greek New Testament that you'd read from both of those is identical, but where they differ is in what's called the textual apparatus.

So at the bottom of the page, you'd have the Greek text. And then the bottom of the page, you'd have all of these sort of shorthand notes.

And the shorthand notes are cataloging where maybe the early church fathers quoted the text potentially differently or where manuscripts disagreed from one another.

And the critical text is a text that's based on a scholarly perspective of looking at all the manuscripts, doing the science and art of textual criticism, which is tracing the original text back.

And then the difference between the UBS and the Nessie -Aland is that one is more critical in the notes at the bottom for translation.

And one is more critical for say academic pursuits and endeavors. So if you're an academic, you're going to be looking at the

Nessie -Aland and you're going to be seeing these differences within the textual history of this particular text are highlighted.

Whereas if you're say translating the Bible into, I don't know, Swahili or Tagalog, a language that needs a translation, you're more likely to use something like the

UBS where the translator's notes at the bottom are more pertinent to the text varies in this particular area and could be rendered in this way.

And catalogs, those differences in the manuscript tradition. Codex Sinaticus is a fourth century manuscript that was found at the

St. Anne's Monastery at the base of Mount Sinai. And it is a very important, in fact,

I have on my shelf, I have a facsimile of Codex Sinaticus' Greek New Testament just right here.

And it comes in around the fourth century. And there are two major manuscripts that we would think of as a

Bible in the sense that it starts with Genesis and ends with Revelation. And that is Codex Sinaticus and Codex Vaticanus.

And there are a few others that fall into that category that are pretty early. Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Washingtonianus.

But Codex Sinaticus is just a single manuscript. And then you have the

TR, which would be sort of another version of that that's thrown around.

But all modern translations are translated from the critical edition of the

Greek New Testament. The sort of weighing the manuscripts, so weighing the readings and looking at those to come up with, what do we think the original text looked like?

Now, it's such a fascinating topic because, I mean, I remember back in the day in my very younger, younger years, reading the book

The Case for Christ for the very first time and just when Lee Strobel was going around trying to find out the different aspects of textual criticism and hearing about Q and all these different areas.

And it's like, wow, there's so many layers and levels to it. But you've got the whole list, even you shared on your

Facebook page today, about all the translations. What is it about the 1611 translation that has just made, it's this, there's such sticklers on it.

I'll be honest, it is somewhat cult -like in a sense to where it's just this translation that they just have a vice grip on.

What is it about that? I mean, was there just, in contrast to translations since that, since 1611, what's the pinning point that's so unique?

Because it feels like it could have been any one of these translations, just looking at that chart. And my question is, if I'm looking at this for the very first time, why 1611 versus any of the other ones?

Does that make sense? Yeah, I think, I mean, I have a video on my

YouTube channel called Why I Don't Recommend the King James Version of the Bible. And in it,

I preface right at the beginning, I say, I love the King James Bible. I do too. Most of the verses that I memorized as a child come out in King James English.

I'm not anti -King James Bible. In fact, I go through periods of time where I do my personal devotions and my study in different translations.

And I've gone through a series of time where I read the entire

King James Bible straight through. I think there's a beautiful aspect of the language that it uses.

It's still an excellent translation. So far be it from anyone accusing me of being anti -King

James Bible. I'm not anti -King James Bible. But I think that there is something about humans that like tradition.

We like to latch on to something that feels safe. And the King James Bible was so influential for so long.

And then you do have some differences between the King James Bible and modern translations.

And I think that makes some people uncomfortable, especially if they're not aware of what might be going on behind the scenes.

And we might talk about this, the so -called missing verses in the Bible. If your King James Bible has verses one to five, and then you pick up an

NIV or an ESV or an NASB, pick your modern translation. And then someone says, well, don't you know there are missing verses in those

Bibles? And you look, and sure enough, it looks like there are missing verses. That's going to scare you.

That's going to make you go, well, I don't know what's going on here. And if we're not aware of some of the conversations that are going on, reasonable conversations, not conspiratorial conversations.

There aren't people behind the scenes who are mischievously trying to take out verses of our

Bible to hide things or make contradictions in the

Bible. If that were true, then if you look at the verses that are so -called missing verses, they're doing a really bad job of it.

I mean, they're taking out basically inconsequential verses and then leaving in some pretty big verses that have big effects on doctrinal issues.

So if this is a nefarious conspiracy to remove doctrines or remove ideas from scripture, whoever is, quote -unquote, taking these verses out is doing a pretty bad job of it.

But I think, yeah, I think we as humans, we like a clean narrative and we like tradition and we like stability.

And if we're not aware of what's truly going on, some of these issues can sound more controversial than they really are.

Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you a question because I was watching some videos on some King James only like arguments and argumentation that they have.

One is such saying that that in order to believe first that well, in order to get to the thought that the

King James Version is the perfect Bible, you must first believe that the perfect Bible exists.

That's part of the argument. So how can that statement be misleading? Right. And also, if your

Bible is not perfect, how could it be the word of God, Wes? Yeah, I think it, it begs the question what we mean by perfect, because I believe that the

Bible is the word of God. But we also need to admit that the Bible, at least scripture,

I should preface that Bible is not a biblical word, but scripture is a scriptural word.

What do I mean by that? Well, Bible is just a, it's taken from the Greek word beblas, which means book.

And for a long time, the Bible was the book. It was kind of the only book that was around in a larger literate culture where, you know, religion rules the day.

The Bible would have been the only book and really the only book that mattered that was around.

But when we look at, you know, passages that talk when scripture talks about itself, it's using the word scripture.

And so in that sense, scripture is what we're aiming at.

And now that I've described that, I've completely forgotten your question, Andrew. What was your question? Yeah.

So that, that was a great explanation, by the way, in terms of saying perfect Bible, like does the perfect Bible.

So do we have the perfect recollection of scripture in the book that we have?

Yes. And I think, I don't know if I'd use the word perfect, because that's kind of a tricky word.

The word perfect implies flawless, but I don't think in the way that we often think about it, because we live in an age where we can literally take pictures on a device, on a computer that we carry around in our phone, and we can have photographic imagery of everything.

And even if you go back, you know, 50, 80, a hundred years, uh, when you could photocopy things, you could still get a pretty exact image of something, but that that's not true for the vast majority of recorded history.

You had to write things down and sometimes mistakes were made. Um, even with the printing press mistakes happened.

In fact, an example that I give in, in one of my talks, when I talk about the subject, as I use the illustration of, there was a printing of the

King James Bible in 1631, which at, uh, Exodus in the 10 commandments passage forgot to put the word not in thou shall not commit adultery.

And so it ended up in the 10 commandments. And then one of them being thou shall commit adultery. And so, uh, they figured out that this was a mistake.

And so they, they try to get rid of these, but you can still, if you go to, you know, collectors auctions, they're called wicked

Bibles that they're, they fetch high prizes. Um, but that's a mistake that's made even with the printing press.

And so, uh, mistakes happen. And so does that mean that the word of God is not preserved because the 1631

King James Bible said thou shall commit adultery? Well, I don't think anybody actually thought that that's what it should have read.

You can figure out pretty quickly from the context that it's the Bible does not say thou shall commit adultery, but the reality of history is that and recorded history is that we mistakes happen.

And I actually think that the way that God preserved his text and the doctrine of preservation that we have in the way that the word of God was given allowed the text of scripture to spread very, very quickly because Christians, unlike the

Jews at the time who are very careful with our copying process, you know, by the time you get to the middle ages, there's, there's a whole rule system that's designed for who can copy passages of the old

Testament, who, who, who has the proper, um, qualifications and abilities and those kinds of things.

And they were very, very careful with copying what's called the Masoretic texts, these Jewish scribes called the Masoretes, uh, between the ninth and 13th century.

Whereas Christians were far less concerned with your qualifications. If you wanted a copy of say the gospel of John for your church community, they allowed you to copy it if you had that capability.

And what this allowed was that the word of God spread very, very quickly. The new Testament book spread very, very quickly over the ancient world.

And a by -product of that was that mistakes in the textual copying process happened.

But now 2000 years later, what we can see is that not only did that allow the gospel to be spread far and wide, very, very quickly, but it also allowed us to compare and contrast the copies of the texts that we have, which allowed us to very carefully, but very easily be able to trace the text back.

So in readings, whether added intentionally or would just, uh, far more of the case, um, uh, by mistake happen, we can pinpoint when and where, and most of the time, why they happen.

And what that does is it rules out certain readings and allows us to be able to trace the original text back.

It also disallows any one person or any one group to add anything to the text at any one point in time.

And this kind of feeds back into what we were talking about, you know, episodes ago, when we were talking about accusations of, uh, uh, things that happened at the council of Nicaea, you know, any accusation that a doctrine was written into the text of scripture at say, uh, three 25 of the council of Nicaea is impossible because of the textual history of the

Bible, because there are copies in the British Isles. There are copies all throughout Asia, North Africa, throughout the middle

East into, you know, uh, all over the known ancient world. And so what that means is that if Constantine wants to add the divinity of Christ, he has to go and find those and he has to unbury them, correct them, rebury them, you know, whatever it takes.

And that's functionally impossible. So I would say, yes, the word of God is preserved.

It is accurate, but we can't, we can't just brush over the way that God has actually preserved his word in that he included humanity into the process.

And I think that that now allows us today to be able to have greater confidence in the text, not, not, um, uh, this confidence.

No, no, I appreciate, I appreciate that. So let me ask you this too. So this would be an example, which we'll, we'll unpack later on.

It's just some of the dogmatic argumentation. So this is on a, we play the clip at the very beginning from the gentleman by the name, very passionate gentleman by the name of Dr.

Gene Kim. And this is on his website, uh, real, you can check this out for yourself, realbiblebelievers .com.

And this is just an example of the type of argumentation that's used. We can unpack this.

I want to just give your initial gut react. Just get your response here. Um, this is on website. He says, all of God's words are in one book, not thousands of manuscripts.

He says, God says that all the right words have, have to be, have to be in one book, not in thousands of manuscripts.

As scholars will try and tell you, he might even be referring to you. Uh, so he, then he quotes a proof text,

Hebrews 10, seven, which says, then I said, low, calm in the volume of the book.

It is written of me to do thy will. Oh God. And then he continues. He says, Jesus wasn't picking words out of manuscripts.

He says there was a book written about him. And we see a similar statement in Luke four 20, where physical book is referenced.

Luke four 20 says, and he closed the book and he gave it again to the minister and sat down and the eyes of all of them that were in the synagogue were fastened upon him.

And we know that's one of the time that's the culmination of his ministry. So we're off there.

He's using that as argumentation for the King James only saying that is the perfect translation you must use versus quote unquote manuscripts.

So what's, how do you feel about that? How do you, would you respond to that initial sort of argumentation? Well, manuscript just means a document that is written, um, you know, script it's, it's, it's scripted, it's, it's written and it's manually scripted.

So it's, it's written down. So if it's a hand written book, it is a manuscript.

So, um, the, I'm a little bit confused about what he's describing there because even whole books that we would consider the

Bible, you know, Genesis revelation, before the printing press, we would call manuscripts.

And I think there's a little bit of an anachronism going on. Anachronism is that, that just something that is anachronistic is when we take a concept that makes sense today and we read it back on something in history.

So, uh, I think it's a Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has a clock that chimes.

Well, that's an anachronism. There aren't any clocks in ancient Rome. So there couldn't have been a clock that chimed, but I think to refer to, to say,

Oh, well, we're, we're seeing the term book Biblos being used in Luke when

Jesus is reading in the synagogue. Uh, and that obviously means

Bible today. Uh, well, no, you're using a word that makes sense to you today, but then you're reading it back onto a time where it would have almost certainly been a scroll.

And it almost certainly would have been an independent scroll. And we know this for the simple fact that these books were just independent books for so long.

I mean, even when Josephus, the, uh, Jewish Romano writer in the late first, early second century, when he's talking about the scripture that the

Jews have, and he's talking about the number of books that are in what we would refer to as the old Testament today.

And he talks about them being housed up in the temple. He's not thinking of a single bound volume.

Like we would have today, uh, like a Bible like this. In fact, I have my, my, uh, my King James version, um, on, on my desk here.

Uh, this is a Bible, right? This is what we think of a Bible because it's a single tome volume, but, um, that is not how people would have understood the word of God in the past, even though there were 27 different books that were floating around just because they're not bound in a single volume makes them no less scripture.

Now we do get the gospels and the letters of Paul being strung together in, uh, what what's referred to as a codex, which is what we would think of, you know, where the pages are written on both sides, sides, and then, uh, bound on one side in what we would today think of as a book that happens pretty early on.

But other than that, you're really waiting for the fourth century. When you have the codex

Sinaiticus is that you brought up Andrew, when you have what we would think of as a Bible coming into view, but that would have been.

Exorbitantly expensive. I mean, codex Sinaiticus took anywhere between, uh, 360 to 370 sheep to make, uh, just to make a single, what we think of as a

Bible, you know, this was incredibly expensive. Um, so, uh, these books, they floated around independently.

And so when I hear someone say that, I think, I think what they're doing is they're applying modern categories and standards onto an ancient context where it just, it wouldn't have made any sense.

A manuscript is a handwritten document. They would have had scrolls and they would have had codexes.

And in Jesus's day, when he's reading in that passage in Luke and he's reading in the synagogue, he's reading from a single scroll of the prophets.

That's just what it would have looked like. Yeah. Yeah. It confuses me when I read that in Hebrews, cause

I'm looking it up on the side here. Uh, if we were to assume that there has to be a book and that has to be a perfect book in the

King James version, is that book. And we talked like we, you're saying it has to be bound. It has to look like a book, this anachronism, uh, just for the sake of the conversation for the

KJV only as to what was that book that is being referred to here in Hebrews 10, seven, the KJV that it was written in the scroll of the book.

Uh, that was the KJV, uh, when Christ came into the world, that's the book that's being referred to, or was there a different book that was bound?

And that one's also the divine word of God. So which one is, is the KJV or is that that one or what exactly is being spoken of here?

It's a, it's an interesting way to, uh, try to think about Hebrews 10, seven, which kind of shows that it's, it's just a proof text.

You're just trying to find a text in the Bible that says there's a book. And then you're assuming that that therefore meant then means that there must be a full bound book that is considered perfect.

You know, it's just a weird, it's a weird way of thinking. Well, yeah. And I think this is where like, it's, it's a tradition, right?

Like you can see where people are wedded to a tradition and the tradition almost supersedes what,

I don't know if putting it in, in the way of saying that what reality dictates, cause

I want to be, I want to be as generous as I possibly can, because I think these people more often than not, a lot of the

KJV only sub ran into, they don't, they don't know what they don't know. And they're often repeating what they've heard.

Now this person, what's his name again? Dr. Gene Kim. Yeah. So I I've actually watched a few videos of Dr.

Jane Kim. So I think he might know better. He's not kind of the, the kind of the person that the person who's sitting in the pew and is just kind of being dictated to,

I think he might actually know better, but a lot of these people, you know, if you build your doctrine of preservation that you have on taking verses completely out of their context to ignore how they're read within the flow of the text and the way that the author intended them, then there's probably something very fragile about how you understand preservation.

Yeah. And just even like bouncing back to just from earlier, it's almost that he's sort of making a duality between two things that basically mean the same thing.

Like there's a, basically, if you look at it, it's like, if you, there's a translation of apples, like whatever apples or fruit or some item was referred to like back then, but then a translation 600 years later, you know, it's described somewhat different.

Then you're, you're all of a sudden you're making those two things separate. He's doing manuscript versus book when it's like, literally those things are like being bound like that is not what people would have had back then.

I mean, the Pauline, when Jesus wrote, when Jesus wrote or read from that book, I mean, the Pauline epistles hadn't even been written,

Paul even hadn't been converted yet. So it does seem to be quite the yeah, quite the ungrounded duality there for sure.

So a question is too, is with some of the, maybe we can tap, we're going to get into this next.

So the next episode, which by the way, if you go to cultishallaccess .com, you can check out the second episode on cultishallaccess.

But we are going to talk about some of the argumentation that's made specifically from the, from as far as him appealing to manuscript evidence, saying how, what other translations use versus the

King James. And we're also going to be talking about quote, unquote, missing verses and also missing doctrine.

I think that's, that's something that people see, you know, you usually casual conversation when initially you see you go, wait, wait a minute, what's that?

And we should have answers to that. But this is one of the things that he does just state real quickly, and maybe you can give a brief synopsis and we'll get into this in the next episode.

But one of the things he talks about in this is he says that the modern

Bibles do not, he talks about the majority text. And this is what he says, he goes in the

Nestle alien, which represents the majority text. This is where the King James Bible comes from.

Majority text means that most manuscripts support much of the KJV text. Logically speaking, the

Bible must, that has the most manuscript evidence must be chosen, which is why

Bible believers choose the KJV as the, as their Bible.

Modern now, and then he talks about the modern Bible. It says modern Bibles, however, do not come from the quote, majority text, but from the, how do you say the

Sinaiticus? Sinaiticus, I'm butchering these names, the

Bazaar and the papyrus 75, the P75. He says P75 is the oldest manuscripts given that the papyrus materials well -preserved despite coming from four of the five manuscript groups.

The manuscript evidence supporting modern versions is very small compared to the manuscript in favor of the

KJV. That being said, what's the quick, what would you say initially just to that argumentation as we sort of wrap up the first part of this episode?

Yeah, so there's a lot being thrown out there. First of all, I would point out the fact that the base of the

King James translation, the Textus Receptus differs from the majority text in 1800 places.

So the majority text is basically the majority of readings. So as time goes on, the text of the

Bible expands and this is just what happens. We can use a simple example of if the original said

Jesus, later on for maybe good reasons or not, someone who is copying that might write

Jesus Christ instead of just Jesus. And then maybe another scribe later on might put

Lord Jesus Christ. And then the scribe down the road might put our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is what's referred to as the expansion of piety. As time goes on, the text grows where something like the simple use of the word

Jesus might turn into our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And that's not nefarious.

That's not bad. It's not even wrong necessarily. It's just maybe not what the author wrote, but texts grow.

They don't shrink. Texts grow because readings get introduced on purpose or on accident.

And that happens. And so what eventually happens is our earliest manuscripts, which admittedly we have very few of, of the vast majority of manuscripts, somewhere between 5 ,000 and 6 ,000 of the

Greek New Testament, the majority of them come from the 9th century and onward. That's a reality.

And those are longer. And so if we're just counting noses instead of weighing readings, then yes, the majority text is much longer.

It's expanded. It has much more, if you want to say textual evidence in terms of the amount of manuscripts on its side, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what the original reading was.

Now the opposite mistake of that is that you choose, you always choose the earliest readings. And that's also wrong.

Sometimes the earliest readings are not as good as later readings. And this is where the critical text, which is what our modern translations are translated from, weigh readings.

They don't always choose the earliest readings because sometimes there are later readings that have more reliability.

And maybe we'll talk about that later on, but the King James is not simply based on the majority texts.

That is false. Like I said before, there are 1 ,800 differences between the

Texas Receptus and the majority reading. So if that article is arguing for the majority text, then they shouldn't be arguing for the

King James Bible because the King James Bible does not match the majority texts in every place. And so what you have is an argument that's really, it's a false argument saying, well, the

King James translation is translated from the majority text. That's false. It's not. And saying that modern translations are just based on these early manuscripts like Sinaiticus and P75 and P66 and some of the others that you mentioned.

Well, that's not true either. There are times where the translation committees and the scholars that produce the critical text will argue against a reading in P66 or P75 because it's an obvious mistake by the scribe.

I mean, I have an entire facsimile behind me that I do my academic work on of the manuscript of P66.

It's the late second, early third century manuscript of the gospel of John. And there are all sorts of mistakes in there. If you were to say, this is the only gospel of John you would ever have for the rest of your life,

Wes, I think that would be okay. But there are obvious mistakes in it. So it's not just that the modern texts are done by individuals who are slavishly following the earliest manuscripts.

It's just not true. So there's a lot thrown out there. But unfortunately, a lot of the right words used in wrong ways.

And ultimately, I think for people who don't know any better, that sounds very academic.

But, and I mean this with all due respect, it is just not accurate for what's going on.

Well, good. Well, I definitely appreciate that response, Wes, is very thorough. I know I'm probably going to go back and re -listen to this episode a couple of times once it's all done and wrapped up.

I think this is something, I think this goes to show too, there's a difference between really thinking through these arguments, figuring out why you disagree.

And sometimes it takes a little bit more work, kind of like how you were chopping wood in that video.

It takes, sometimes it takes a little more grunt work to actually do the digging versus just finding a meme that reinforces your confirmation biases and kind of basing that off a talking point when you're arguing on Facebook.

So I definitely think that's a really good point. So what we're going to do is we're going to wrap up here. We will be back in about two weeks with part two of this conversation.

If you want to listen to, again, part two, that's going to be available right now. You can go to cultishallaccess .com.

You can look on our social media. You can get a link and you become an All Access member. You can access that. You can also access our archive of other content that we have not released yet.

We also have a bunch of other bonus content. We've got Cultish to Water Cooler. You could hang out with us.

We have Cultish the Aftermath. We just have a lot of new members only stuff that we have going on.

So definitely check that out at cultishallaccess .com. All that being said, we'll talk to you very, very soon on next time on Cultish.

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