Class 07: King James Onlyism

Well, good evening, everyone. We are in class seven of our eight-week study of the subject to the survey of how we got the Bible. And tonight we have a lot to get through. I hope we get through at least the bulk of it.

And I want to remind you that because next week is the last class of the term, that next week is when you'll be given the final. And I'm still working on the final. I've, this week, been set back in my time a little.

So I'm still putting everything together. But it will be coming to you in the same format that the other tests have come. And the POP quizzes, so if you haven't done the POP quizzes, they are on the website.

So I'm on graceacademy .org. You can go in, log in, get the link, go straight to the link, take the test. The test will be essentially your final grade. If you show me your notes next class that you have taken notes and you receive a passing grade on the final, then you essentially have passed as long as you've been, you know, taking notes every class and you pass the final.

I'm not counting the POP quiz grades toward your final grade this time. Now next term I may, but because all of this was new, the using of the new technology and the testing and everything, I just don't feel like I should, you know, hold you to that standard for the first two POP quizzes.

But those were practice. This one's the real deal. This final will determine your grade and as always you have to receive a C or better to receive the certificate. But most of you have done very well and that includes our online students.

Average test score, I get a copy of everything. The test software sends me everything. I see where people are having trouble. I see where the issues are and our average testing score is way above passing.

It's in the high 80 range. So that's very positive that everyone's doing so well.

So I'm thankful.

The King James Only Movement in Context

Well tonight we are going to continue on with what Brother Mike taught last week. Last week was the survey of how the English Bibles and if you weren't here, please go back and listen to it. He did a wonderful job of outlining the various English translations that have come beginning with Wycliffe's text and then on down through the various additions and revisions.

And tonight we're going to study just specifically what's known as the King James only movement which is a subset of the larger study of the English Bible. So let's begin with a word of prayer. Father in heaven, I do thank you for the opportunity to teach your word and to talk about the history.

Of it.

And Lord, we know that the subject that we are going to discuss tonight has engendered many debates, arguments, divisions, and even Lord, hatred and discord within your body and it is very sad that such a conversation cannot be had civilly between believers at.

Times.

So we pray Lord that tonight we will be gracious to both sides, that the information presented would be well received and that you would be glorified by it. And Lord, most of all that we would always be those who want to know the truth, not simply have our traditions verified, but Lord to have our, if our traditions are incorrect, to have them corrected.

And I pray Lord that all of this would be for your glory and honor in Jesus' name, amen. Most of us have had some experience, whether it be positive or negative, most of us have had some experience with the King James only movement.

There are entire denominations of Christianity and seminaries and Christian colleges which are committed to the belief that the King James Bible is in fact the only Bible that should be used in the English speaking world.

David's coming in, somebody would open the door for him. So as I said, there are entire denominations, colleges and seminaries which are committed.

To this belief.

I remember years ago being in Pensacola, Florida, where I was attending a Bible conference and well, no, I'm sorry, it wasn't a Bible conference, it was a homeschooling conference. And while I was there, I noticed that there were bumper stickers on several cars and the bumper sticker said, KJV only or AV1611, and of course 1611 is 1611.

And it was because Pensacola Christian College is committed to King James only teaching. And so the school, I guess, had had these bumper stickers printed. And we've had people come to this church and upon entering our doors recognize that we use something other than the King James Version and they have done an immediate about face and headed back to their cars.

Pastors who teach from other translations have at times been demonized in books and other media. They have been called servants of the devil, haters of the Bible and responsible for the coming of the one world religion and the rise of the Antichrist.

Now that's not, I'm not exaggerating, Gail Riplinger wrote a book that is very famous in the King James only movement entitled New Age Bible Versions and she makes the claim that all other translations other than the King James Bible are being used by Satan to usher in the age of the Antichrist.

That's just directly from her book. The full title of her book in fact is, quote, New Age Bible Versions, colon, an exhaustive documentation of the message, men and manuscripts moving mankind to the Antichrist one world.

Religion.

That's the title of the book. So I'm not exaggerating or being at all disingenuous about her intentions. She was very clear on the title. So it should be obvious that this subject is not one which is easy to undertake as those who stand in opposition to the new translations often take a very divisive stance against.

Those who use them.

And I would say that in the study of the history and reliability of the Bible this subject stands out as one of the most divisive even though I would say it really is only an issue in America. You don't tend to find this issue outside of America and even in America this tends to be a southern issue, not one that you find everywhere.

Now I'm not obviously speaking there are King James only's everywhere. But it tends to be very locally associated with southern America. That doesn't mean that doesn't give it right or wrong. It just is what it is.

Defining King James Onlyism and Its Different Forms

So let's very quickly let's define some terms. When we say the term King James only, what does that mean? Because it doesn't mean the same to everyone. If you read this book, this is one of the recommendations on your reading list is the King James only controversy by Dr. James White.

He notes five different kinds of people who would all identify themselves in some way as King James only. The first one is one who would say I like the King James the best because it is the one I grew up with.

It's the one that I am used to hearing. It's the one that I quote. It's the one that I memorized as a little boy in vacation Bible school. It's the Bible that I know, therefore it's the Bible that I prefer.

And that is simply I like the King James the best. That's one way. And I will in a moment I'll say that's really not King James onlyism. But that is a that is one form. And I would say the least problematic.

If somebody likes the King James, that's great. I think it's beautiful as well. So that's not a problem. Number two are those who make a textual argument regarding the King James. This group believes that the King James underlying Hebrew and Greek text are the most accurate.

This is a different argument because they conclude that the King James version is based upon better manuscripts. And many in this group may accept a modern version based on the same manuscripts. And this is we're going to talk about this later.

But the King James version is based on what we're going to talk about later is sometimes referred to as the Textus Receptus. But so is the new King James version. And so if somebody makes the argument that it's a textual issue, then the new King James would fit in that category as well.

The third group is the those who believe in what is known as received text only. Received text only is a view that the Hebrew and Greek texts are believed themselves to be supernaturally preserved. And you say, well, what's the difference between this one and that one?

This one would specifically refer to the Textus Receptus itself because there's different types of texts. And we've talked about this in our textual variant class. We've talked about this in our New Testament survey or rather New Testament transmission.

You have different text types. So you have what's known as the Alexandrian text type. You have the Byzantine text type, the Western text type, and the majority text which are different types different families of manuscripts.

But the TR is not a manuscript. The TR, when you hear that, that means Textus Receptus. The Textus Receptus is not a manuscript. It is a printed edition. That's not the same thing. A manuscript is handwritten.

That's something that was handwritten and passed down. The TR is a printed edition after Johannes Gutenberg and it represents a critical study done by different authors. We're going to see this later, but it began with Erasmus and then it was Stephanus and then it was Beza.

And the Textus Receptus represents their work. And so there are those who would say the Textus Receptus is what is to be understood as the only text that should be used. And the one that is used is, as we'll see, the one that was edited finally by Scrivener and it was reversed, as it were, the readings in it were decided because of what the King James translators chose.

So there was I'm going to do a little timeline in a minute and show you how all this works out. But it's different to say, I believe, the textual argument versus the TR only. Some will say TR only and that's different.

Number four is the inspired King James group. There are those who simply believe the King James version itself is inspired in the same way that the New Testament documents, the Old Testament documents are inspired.

There are those who would say the King James Bible itself is inspired by God. Interesting character in this group would be someone like Dr. Samuel Gipp. Dr. Samuel Gipp believes that the King James Bible is the only Bible anyone should use and if you really want to know what God spoke, then you need to read the King James Bible and if you don't speak English, you need to learn English.

And I'm not misquoting him. I literally heard him say that. It came out of his mouth on the John Ankerberg show, which was recorded in 1993 or 94. He was asked, is the King James Bible the only Bible people should use?

He said, yes. He said, well, what if you're Russian and you don't speak English? He said, you need to learn English. He said, you have to learn English if you're a pilot because all pilots have to learn English.

You have to learn English for commerce because everybody does business, Japanese people. This was his exact argument. He said, Japanese people learn English. You have to learn English. Therefore, everybody should learn English so they can read the King James Bible because it's the only inerrant word.

Now again, I promise you I'm not exaggerating. I can pull the video up right now and show it to you. That I think is a far extreme view. That is not the view held by most, but that is the view held by some.

And Peter Ruckman, Samuel Gipp, and others hold a very extreme view. And that's it. And then there's number five, which is another version of that, is that the King James Version itself is new revelation, that the King James Version itself is new revelation or an advanced revelation from God.

That would be closer to Peter Ruckman's position, that the King James itself is revelation from.

God.

So instead of dealing primarily in Providence, we're dealing with God inspiring the translators. So I'm going to distill these down for the simplification of our class because I said there's five, and there are five.

If you really get into the nuances, there are even more than that. But I'll give you the two that matter. There's those who prefer, and those who say only. So you have KJV preferred, and honestly, this class will not challenge that one bit.

I have no problem with King James preference, and there are times where certain texts I would prefer the reading as well. But King James only-ism is not the same, because as one interview I watched with Steven Anderson, who, again, some would say I'm pulling the worst of the worst, but I am pulling ones who have a lot of video screen time.

Steven Anderson said if you were saved without hearing the King James Bible, you weren't saved. Again, I'm not exaggerating. I could pull a video up right now and show it to you. In fact, I brought along some videos I want you to watch.

I'm going to put them on the site. Now, I don't expect you to watch this because there's more eight hours of video here. But if you do, you'll see I'm not exaggerating. Steven Anderson said faith comes by hearing, hearing comes by the Word of God.

King James Bible is the Word of God. Therefore, if you didn't hear the King James Bible, you didn't get saved. You don't have true faith. That's the argument. And as a syllogism, it works. As a logical syllogism, King James Bible is the Word of God.

Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. If you didn't hear the Word of God in the King James, you didn't get saved because faith comes by hearing the Word of God. That's a syllogism that works if that's the position you hold.

But it is an extreme and incorrect, dangerously incorrect position because it causes an entire writing off of a generation of people who have not read the King James Bible as being impossible to be saved.

While most Christians appreciate the value of the King James Bible, and I do, as I've said, and I do, and I want to say this before I say my next, before I even finish this sentence, I want to say something.

When I study every week, and it's my job, so I do study every single week. When I study every week, I usually have about five different English texts and a Greek text.

In front of me.

The five English texts that I use is the ESV because that's what I preach out of, the King James Version because we have people in this church that use the King James Version and so I want to see what they are seeing, especially if there are any differences that I have to address.

I use the New American Standard Bible because as far as accuracy to the original, it's probably the most accurate in its rendering, even though sometimes it's choppy and it doesn't sound very poetic or very good, it's probably the most accurate.

I use the New English Translation because the New English Translation is a textual critical edition which addresses textual critical editions and helps me justify some of the differences between the King James and modern translations and that helps me.

And I'll throw another one in for fun because there are other translations like the NIV or the NLT that give dynamic equivalents that allow me to at least see a different way of reading this same thing.

And then the Greek text shows me what's underneath all of them, and so I can look at all of that. And just, yes?

You use the ESV too?

That was my first one, that's the first one I said. Did I say ESV? Yeah, that was it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one I preach out. I actually outline from the ESV because I know that's the text that I'm preaching out.

Of.

Yeah, yeah. So the ESV is primary for me, not because it's my favorite, but because it's the one that's in the pew. And I do, I try to at least, I would say 80 of our church has an ESV. And so I just want to be consistent with what most people have.

Now that's changing. 10 years ago, 90 had an ESV. But we've, Brother Mike and Brother Andy both use different Bibles, you know, so it's not the same as it used to be. And if I get my chance, I may sneak that NASB back in there, but it's probably not going.

To happen.

Probably not going to happen. Because we're not buying all-new pew Bibles. And the one person I do care about is the person who's never read the Bible before they come into our church, and all they have is the one in front of them.

I care about that person, because they're going to pick up the Bible we hand them, and I want it to be the same one I'm preaching out of. I know Mike, and he can handle being different, and he can understand.

Mike, I'm talking about that Mike, because he has King James, and then you got Mike Collier, he's got a New American Standard. It's not going to bother them that there's some differences. They can figure it out.

But a brand new person, I want to be reading the same thing they're reading. I think that's helpful. I think that's helpful. So I got a little off topic there. My point is that when I study, I study it all, because I can't help not to.

But while most Christians appreciate the value of the King James, and I do as well, we have to realize its weaknesses, and the need, I believe, for at least considering why the new versions exist. And that's what we're going to do tonight.

I want to read a quote. This is from Underwood.

This says this.

It says, quote, the King James version of the Bible was based on the best Greek and Hebrew text available. This contributed immeasurably to its worth, for most English Bibles had been translated from a Latin translation.

Thus, the King James took English readers a full step closer to the original message. But that was over 350 years ago. Now, over 400 years ago now. Archeology has contributed much to biblical study since that time, and textual criticism has made some significant advances since then as well.

So we have to consider where we are in history, and what the men who translated the King James Bible would have used had the same tools been available to them. And so it's important that we take a balanced view of all of this, and we not allow our presuppositions or a priori commitments to certain traditions cloud our understanding.

And when we discuss these things, we need to understand a word of caution is necessary. The differences between the King James version and most recent versions are very minor. There are a few major variants.

And really, I call them the big three. I was recently interviewed on a podcast by Pastor Dwayne Green, who does nothing but textual criticism on his podcast, and he interviewed me on the subject of textual criticism, and he interviewed me on the three main textual variants that tend to divide the King James from the other versions.

And it's 1 John 5 -7, also known as the Kamiohonium, John 7 -53 through 8 -11, known as the Percopaea Adulterae, and the longer ending of Mark, which is Mark chapter 16, verses 9 -16, I think. 9 -16? 9 to the end.

Well, the Latin is the Percopaea Adulterae, but don't try to write that, just say the woman caught in adultery. And it is John 7 -53 through 8 -11. John 7 -53 through 8 -11 is the story of the woman who was brought before Jesus, caught in adultery, and he says, let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.

In fact, if you have your Bibles, take your Bibles out, and if you have anything other than a King James, go to John 7 -53, and you'll see a Mark in your Bible. I'd like to hear what your Bibles say, actually, I'd be curious.

So it's the last verse of John 7, and what does yours say, Billy Ray? The earliest manuscripts do not include this. By the way, how many of you watched, I hope you all did, did you all watch the class I did on textual variants, sitting in front of the blue screen?

I talked about some of this, I don't know if I got to that one variant, but we talked about how variants arise and where they come from and what they are, but the three you're going to run into a lot is 1 John 5 -7, John 7 -53 through 8 -11, and the longer ending of Mark.

So I said something earlier that I'm sure would get me expelled from several churches. I said, oh, by the way, real quick, does anybody else's Bible say anything different other than the King James? Anybody else say anything any different?

Did they all make a note there? Did yours make a note there, David, at John 7? Using King James, okay. John 7 -53 through 8 -11 is not there, what do you have, a CSB? Is there a marginal note? Now see, I don't like that.

I don't like that, and if you listen to my, and you probably won't because I'm giving you eight hours of other stuff to listen to, but if you actually listen to my interview with the man on textual criticism, I said in the interview, I said I don't like it when they remove it completely.

At least put it in the footnotes if there's a variant between the King James and the modern version so that when a pastor's preaching, he can know what's in the different versions in his Bible. He didn't have to go seek out an apparatus or something.

So I'm not saying it's terrible, I just don't like that they take it completely out of the.

Line.

It's in the bottom, but it's not.

So it is in the bottom. Okay, at least it's in the bottom. At least it's there. And is that the CSB? How new? Is that, what, because New King James was in 82. Yeah, that must be, that's wild. Yeah. Yes, sir, Corey.

The first John one?

First John 5 -7.

Wow.

2016.

Yeah, I wonder if that's an update. I mean, because, you know, the first New King James translate, it was Arthur Farrstead was the editor, general editor, and he was, and that was in 82, I think. And he was, he was very committed to keeping the same underlying text as the.

No, it's there.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

So it is in there.

Okay.

That scared me for a minute. I was like, that's, that's different.

Yeah.

But at least they make the note at the bottom.

Okay. All right.

Good.

The King James Textual Tradition and Its Manuscript Base

So again, I said something earlier that would make, would have me expelled from certain.

Churches.

I said that the King James Version has some weaknesses. So I want to, I want to back that up by giving you what they are and let the reader decide, let the, let the hearer understand, do with the information what you will.

The first weakness is that the King James Version is based on a relatively small number of manuscripts. And technically it's, we would, we would say it's, it's based upon printed editions, not even really what we would call manuscripts.

But let's go through the history a little bit. The translators of the new, of the, of the King James Version, New Testament, utilized the Greek textual tradition, which would later become known as the TR or the Textus Receptus.

The Textus Receptus was actually a phrase that wasn't used until after the King James.

Version.

The term Textus Receptus was not applied to the Greek text until after the King James and the phrase simply means the received text. You'll often hear people say authorized version, received text, authorized version, received.

Text.

Those two phrases are very common because they sound and they, they, they, they seem to carry weight with what they're saying. This one's the authorized, therefore it's the right one. This one's the received one, therefore it's the right one.

But both of those terms have a history. Authorized, what was it authorized by? Who was it authorized by? It was authorized by King James. And what was the authorization for? It was the authorization of the translating a Bible into the English language for the use in the churches.

It was authorized for that purpose. And it was different than the previous translations because the previous translations of the English Bible, including the Geneva Bible, which was much more popular with the Puritans than the King James, the Geneva Bible had certain translations, certain uses of words that the King James was not allowed to have.

For instance, the word Ecclesia. The King would not allow the word Ecclesia to be translated as congregation. It had to be translated as church because the word church had a usage in the day that was important to maintain.

The word Ecclesia means assembly or congregation, but he wanted it translated church. And so you could not translate Ecclesia as congregation. Baptized, which we as Baptists know means to immerse, was not allowed to be translated as immerse.

It had to be translated as baptized. This is well documented. I'm not pulling this out of thin air. This is documented. There were certain things that were demanded of the King James translators, and one of them was certain words had to be translated certain ways because of their use in the church at the time.

And so the King James was authorized by the King. The Textus Receptus, though, has a much different history. Desiderius Erasmus was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest in the early 16th century, and he holds the honor of being the first to publish a Greek New Testament after the invention of the printing press.

But Erasmus did not have a full copy of the New Testament manuscript, so he produced some of his text, well I would say quite a bit of his text, by comparing partial manuscripts to one another and at times consulting commentaries which had the text within them, having to pull the Greek text out of the commentaries.

And at one place specifically, this is probably the most famous, there are places where he translated back from the Latin because he did not have a Greek text of that particular passage. The most famous of these is the last six verses of the book of Revelation.

He did not have a copy of the Greek of the last six verses of the book of Revelation, therefore he translated back into Greek from the Latin because that's all he had. That was all that was available to him.

Now that's not all that existed in the world, but again, this ain't 2023, you can't just fax somebody a copy of something. What he had available to him was a very limited number of manuscripts. In fact, we know what he had.

Erasmus was able to gather the copies of what we call today minuscule 1, 2, 7, 8, 17, 28, 14, 28, 15, and 28, 16. All of these are medieval manuscripts ranging in date from the 12th century to the 15th century.

None of them were earlier than the first millennium. None of the manuscripts that he was working were from the first millennium. All of them were later manuscripts. All of them were in the lowercase hand.

Remember I talked about uppercase, unsealed, lowercase, minuscule. All of them were that. We know what he had and we know what he used. So for his first edition, so for instance, Erasmus had three copies of the Gospels to compare.

That was how many he was working from. Three copies of the Gospels, three copies of Acts, and four copies of Paul's letters. And again, only one of the Book of Revelation in that one was not complete.

Thus, a few verses in Erasmus are not based on any Greek manuscripts at all. This is why there exists today in the Textus Receptus renderings in the Greek that are not in any Greek manuscript in the world except for those Greek printed editions.

Again, I'm not giving you, I'm not blowing smoke. This is absolutely true. There are readings in the TR that are not found in any Greek manuscript because they were back translated by Erasmus. So that's the first edition.

For his second edition, which was in 1519, his first edition was in 1516. That should give you some thought because Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses in 1517. All this is happening at the same time. All this is happening.

First edition of the Greek, 1516. Next edition was in 1519. He gained access to some other manuscripts. Thus, he engaged in textual criticism. This is the part that I love to point out to people, that when we talk about doing textual criticism today, people don't like that.

Well, the guy who was the first to put these words from a handwritten manuscript to a printed manuscript himself engaged in textual criticism because he had to deal with the texts that he had and he had to make textual choices based upon the manuscripts that he had.

He was doing the same thing we're doing today on a much simpler level because he didn't have as many manuscripts to work with. So he gained access to Menuschule 33, a 9th century copy of the New Testament, so he was able to have an older manuscript at that point, but again, it lacked the entire Book of Revelation and there was some damage to the Gospels.

His third edition was in 1522. So, there are two more editions, 1527 and 1535, however, the third edition was the basis for the next man whose name was Stephanus. Stephanus carried on the tradition from Erasmus' third edition, Stephanus begins with that and starts his editions.

His name is actually Robert Esteen, but he's known as Stephanus. He was a scholar in Paris and using the text of Erasmus' third edition, Stephanus produced four more editions of the Greek New Testament in 1546, 1549, 1550, and 1551.

I'm not expecting you to write all this down. If you want to try, you can, but I can't slow down enough to give them all to you. Just know that there were four editions of Stephanus and he expanded the available data for scholars and translators to use.

Now here's the thing, while Stephanus was quite conservative in making changes to the main text of Erasmus' work, he noted a variety of variant readings in the margins for the reader to consider. His in many ways was the first truly critical text of the New Testament because he put in the margins the various readings.

So, variant readings in our Bibles did not begin in the 1800s with Westcott, Hort, and Tischendorf. Variant readings did not begin with the New International Version of the New American Standard Bible or any of those.

Variant readings were known about and studied during the time and prior to the time of the Reformation. The manuscripts from which Stephanus drew to produce his notes were several codices, Codex D, which was the 5th century Codex, Codex L, which was an 8th century Codex, several minuscules ranging from the 11th century forward.

There was also the 16th century printed text known as the Complutensian Polyglot, which was a multiple translation version in one. You know how you'll get sometimes like an NIV, KJV in the same book? Well, that's called a polyglot and they had that at that time.

Imagine the work that went into that, it just boggles the mind. But it exists, it's called the Complutensian Polyglot, C-O-M-P-L-U-T-E-N-S-I-A-N, Complutensian Polyglot and it was a 16th century printed text.

So, again, we have five editions of Erasmus, we have four of Stephanus, Stephanus basing his work on the third edition of Erasmus, and then we have the introduction of Theodore.

Beza.

Now, if you know anything about the history of the Reformation, Theodore Beza was the successor to Calvin in Geneva, so Theodore Beza has some importance in Reformed theological history. Theodore Beza was a scholar in Geneva who would ultimately become the successor to John.

Calvin.

I don't know why I just read that sentence, I literally just said that, sorry. Beza continued to refine the Greek New Testament based upon the manuscript data that Stephanus provided as well as some additional text such as Codex Claro-Montanus, though he seemed to have rarely used that one, and Beza's primary work was not that of supplying new manuscript data but rather of critically examining the data that his predecessors had provided.

By the way, some of this information I'm getting, a lot of this information I'm getting is actually from an article that I can send to you, it's by Luke Wayne on the history of the texts of the King James.

It's put out by Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, which is, if you're not familiar with CARM, that's CARM .org, C-A-R-M .org, they do a lot of good stuff, and I recommend them to you. But here's the one that really, this one is the one that should cause anyone who is a King James only, again, I don't care if you're King James or not, but if you're King James only, this one should cause at least some introspection, because Beza was very conservative in making changes, but he did make a very famous conjectural emendation, meaning he made a choice to change something in the text that still exists today, and it still exists in the TR, and it still exists in the King James Bible, but it is not in any handwritten Greek manuscript.

Not one. And I'll show it to you. If you have your Bible, turn to Revelation 16, verse 5. In Revelation chapter 16, verse 5, the King James reads, well, the phrase that is in question is the question, and shall be.

But I don't have a King James in front of me, so Mike, I'm going to have to ask you.

To read it.

Mike, would you read Revelation 16, 5 for me?

Okay.

Who was.

Who.

Okay.

Who are, and was, and shall be.

Was. And shall be.

Okay.

Now, that sounds right. That sounds just like that, but who are, and was, and shall be. Somebody else read it from another version.

Go ahead, Bill.

Verse 5, right?

Yep.

And I just.

Okay.