Class 07: King James Onlyism

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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May 29, 2023

00:00: Well good evening everyone.
00:03: We are in class 7 of our 8 week study of the subject to survey of how we got the Bible.
00:15: And tonight we have a lot to get through.
00:18: I hope we get through at least the bulk of it.
00:22: 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.
00:35: And I'm still working on the final.
00:37: I've this week been set back in my time a little.
00:41: So I'm still putting everything together.
00:45: But it will be coming to you in the same format that the other tests have come.
00:50: And the pop quizzes, so if you haven't done the pop quizzes, they are on the website.
00:55: SolomonGraceAcademy.org.
00:57: You can go in, log in, get the link, go straight to the link, take the test.
01:04: The test will be essentially your final grade.
01:09: 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 taking notes every class and you passed the final.
01:23: I'm not counting the pop quiz grades toward your final grade this time.
01:28: 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 hold you to that standard for the first two pop quizzes.
01:42: But those were practice.
01:43: This one's the real deal.
01:45: This final will determine your grade and as always you have to receive a C or better to receive the certificate.
01:54: But most of you have done very well and that includes our online students.
02:00: Average test score, I get a copy of everything.
02:02: The test software sends me everything.
02:04: I see where people are having trouble.
02:06: I see where the issues are and our average testing score is way above passing.
02:11: It's in the high 80 range.
02:15: So that's very positive that everyone's doing so well.
02:18: So I'm thankful.
02:20: Well tonight we are going to continue on with what Brother Mike taught last week.
02:27: Last week was the survey of how the English Bibles and if you weren't here, please go back and listen to it.
02:35: 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.
02:48: 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.
03:00: So let's begin with a word of prayer.
03:04: Father in heaven, I do thank you for the opportunity to teach your word and to talk about the history of it.
03:14: 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.
03:37: 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.
03:51: 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.
04:09: And I pray, Lord, that all of this would be for your glory and honor in Jesus' name.
04:16: Amen.
04:19: 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.
04:32: 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.
04:52: David's coming in.
04:53: Somebody would open the door for him.
05:02: So as I said, there are entire denominations, colleges and seminaries which are committed to this belief.
05:09: 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.
05:22: And while I was there, I noticed that there were bumper stickers on several cars and the bumper sticker said, KJV only or AV1611.
05:37: And of course, 1611 is 1611.
05:40: And it was because Pensacola Christian College is committed to King James only teaching.
05:49: And so the school, I guess, had had these bumper stickers printed.
05:54: 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.
06:10: Pastors who teach from other translations have, at times, been demonized in books and other media.
06:18: 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.
06:27: Now that's not – I'm not exaggerating.
06:30: Gail Riplinger wrote a book that is very famous in the King James only movement entitled New Age Bible Versions.
06:37: 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.
06:48: That's just directly from her book.
06:50: 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.
07:04: That's the title of the book.
07:05: So I'm not exaggerating or being at all disingenuous about her intentions.
07:11: She was very clear on the title.
07:15: 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.
07:31: 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.
07:42: 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.
07:52: Now, I'm not obviously speaking – there are King James Onlays everywhere.
07:57: But it tends to be very locally associated with southern America.
08:06: That doesn't mean – that doesn't give it right or wrong.
08:08: It just is what it is.
08:11: So let's – very quickly, let's define some terms.
08:14: When we say the term King James Only, what does that mean? Because it doesn't mean the same to everyone.
08:24: If you read this book, this is one of the recommendations on your reading list, is the King James Only Controversy by Dr.
08:34: James White.
08:35: He notes five different kinds of people who would all identify themselves in some way as King James Only.
08:42: 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.
09:10: That's one way.
09:12: And I will – in a moment I'll say that's really not King James Only-ism, but that is one form, and I would say the least problematic.
09:21: If somebody likes the King James, that's great.
09:23: I think it's beautiful as well, so that's not a problem.
09:26: Number two are those who make a textual argument regarding the King James.
09:33: This group believes that the King James underlying Hebrew and Greek text are the most accurate.
09:40: 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.
09:58: 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.
10:11: 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.
10:22: The third group is those who believe in what is known as received text only.
10:32: 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.
11:01: You have different text types.
11:05: 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.
11:19: But the TR is not a manuscript.
11:26: The TR, when you hear that, that means Textus Receptus.
11:31: The Textus Receptus is not a manuscript.
11:34: It is a printed edition.
11:35: That's not the same thing.
11:36: A manuscript is handwritten.
11:38: That's something that was handwritten, passed down.
11:40: The TR is a printed edition after Johannes Gutenberg, and it represents a critical study done by different authors.
11:51: 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.
12:00: 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.
12:26: The readings in it were decided because of what the King James translators chose.
12:32: So I'm going to do a little timeline in a minute and show you how all this works out.
12:36: But it's different to say, I believe, the textual argument versus the TR only.
12:40: Some will say TR only, and that's different.
12:42: Number four is the inspired King James group.
12:47: 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.
12:56: There are those who would say the King James Bible itself is inspired by God.
13:09: An interesting character in this group would be someone like Dr.
13:13: Samuel Gipp.
13:14: Dr.
13:14: 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.
13:28: And I'm not misquoting him.
13:29: I literally heard him say that.
13:32: It came out of his mouth on the John Ankerberg show, which was recorded in 1993 or 94.
13:38: He was asked, is the King James Bible the only Bible people should use? He said, yes.
13:41: He said, well, what if you're Russian, and you don't speak English? He said, you need to learn English.
13:46: He said, you have to learn English if you're a pilot, because all pilots have to learn English.
13:49: You have to learn English for commerce, because everybody does business, Japanese people.
13:53: This was his exact argument.
13:54: He said, Japanese people learn English.
13:55: You have to learn English.
13:57: Therefore, everybody should learn English so they can read the King James Bible, because it's the only inerrant word.
14:04: Now, again, I promise you I'm not exaggerating.
14:06: I can pull the video up right now and show it to you.
14:09: That, I think, is a far extreme view.
14:12: That is not the view held by most, but that is the view held by some.
14:16: And Peter Ruckman, Samuel Gipp, and others hold a very extreme view, and that's it.
14:23: 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.
14:35: That would be closer to Peter Ruckman's position, that the King James itself is revelation from God.
14:42: So instead of dealing primarily in Providence, we're dealing with God inspiring the translators.
14:52: So I'm going to distill these down for the simplification of our class, because I said there's five, and there are five.
15:00: If you really get into the nuances, there are even more than that.
15:04: But I'll give you the two that matter.
15:07: There's those who prefer, and those who say only.
15:13: So you have KJV preferred, and honestly, this class will not challenge that one bit.
15:24: I have no problem with King James preference, and there are times where certain texts, I would prefer the reading as well.
15:32: But King James onlyism is not the same, because as one interview I watched with Stephen 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.
15:55: Stephen Anderson said, if you were saved without hearing the King James Bible, you weren't saved.
16:04: Again, I'm not exaggerating.
16:06: I could pull a video up right now and show it to you.
16:07: In fact, I brought along some videos I want you to watch.
16:10: I'm going to put them on the site.
16:12: Now, I don't expect you to watch this, because there's more eight hours of video here.
16:16: But if you do, you'll see I'm not exaggerating.
16:20: Stephen Anderson said, faith comes by hearing, hearing comes by the word of God.
16:25: King James Bible is the word of God.
16:27: Therefore, if you didn't hear the King James Bible, you didn't get saved.
16:29: You don't have true faith.
16:31: That's the argument.
16:32: And as a syllogism, it works.
16:36: As a logical syllogism, King James Bible is the word of God.
16:40: Faith comes by hearing the word of God.
16:42: 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.
16:47: That's a syllogism that works if that's the position you hold.
16:51: 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.
17:08: 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.
17:19: When I study every week, and it's my job, so I do study every single week.
17:25: When I study every week, I usually have about five different English texts and a Greek text in front of me.
17:34: 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.
17:47: 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.
18:02: 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.
18:15: 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.
18:28: And then the Greek text shows me what's underneath all of them, and so I can look at all of that.
18:35: That was my first one, that's the first one I said.
18:37: Did I say ESV? Yeah, that's the one I preach out of.
18:41: I actually outline from the ESV, because I know that's the text that I'm preaching out of.
18:46: So the ESV is primary for me, not because it's my favorite, but because it's the one that's in the pew.
18:53: And 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.
19:02: Now that's changing.
19:03: Ten years ago, 90% had an ESV.
19:06: But Brother Mike and Brother Andy both use different Bibles, so it's not the same as it used to be.
19:12: 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.
19:23: 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.
19:29: 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.
19:37: I know Mike, and he can handle being different, and he can understand.
19:41: I'm talking about that Mike because he has King James, and then you've got Mike Collier, he's got a New American Standard.
19:50: It's not going to bother them that there's some differences.
19:52: They can figure it out.
19:53: But a brand-new person, I want to be reading the same thing they're reading.
19:56: I think that's helpful.
19:57: I think that's helpful.
19:58: So I got a little off topic there.
20:00: My point is, though, when I study, I study it all because I can't help not to.
20:06: 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.
20:22: And that's what we're going to do tonight.
20:25: I want to read a quote.
20:27: This is from Underwood.
20:30: This says this.
20:31: It says, quote, The King James Version of the Bible was based on the best Greek and Hebrew text available.
20:39: This contributed immeasurably to its worth, for most English Bibles had been translated from a Latin translation.
20:47: Thus the King James took English readers a full step closer to the original message.
20:52: But that was over 350 years ago.
20:53: Now over 400 years ago.
20:57: Archeology has contributed much to biblical study since that time, and textual criticism has made some significant advances since then as well.
21:05: 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.
21:18: 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.
21:34: And when we discuss these things we need to understand a word of caution is necessary.
21:40: The differences between the King James Version and most recent versions are very minor.
21:45: There are a few major variants, and really I call them the big three.
21:50: 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 16, verses 9-16, I think.
22:22: Yeah.
22:24: Isn't it 9-16? Nine to the end.
22:32: Well, the Latin is the Percopaea Adulterae, but don't try to write that.
22:37: Just say the woman caught in adultery.
22:39: And it is John 7-53 through 8-11.
22:43: 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.
22:52: 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.
23:03: I'd like to hear what your Bibles say, actually.
23:06: I'd be curious.
23:10: So this is the last verse of John 7.
23:14: What does yours say, Billy Ray? Earliest manuscripts do not include this.
23:21: By the way, how many of you watched? I hope you all did.
23:24: Did you all watch the class I did on textual variants sitting in front of the blue screen? I talked about some of this.
23:29: 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.
23:35: 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.
23:49: So I said something earlier that I'm sure would get me expelled from several churches.
23:56: 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? I'm using King James.
24:07: You're using King James? Okay.
24:11: John 7-53 through 8-11 is not there.
24:13: What do you have, a CSB? Yeah.
24:20: Is there a marginal note? Yeah.
24:28: Now, see, I don't like that.
24:30: It's not what? I don't like that.
24:32: And if you listen to my – and you probably won't because I'm giving you eight hours of other stuff to listen to.
24:36: 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.
24:48: 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 is preaching, he can know what's in the different versions in his Bible.
24:58: He doesn't have to go seek out an apparatus or something.
25:00: But so I'm not saying it's terrible.
25:04: I just don't like that they take it completely out of the line.
25:07: It's in the bottom, but it's not.
25:09: So it is in the bottom.
25:10: Okay, at least it's in the bottom.
25:11: At least it's there.
25:12: And is that the CSB? How new? Is that what? Because New King James was in 1982.
25:23: Yeah, that must be in – that's wild.
25:29: Yeah.
25:30: Yes, sir, Corey.
25:33: First John 5-7.
25:35: Wow.
25:36: 2016.
25:38: Yeah, I wonder if that's an update.
25:39: I mean, because, you know, the first New King James translate, it was Arthur Farstad was the editor, general editor, and that was in 1982, I think, and he was very committed to keeping the same underlying text as the – No, it's there.
25:58: They just put it right in there.
26:01: Oh, okay.
26:02: Okay, so it is in there.
26:03: Okay, that scared me for a minute.
26:05: I was like, that's different.
26:07: Yeah, but at least they make the note at the bottom.
26:08: Okay, all right, good.
26:09: So, again, I said something earlier that would make – would have me expelled from certain churches.
26:17: I said that the King James Version has some weaknesses.
26:21: So I want to back that up by giving you what they are and let the reader decide.
26:27: Let the hearer understand.
26:29: Do with the information what you will.
26:31: The first weakness is that the King James Version is based on a relatively small number of manuscripts, and technically we would say it's based upon printed editions, not even really what we would call manuscripts.
26:50: But let's go through the history a little bit.
26:55: The translators of the King James Version New Testament utilized the Greek textual tradition, which would later become known as the TR or the Textus Receptus.
27:05: The Textus Receptus was actually a phrase that wasn't used until after the King James Version.
27:10: The term Textus Receptus was not applied to the Greek text until after the King James, and the phrase simply means the received text.
27:18: You'll often hear people say authorized version, received text, authorized version, received text.
27:24: Those two phrases are very common because they sound and they seem to carry weight with what they're saying.
27:32: This one's the authorized, therefore it's the right one.
27:35: This one's the received one, therefore it's the right one.
27:37: But both of those terms have a history.
27:40: Authorized, what was it authorized by? Who was it authorized by? It was authorized by King James.
27:46: 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.
27:54: It was authorized for that purpose.
27:56: 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.
28:14: For instance, the word Ecclesia.
28:16: The King would not allow the word Ecclesia to be translated as congregation.
28:21: It had to be translated as church because the word church had a usage in the day that was important to maintain.
28:29: The word Ecclesia means assembly or congregation, but he wanted it translated church.
28:33: And so you could not translate Ecclesia as congregation.
28:37: Baptized, which we as Baptists know means to immerse, was not allowed to be translated as immerse.
28:43: It had to be translated as baptized.
28:45: This is well documented.
28:46: I'm not pulling this out of thin air.
28:48: This is documented.
28:49: 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.
29:00: And so the King James was authorized by the king.
29:04: The Textus Receptus, though, has a much different history.
29:09: 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.
29:31: 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.
29:58: 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.
30:10: The most famous of these is the last six verses of the book of Revelation.
30:14: 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.
30:25: That was all that was available to him.
30:27: Now that's not all that existed in the world, but again, this ain't 2023.
30:30: You can't just fax somebody a copy of something.
30:34: What he had available to him was a very limited number of manuscripts.
30:39: In fact, we know what he had.
30:43: 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.
30:51: All of these are medieval manuscripts ranging in date from the 12th century to the 15th century.
30:56: None of them were earlier than the first millennium.
30:59: None of the manuscripts that he was working were from the first millennium.
31:02: All of them were later manuscripts.
31:03: All of them were in the lowercase hand.
31:05: Remember I talked about uppercase, unsealed, lowercase, minuscule.
31:08: All of them were that.
31:09: We know what he had, and we know what he used.
31:14: For his first edition, for instance, Erasmus had three copies of the Gospels to compare.
31:22: That was how many he was working from, three copies of the Gospels, three copies of Acts, and four copies of Paul's letters.
31:29: Again, only one of the Book of Revelation in that one was not complete.
31:36: Thus, a few verses in Erasmus are not based on any Greek manuscripts at all.
31:39: 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.
31:51: Again, I'm not blowing smoke.
31:53: This is absolutely true.
31:55: There are readings in the TR that are not found in any Greek manuscript because they were back-translated by Erasmus.
32:05: So that's the first edition.
32:08: For his second edition, which was in 1519, his first edition was in 1516.
32:13: That should give you some thought because Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses in 1517.
32:18: All this is happening at the same time.
32:21: All this is happening.
32:22: First edition of the Greek, 1516.
32:25: Next edition was in 1519.
32:28: He gained access to some other manuscripts.
32:31: Thus, he engaged in textual criticism.
32:33: 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.
32:39: 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.
32:54: 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.
33:04: So he gained access to Manuscript 33, a 9th century copy of the New Testament.
33:08: So he was able to have an older manuscript at that point.
33:11: But again, it lacked the entire Book of Revelation, and there was some damage to the Gospels.
33:16: His third edition was in 1522.
33:25: So there are two more editions, 1527 and 1535.
33:31: However, the third edition was the basis for the next man whose name was Stephanus.
33:37: Stephanus carried on the tradition from Erasmus' third edition.
33:43: Stephanus begins with that and starts his editions.
33:49: His name is actually Robert Esteen, but he's known as Stephanus.
33:54: He was a scholar in Paris.
33:59: And using the text of Erasmus' third edition, Stephanus produced four more editions of the Greek New Testament in 1546, 1549, 1550, and 1551.
34:07: I'm not expecting you to write all this down.
34:08: If you want to try, you can, but I can't slow down enough to give them all to you.
34:12: Just know that there were four editions of Stephanus, and he expanded the available data for scholars and translators to use.
34:21: Now here's the thing.
34:22: 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.
34:32: His, in many ways, was the first truly critical text of the New Testament because he put in the margins the various readings.
34:42: Variant readings in our Bibles did not begin in the 1800s with Westcott, Hort, and Tischendorf.
34:50: Variant readings did not begin with the New International Version of the New American Standard Bible or any of those.
34:57: Variant readings were known about and studied during the time and prior to the time of the Reformation.
35:06: 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.
35:24: There was also the 16th century printed text known as the Complutensian Polyglot, which was a multiple translation version in one.
35:33: You know how you'll get sometimes an NIV, KJV in the same book? Well, that's called a polyglot, and they had that at that time.
35:40: Imagine the work that went into that.
35:44: It just boggles the mind, but it exists.
35:47: It's called the Complutensian Polyglot.
35:54: Complutensian, C-O-M-P-L-U-T-E-N-S-I-A-N, Complutensian Polyglot.
36:02: It was a 16th century printed text.
36:11: Again, we have five editions of Erasmus.
36:14: We have four of Stephanus, Stephanus basing his work on the third edition of Erasmus.
36:22: Then we have the introduction of Theodor Beza.
36:25: Now, if you know anything about the history of the Reformation, Theodor Beza was the successor to Calvin in Geneva, so Theodor Beza has some importance in Reformed theological history.
36:39: Theodor Beza was a scholar in Geneva who would ultimately become the successor to John Calvin.
36:44: I don't know why I just read that sentence.
36:45: I literally just said that.
36:47: Sorry.
36:49: 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.
37:08: Beza's primary work was not that of supplying new manuscript data, but rather of critically examining the data that his predecessors had provided.
37:17: 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.
37:25: It's by Luke Wayne on the history of the text of the King James.
37:29: 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.
37:38: They do a lot of good stuff, and we recommend them to you.
37:42: 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 before, 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.
38:20: Not one.
38:23: And I'll show it to you.
38:24: If you have your Bible, turn to Revelation 16, verse 5.
38:51: In Revelation chapter 16, verse 5, the King James reads, well, the phrase that is in question is the question, and shall be.
39:07: 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.
39:10: Mike, would you read Revelation 16, 5 for me? Okay.
39:24: Who was.
39:25: Who was.
39:28: Okay.
39:29: Who art and was and shall be.
39:31: Who was and shall be.
39:32: Okay.
39:33: Now, that sounds right.
39:35: That sounds like who are and was and shall be.
39:41: Somebody else read it from another version.
39:43: Go ahead, Bill.
39:44: Verse 5, right? Yep.
39:46: And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say, just who is and who was.
39:57: Okay.
39:57: All right.
39:58: The difference is the King James says, who are, who was, and who will be.
40:06: But the phrase, who will be, is not in any manuscript.
40:11: The phrase is a holy one.
40:16: And that's why it translates it as holy one here.
40:18: Who are, who was, the holy one.
40:20: That phrase, the holy one.
40:21: You say, well, that doesn't sound right.
40:23: Well, it doesn't matter if it sounds right.
40:25: But it matters what is true.
40:27: And what is true is this.
40:29: The King James reading is based on Theodore Bayes' 1598 edition of the Texas Receptus.
40:34: And that reading, Kai Ha Esaminas, does not appear in any existing manuscript.
40:40: Existing manuscripts all read Kai Ha Asias or Kai Asias.
40:49: They all say holy one.
40:51: None of them say and shall be.
40:52: No manuscript in history, no Greek manuscript in history says and shall be.
40:59: Now, it does say it in other places.
41:00: At the beginning of Revelation, who was and will be, it says in other places.
41:05: So, and this is Bayes' work.
41:11: He saw it.
41:13: He felt the need to change it because he didn't think it read like the others.
41:18: And he made the change.
41:20: We can see it in history.
41:21: We know where it came from because he harmonized it with Revelation 1, 4, 1-8, and 4-8.
41:27: Because those say was and shall be.
41:30: He added the phrase and shall be.
41:32: It is not in any Greek manuscript.
41:36: Bayes did this based upon his own speculation that this is what it should read.
41:42: Not because that's what it read.
41:43: That's not because he had any manuscript evidence.
41:45: You say it sounds like a conspiracy theory.
41:47: This is what he wrote.
41:48: He wrote that this, he had made an assumption based upon the fact that it says this in other places.
41:55: That must be what it says here.
41:57: And he changed it.
41:58: And there's been never, he assumed they would find Greek manuscript to support it.
42:02: He assumed at some point they're going to determine that that was the real reading.
42:06: We haven't.
42:08: Nobody has.
42:10: And so here's the key.
42:12: A lot of times when I have discussions with King James Onlius, and this came up on the podcast where I was interviewed, because the man interviewing me was a Byzantine Prioritist, which is not the same as a King James Onlius, but it's close.
42:22: The man interviewing me was a Byzantine Prioritist, and he said, Psalm chapter 12 says, God's word is pure, refined as gold refined in a fire tried seven times.
42:32: How can you say that these new translations are God's word when they have these variations? We can only have one translation that's right.
42:42: It's got to be the King James.
42:43: Now, that wasn't the argument he made, but he was saying that's an argument that has been made.
42:47: And I say that argument doesn't apply to the King James either, because if you take Psalm 12, which I don't think is about a written text anyway, but if you take Psalm 12 and apply it to the King James Bible, you run into a problem.
43:01: Number one is that the text that's based upon, I've just shown you, that the text that's based upon has some issues, some issues of history.
43:11: Number two, the King James Bible is translated in 1611, but people who carry a Bible today and they call it the King James Bible is not a 1611 King James Bible in general.
43:23: It's a 1769 Blaney revision of the King James.
43:27: And Blaney's revision of the King James is different than the 1611, and I can show you because I have a 1611.
43:34: I meant to bring it out.
43:35: I will go get it during the break.
43:36: I have a copy of the 1611 sitting on my desk.
43:39: In 2011, there was a huge 400-year celebration of the King James Version, and they sold printed copies of the original King James Version, and I have one sitting on my desk, and it's this thick and it's that big, but I'll show you what it looks like, and the readings are different than the 1769 version.
43:58: In fact, the 1769 version has two editions.
44:01: It has the Oxford edition and the Cambridge edition, and they are not the same.
44:06: So if your argument is the King James has to be right because it's the only one that hasn't been changed or hasn't been revised or hasn't been edited, that's an incorrect argument.
44:16: It's not based upon history or facts.
44:18: It's based upon a traditional understanding that this is what God gave us.
44:23: It's just not the facts.
44:26: Beza shows us here that he was willing to make a change, and it stuck, unfortunately.
44:36: Also, there are others like that, but that's the most famous one.
44:44: But the last thing in regard to the translators, the translators who translated the King James Bible, they're working from these printed editions.
44:52: They're not working from handwritten manuscripts.
44:53: The translators of the King James Bible are working from the works of Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza, all of which are printed texts based upon handwritten manuscripts.
45:04: The same way today, if they translate a Bible today, they're not translating from handwritten manuscripts.
45:08: They're translating from printed texts because that's what they have.
45:11: That's the same thing that Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza are all translating from printed texts, and the printed texts that they are translating from all are different.
45:22: None of them was exactly the same because, again, you don't make an edition of something without making a change to it.
45:28: So Stephanus had five editions.
45:31: I'm sorry, Erasmus had five editions.
45:33: Stephanus had four editions, and then you have Beza's work, and so you go down the line.
45:39: They still had to make decisions, and the original King James, and I have it again.
45:45: I can bring it in here and show you.
45:46: You can look, and there are marginal notes in the 1611 King James Bible where variant readings are in the 1611.
45:54: Now, they are not in the modern version, the modern King James, the one that's handed out and printed today, but they were there in 1611.
46:04: I can just open it and just flip it to you and show it to you.
46:07: So the history of this is not as simple as some people want it to be, and the argument is that the Textus Receptus, which is the result of this work, is the perfect Greek text.
46:24: But here's the last part of this.
46:26: I do need to move on because, again, I'm dealing with only one argument.
46:30: But let me give you a little history on what is the modern TR.
46:35: Because if you ask somebody the Textus Receptus, so you talk about the TR, you can order a TR.
46:43: You can go to the Trinitarian Bible Society.
46:44: You can order a blue-bound, case-bound Textus Receptus.
46:47: It's a Greek text.
46:48: You got one? You have one? Anybody? Does anybody have one? I didn't know if you might have one, Mike, have a Textus Receptus.
46:55: I know a lot of guys have them.
46:58: The blue, case-bound Textus Receptus, it is based on the work of a man named F.A.H.
47:06: Scrivener, and it was put together not in the 16th century, not in the 17th century, not in the 18th century.
47:13: It was put together in the 19th century, and it was put together based upon the readings that were chosen by the King James translators.
47:21: So it is a reverse Greek text.
47:24: Looking at what the King James translators chose, he produced a Greek text that would agree with it, and it does not have one manuscript in the world that reads exactly like it does.
47:37: It just doesn't exist.
47:40: Again, I sound like I'm being, like I'm building my case.
47:43: I am.
47:43: I'm building a case against this.
47:47: This is fine.
47:48: I don't care about this.
47:48: I care about this because it's not based on the history.
47:53: I'll just read this to you.
47:55: This is from TexasReceptusBibles.com, referring to Scrivener.
47:59: In the latter part of the 19th century, F.A.H.
48:02: Scrivener produced an edition of the Greek New Testament, which reflects the Textus Receptus underlying the English authorized version.
48:08: F.A.H.
48:08: Scrivener, who lived between 1813 and 1891, attempted to reproduce as accurately as possible the Greek text which underlies the authorized version of 1611.
48:21: You understand, he's working backwards now.
48:23: He's using the English text as his foundation and going back to the Greek and making the Greek agree with it.
48:29: So now if you buy that TR, you're buying a TR which readings were purposely chosen to agree with the King James Version.
48:40: That's backwards, but that's what it is.
48:44: And you can buy one.
48:45: Like I said, you can order one.
48:48: I want to read a little bit more of this.
48:50: It says, the authorized version was not translated from any one printed edition of the Greek text.
48:56: The authorized translators or authorized version translators relied heavily upon the work of William Tyndale, which we're going to talk about that in a minute, because Tyndale's translational methods were used, not his manuscripts, but he translated.
49:09: And upward of 90% of the King James Bible reads the exact same as Tyndale's.
49:17: And again, when we're talking about these differences, the differences are 1%.
49:21: Even in the differences between the modern versions and the King James, only about 2%.
49:26: We're still talking about a very small amount of information.
49:32: Anyway, the authorized translators relied heavily upon the work of William Tyndale and other editions of the English Bible.
49:38: Thus, there were places in it which were unclear what the Greek basis of the New Testament was.
49:42: Scribner, in his reconstructed and edited text, used as his starting point the Beza edition of 1598, identifying the places where the textus receptus or, excuse me, identifying the places where the English text had different readings from the Greek.
49:56: He examined 18 editions of the textus receptus, 18 editions of the textus receptus, 18.
50:01: Hear that again, because you'll hear people say, the textus receptus, the textus.
50:06: There's textus recepti.
50:09: There's not a textus receptus.
50:12: There's 18 editions of it or more.
50:15: There isn't just one.
50:18: We've already shown that.
50:19: We've got the work of three men going down the line.
50:25: Scribner, in his reconstructed, edited text, identified the starting point of Beza's edition of 1598, identified the places where the English text differed from the readings in the Greek.
50:34: He examined 18 editions of the textus receptus to find the correct Greek rendering and made the changes to his Greek text.
50:41: When he finished, he had produced an edition of the Greek New Testament, which more closely underlies the text of the authorized version than any one edition of the textus receptus.
50:51: He produced a Greek text to agree with the King James Bible.
50:57: So, yeah, that happened.
51:00: And so you have to ask, why? Why? Why would something like that happen? It happens because we have an a priori commitment to an English text.
51:10: So we're willing to go back and make the Greek agree with it.
51:14: That's backwards.
51:15: That is absolutely working backwards.
51:21: So that is, when I say the weaknesses in the manuscripts, that's what I'm talking about.
51:29: That's what I'm talking about.
51:32: Now, the next part of this, and this is from your textbook, I'm going to read a quote from your textbook.
51:38: It is also important to remember that the four most valuable witnesses to the New Testament text, which are Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and the Ephraim manuscript were not available when the King James translators was made.
51:51: So when you read in your modern Bible and it says the older manuscripts have this, it's talking about manuscripts from the first millennium.
52:00: The vast majority of manuscripts used for the King James are from the second millennium.
52:04: That's why it says the older manuscripts.
52:06: They are older.
52:07: There's no doubt about that.
52:12: It doesn't make them better necessarily, but they are older.
52:15: Now, some will say the older and better manuscripts, well, there's some debate about that because there's arguments about historicity and where it came from, those things.
52:23: But there's no doubt that they're older.
52:30: So the King James Version is working on a smaller number of manuscripts.
52:39: That's the first reason why I argue that it has weaknesses.
52:46: Again, some people get upset when you hear the word weaknesses, but that's what I mean.
52:51: Number two, the King James maintains readings.
52:57: I'll get that.
52:57: That's probably for me.
52:58: I'm just kidding.
53:00: Number two, the King James maintains readings, which some aren't going to like me say that, I'll say it, which are not part of the original autographs, which are not part of the original autographs.
53:14: Now, you may write that differently, which assumed to not be part of the original autographs.
53:18: The most obvious one to me is 1 John 5-7, and I'm very aware that entire books have been written for the purpose of defending 1 John 5-7.
53:33: But here is what the facts are.
53:38: This is known as the Comma Johannium.
53:40: It is one small line in 1 John 5-7 where the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one.
53:48: That sentence is in the King James Bible.
53:52: It is in the New King James Bible, but it's not in the NIV, the ESV, or any other modern translation.
53:59: And the reason why is because it appears in no Greek manuscript before the 13th century.
54:10: The 13th century.
54:11: It does not exist in any Greek manuscript or patristic writing or translation except for it is in the Latin.
54:19: We'll talk about that in a minute.
54:21: But it is not found in any Greek manuscript prior to the 13th century.
54:37: And I want to tell you why I believe it's in the King James.
54:40: You can do with all this information, do with it what you want.
54:43: This is what I know and this is what I believe.
54:48: Going back to Erasmus.
54:52: Quick pop quiz.
54:53: How many editions did Erasmus have? Which one was used by Stephanus? Third edition.
54:59: Very good.
55:01: The Comma Johannium was not in Erasmus' first edition.
55:06: It was not in his second edition because it wasn't in the Greek text.
55:12: It was not in his first edition.
55:14: It was not in his second edition.
55:17: But it was in the Latin Vulgate.
55:21: And the Latin Vulgate was the Bible of the church for 1,000 years.
55:27: And therefore, there was pressure from the church.
55:30: And remember, Desiderius Erasmus is Catholic.
55:34: So when we say the church, we're talking about the Catholic church.
55:37: Yes.
55:38: There was pressure from the Catholic church.
55:40: After his first edition appeared, there arose such a fervor over the absence of the comma that Erasmus needed to defend himself.
55:47: And he argued that he would put in the comma, that he could not put in the comma because he found no Greek manuscripts that included it.
55:56: So one was found.
55:58: Found.
56:00: Found.
56:02: Codex 61, which was dated to 1520.
56:10: Yeah, exactly.
56:12: Just, again.
56:14: Erasmus felt obliged to include the reading, and he included it in his third edition.
56:24: But in his annotations to his third edition, he doesn't protest the rendering in the text as though it were made to order, but he does defend himself from the charge of indolence, noting that he had taken care to find whatever manuscript he could for the production of his text.
56:42: In the final analysis, Erasmus altered the text because of political and theological and economic concerns.
56:49: He did not want his reputation ruined, nor his novum instrumentum, which is what he called his New Testament, to go unsold.
56:56: Therefore, it was included in the third edition.
57:00: Now, we can argue the history of the first John 5-7, but that's why it's in Erasmus' work.
57:06: It wasn't in the first.
57:07: It wasn't in the second.
57:08: He said, I'll put it in if you can find a manuscript.
57:10: Lo and behold, here's a manuscript.
57:12: We found one.
57:13: It just happens to be dated to the same time as now, but we found one.
57:20: Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but that don't pass the smell test, as they say.
57:27: But here's the other side of that.
57:32: I was asked the other day, I was asked on the podcast, I was asked, what of the three main variants, which three, where do you put them? Because there's three.
57:42: And there's others.
57:43: I mean, there's a bunch, but there's three main, like, argumentative ones.
57:46: First John 5-7, I mentioned to Mervyn.
57:49: I said, I look at it as a spectrum.
57:53: I say, in my estimation, there's no way, there's no reason to believe in the Kamiohanem as part of what John wrote.
57:59: I've never seen any evidence to believe that it is.
58:03: The Priccape Adultery is a little bit different because it's in a lot of manuscripts, but the story moves around.
58:10: In some manuscripts, it's in Luke.
58:12: In some manuscripts, it's in Acts.
58:15: And in some, it's at the end of John rather than at John 7.
58:19: So the story, I think the story's true.
58:21: I just don't think John wrote it.
58:22: I think it's part of oral tradition that made its way into the text.
58:25: So I handle it a little differently.
58:28: And the Longer Ending of Mark is more difficult because there's very few manuscripts that miss the Longer Ending of Mark, so you have to treat it a little bit more, a little bit differently.
58:37: Because I would say there's a lot more, there's more textual history for the Longer, much more textual history for the Longer Ending of Mark.
58:44: And this gets to the issue of when you hear somebody say the King James represents the majority of manuscripts.
58:50: Not here it don't.
58:52: In 1 John 5-7, it's nowhere close to representing the majority of manuscripts.
58:58: Neither in Revelation 16-5 because in Revelation 16-5, no manuscript has it.
59:03: And in 1 John 5-7, only a few manuscripts, late, late, possibly produced for the purpose of, have it.
59:12: But it's not in the other manuscripts.
59:15: It's just not there.
59:18: And therefore, the defense of it, to me, it's working backwards, as I said, working backwards.
59:28: So are there texts in the King James that should not be there? I argue yes, based upon these things.
59:35: And the two most just obvious to me is 1 John 5-7, Revelation 16-5.
59:40: At least not the whole text, just a word.
59:42: Revelation 16-5, it's literally asaminos.
59:46: It's one phrase.
59:48: It shouldn't be there.
59:51: So notice what I didn't do tonight.
59:53: We're fixing to take our break.
59:54: Notice what I didn't do tonight.
59:55: I didn't make my argument about the King James based on archaic words.
01:00:00: That's usually the one that people, you know, when it comes to the King, oh, I don't like the King James because it uses, you know, pisses against the wall or something crazy.
01:00:07: You know, like there are phrases in the King James that we just don't use anymore, right? But it's in the King James, right? And there are people who make that their argument, that we shouldn't use the King James because it uses archaic language.
01:00:20: We could talk about that.
01:00:21: And if you have questions about it, I'm happy to talk to you about it.
01:00:23: But I didn't make my argument based on that.
01:00:25: And I didn't make my argument based upon my argument that all of the new versions are superior because I don't believe that either.
01:00:32: I said we should use all of them and we should compare all of them and we should be fair and be honest about every textual variant and look at its history.
01:00:39: And as I said, I think there's places in the King James where the variant would support the King James and I think there's places where the variant doesn't.
01:00:47: And therefore, I think we should be honest.
01:00:49: This is taking an eclectic approach to textual variation.
01:00:54: Reason eclecticism is my position because there's Byzantine priority, there's majority priority, there is TR only, and then there's reason eclecticism.
01:01:03: That's the four views, and I happen to have the last one.
01:01:06: There's more views than that, actually, but that's most likely for you to run into.
01:01:12: In Byzantine priority and majority, there's arguments about that.
01:01:16: But here's the thing.
01:01:17: When somebody says the TR represents the majority, there are 1,800 plus differences between the TR that is currently in use, the TR that I told you about, Scribner's TR, there's 1,800 differences between the in-use TR and what is known as the majority text.
01:01:33: Over 1,800 differences.
01:01:36: So it's not the same.
01:01:38: When somebody says we use this because it's the majority, it's not.
01:01:41: It's just, again, it's not the case.
01:01:44: All right, so we're going to take a break.
01:01:46: I've got to get some water and relax.
01:01:48: You guys have five minutes and we'll be back.
01:01:57: All right, we are back.
01:01:58: And so for our last, I mean, I have more, but I feel like we've sort of exhausted the textual question.
01:02:10: Well, first, anybody have any questions on what I've said? You want to throw out a question or an issue? Maybe I've misstated something.
01:02:21: And, again, I'm not perfect.
01:02:25: I know my limitations.
01:02:27: And I still didn't go get the 1611.
01:02:31: It's still sitting on my desk.
01:02:34: If you don't mind, yeah, it's actually you'll see it.
01:02:38: It's pretty obvious sitting there on my desk.
01:02:41: If you don't mind.
01:02:42: Thanks, Billy Ray.
01:02:45: So the last part of class, what I wanted to do is I actually want to address some of the arguments for the King James because I've made my sort of case for the weaknesses.
01:02:59: I want to address some of the arguments that are made and give the way that I would respond.
01:03:07: Thank you.
01:03:09: By the way, this is the 400th anniversary edition of the King James Bible.
01:03:14: I'm pretty sure the pages were shrunk.
01:03:17: It's a printed text, but it's for the sake of money.
01:03:21: I'm sure it wasn't this size when they printed it in 1611.
01:03:24: It's like this big.
01:03:25: But you can come and see.
01:03:28: If you want to see after class, you can see the marginal notes here.
01:03:32: They're, I mean, literally on almost every page there are marginal notes.
01:03:36: Some of them are alternate readings.
01:03:38: Some of them are translational differences where it said it could be translated this way or translated this way.
01:03:45: Some of them are cross-references.
01:03:50: Like this here is a cross-reference for 1 King 8, and it's in the Song of Solomon.
01:03:56: I'm sorry, no, 2 Chronicles.
01:03:59: So you can see that there as well.
01:04:01: So there are those.
01:04:06: Also, remember the 1611 King James Bible did have the apocrypha in it.
01:04:10: That was part of what was translated.
01:04:12: Because why? It was in the Latin, and it was believed to be part of God's word.
01:04:18: So we talked about that in a previous class.
01:04:21: But this is a facsimile copy, or not facsimile, but a photocopy of what the text would have looked like.
01:04:28: You'll notice such as things like Fs don't look like Fs.
01:04:32: They look like Ss.
01:04:33: There are certain things that are just different ways of forming letters.
01:04:39: But that wouldn't make it right or wrong.
01:04:41: That's just a historical difference.
01:04:44: So let's talk about what objections are often raised by those in the King James movement.
01:04:54: Number one, God has promised to preserve his word.
01:04:58: If God has not preserved his word in the King James Version, how has he preserved it? That is one common question.
01:05:06: And to answer this question, we have to first realize the foundation of the question.
01:05:12: The question assumes that the only way to preserve the Bible is to have one perfect, absolutely perfect text to go from that undergoes no changes and remains intact in the same condition in which it was originally.
01:05:28: And if that's your definition, then the King James doesn't qualify either.
01:05:37: If someone says, how has God preserved his word? The answer is that he has preserved it in its original languages through a tenacious manuscript tradition, one which has been passed down through the generations.
01:05:49: And now we have over 5,000 of handwritten Greek manuscripts along with printed texts based on those handwritten manuscripts.
01:05:57: And here's the beauty of it.
01:06:00: Had the Bible been kept in one place by one group of people over the last two millennia, it would easily have been subject to corruption by that group.
01:06:13: But because the Bible very early, the New Testament specifically, very early was translated and quickly disseminated within the Mediterranean world and even up into the European world and down into Africa, because that happened, there was no way to make wholesale changes.
01:06:34: No way to make wholesale changes because the copies have already gone out.
01:06:38: It's like posting a video online.
01:06:40: Once it's posted, you can't edit it because it's out there.
01:06:43: You can take it down, but somebody's got it because it's out there.
01:06:48: And once it was out there, it was out there.
01:06:51: And here's where it's different from the Koran.
01:06:54: The Koran, which is currently in use by Muslims, is what is known as the Uthmanic revision.
01:07:01: The Uthmanic revision was a revision of the writings of Muhammad, which took place after his death, and the manuscripts from prior to that were destroyed.
01:07:13: So there is no way of knowing if the Uthmanic revision accurately represents what Muhammad wrote or not because there was a revision that was made after his death and the manuscript copies were destroyed.
01:07:26: Now, some evidence has come out.
01:07:28: Some evidence has come out because you'll hear Muslims will say our text has no variance.
01:07:39: It's not exactly true.
01:07:40: There are some variants in some of the manuscripts, but it's not like what we have because our manuscripts went everywhere, copied by professionals and by peasants, copied on leather and copied on papyri.
01:07:55: That's how God preserved his word, vast amount of copies over a very short amount of time.
01:08:04: I mean, think about it.
01:08:04: Why do we still have copies from the 2nd, 3rd century, 4th century? Why do they still exist? Because they were going out like gangbusters.
01:08:13: They should not still exist.
01:08:17: Papyrus should not exist, but we have papyri fragments.
01:08:21: Well, we have some manuscript pieces, but we don't have like we have with the codices because the codices are vellum.
01:08:31: But still, it shouldn't exist, but it does.
01:08:36: Second objection, very common objection.
01:08:39: The King James Bible was influential in the conversion and instruction of billions of Christians since its publication or billions of people since its publication.
01:08:48: How can you question a Bible with 400 years of history? Now, that is a very common argument.
01:08:56: In fact, if you watch the video that I'm going to send to you from the John Ankerberg show, which was in 1993, one of the supporters of the King James Bible said almost those very words.
01:09:07: He said, it has been the standard for 400 years.
01:09:12: In fact, I listened to a debate a couple of weeks ago.
01:09:17: I was doing a funeral out of town, and I had to drive to Lake City and back, so I had a two-hour drive.
01:09:23: So any time I have a two-hour drive, I usually listen to a debate.
01:09:26: That's about how long they take.
01:09:27: And I listened to a debate where a man was arguing for the King James, and I just was wanting to hear his position.
01:09:35: And Jack Mormon was his name, not Mormon like the Mormons, but M-O-O-R-M-A-N.
01:09:40: And Jack Mormon said, I love a standard, and the King James gives me a standard, and you don't know where you stand without a standard.
01:09:47: He must have said that six times.
01:09:48: I still remember it.
01:09:49: I love a standard.
01:09:50: King James is a standard.
01:09:51: You know where you stand if you have a standard.
01:09:53: And that was his position.
01:09:54: This is the standard.
01:09:55: It's been the standard for 400 years.
01:09:56: Why change a standard? The problem with that argument is that's the same argument that was used against Erasmus regarding the Latin, because when Erasmus was producing his first edition of the Greek New Testament based upon the handwritten manuscripts, when he was doing that, there were people who said, we have used the Latin for 1,100 years.
01:10:18: Why would we change? The Latin has been responsible for the conversion and instruction of countless people for 1,100 years.
01:10:26: Why change? So the same arguments that are used by King James Bible to say it's 400 years, why change, are the same arguments that were used for the Latin 400 years ago.
01:10:43: Here's an interesting one, and this is just one that I've heard, and that is that the newer translations are copyrighted, which means they're owned by companies, and therefore they're open to corruption because of copyright.
01:10:57: The King James Version is not copyrighted, and therefore it is free from motivation.
01:11:03: Now, I might surprise you.
01:11:05: I sort of agree with this one in one sense.
01:11:09: I believe that the reason why we have so many English translations is because publishing houses did not want to pay royalties to other translations, and therefore they produced their own translations so they could produce their own study Bibles, their own study material with their own translations.
01:11:28: So, for instance, Crossway doesn't have to pay Thomas Nelson for the New King James because Crossway has the ESV, and NIV, which is Zondervan, doesn't have to pay Crossway for the ESV because they have the NIV.
01:11:43: I believe that, I'm not saying it's a scandal, but I am saying money is a motivator, and I do believe that there are some, part of the reason why we have so many translations is because there is a need financially, and I don't agree with it, but it doesn't mean the translations themselves are bad.
01:12:04: I really hope you guys, I pray, if you don't watch anything else, I know it's three hours long, and you're probably just saying you're nuts.
01:12:12: Where am I going to find three hours? If you watch Titanic, you can watch this.
01:12:17: The John Ankerberg show from 1993 had three men representing the King James Bible, but three different positions.
01:12:26: One was a textual advocate.
01:12:27: Remember I said there were different King James? One was Sam Gipp, King James-inspired.
01:12:30: One was a man representing Dale Ripplinger's position.
01:12:34: One was a man representing the TR, representing the text, the Greek underline.
01:12:41: On the modern translation side, it had four guys, and the reason why is because they had the NIV, the man, the general editor of the NIV is on this panel.
01:12:51: Blows my mind.
01:12:52: The dude who is like behind the scenes of the NIV is there.
01:12:56: You can see his face.
01:13:00: You're not a nerd if you don't think that's cool.
01:13:02: I think it's cool.
01:13:03: You see the guy.
01:13:04: Arthur Farrstad, the man responsible for being a part of the new King James is there.
01:13:12: Arthur Farrstad is there in this conversation.
01:13:17: Dan Wallace is there.
01:13:18: If that don't get you excited and you don't know anything about Greek history, Dan Wallace is the man, and he's there, and he's got the coolest mustache, and his hair is still there.
01:13:26: It's awesome.
01:13:27: Again, this is 30 years ago.
01:13:28: My point being, if you can watch this video, you'll hear the best both sides have to offer, and you can decide for yourself.
01:13:39: You can literally hear the arguments go, and they're kind to each other.
01:13:42: They're not ugly.
01:13:43: They don't yell.
01:13:45: It ain't the Jerry Springer show.
01:13:47: It ain't.
01:13:48: They're very reasoned.
01:13:50: James White is there.
01:13:51: He has hair, his Coke bottle glasses, and he wasn't even a doctor.
01:13:56: Everybody else, Dr.
01:13:58: Sam Gipp, Dr.
01:13:59: this, Dr.
01:13:59: that, and Mr.
01:14:00: White.
01:14:01: This is before he had his doctorate.
01:14:02: This is a long time ago, but they're all there having this conversation.
01:14:06: It took three hours long, and it was several episodes.
01:14:10: I'm going to post the link.
01:14:12: If you don't watch anything else, watch that.
01:14:16: But the idea of copyright, anything prior to 1922 is not subject to copyright anymore.
01:14:25: It's just the way the law works.
01:14:28: So this is simply because of the lack of copyright laws at that time.
01:14:35: So anybody says, well, the King James is not copyrighted.
01:14:37: Okay, well, it wouldn't really be subject to copywriting.
01:14:45: But I will say this just to add to the thought.
01:14:51: The King James Version is actually copyrighted under the Crown Copyright of England.
01:14:55: Therefore, the copyright of the King James does fall under the jurisdiction of England.
01:14:58: It is technically copyrighted in England.
01:15:01: It's just not something you're going to get punished for using.
01:15:04: It doesn't mean there wasn't.
01:15:06: By the way, who authorized it? King James.
01:15:13: It was authorized for what? It was for use, right? It was authorized.
01:15:16: It had a right to be published, and the rights to it were owned by the Crown.
01:15:23: So to say it never had a copyright, well, laws are different now, but it certainly had an authority.
01:15:33: Here's one that Mike touched on this last week, and this is an objection that comes up a lot.
01:15:41: And that is that the earlier manuscripts, such as Sinaiticus specifically, but also Alexandrinus and Vaticanus, that the earlier manuscripts were compiled and corrupted by heretics.
01:15:56: Compiled and corrupted by heretics.
01:15:59: I'm sorry, excuse me.
01:16:01: Were written by heretics and compiled by corrupt men.
01:16:07: And you'll hear people talk about Westcott and Hort, and they'll talk about these men were not good men.
01:16:17: But here's the problem with that argument.
01:16:25: We are not reliable.
01:16:26: Even if you could prove that Westcott and Hort kicked puppies and Curt Allen baptized cats, whatever you can prove about these men, the texts are open for everybody to study now.
01:16:43: You can go online and you can look at Sinaiticus yourself.
01:16:48: You don't have to have these men tell you anything.
01:16:52: All of the evidence is there for everyone to see.
01:16:56: So the argument that these men made these changes and made these corruptions, one, it's just not based in reality, and two, we have the manuscripts to see for ourselves.
01:17:07: I can walk into my office, I can pull Philip Comfort's textual encyclopedia down, which has an encyclopedic study of almost every major variant in the New Testament.
01:17:18: I would say every major variant and most of the non-major variants.
01:17:22: It's this thick.
01:17:23: You can open it up.
01:17:24: You can look and see.
01:17:27: For instance, Revelation 16.5, what manuscript is it in? Why is it introduced into the text? It's right there.
01:17:40: So demonizing Constantine von Tischendorf or Curt Allen or any of these men is useless.
01:17:47: It's called ad hominem.
01:17:49: And if you study anything about logic, the first logical thing you don't do is you don't attack the man, you attack the argument.
01:17:58: And when we attack the man, we demonstrate our position to be faulty.
01:18:09: Now another subset of this is that the manuscripts themselves, and this one you'll hear if you watch the video, if you watch the three-hour video.
01:18:20: Again, I'm not trying to sell it to you, but you'll hear this.
01:18:22: One of the guys said, the Bible, I think Sam Gipps said this, he said, the Bible tells us that Egypt is bad because Egypt, you know, out of Egypt, I call my son all these different texts.
01:18:39: Like it'll say Egypt is, they went down to Egypt, they went up to Jerusalem.
01:18:42: He pointed out several different things.
01:18:44: And he said, and where did these new manuscripts come from? Egypt.
01:18:52: Here's the thing.
01:18:59: While the discovery of many of these manuscripts has been Egyptian because Alexandria, that's why we call it the Alexandrian text type, many of them, there is no proof that that's where they were written.
01:19:17: Remember, these manuscripts are copied and sent all over the world, taken all over the world.
01:19:22: And the same readings in these manuscripts, many of them are now being found in other manuscripts in other places.
01:19:28: So to say that this was some kind of Alexandrian corruption based upon some mythical Egyptian evil that was only in Egypt, the heretics were only in Egypt, and they made these corruptions, first of all, it doesn't make sense on a practical level because whatever corruptions you argue, nothing changes an essential doctrine of the text.
01:19:53: If you go back to my variant class two weeks ago, what did I say? The vast majority of textual variation is either meaningless or unviable.
01:20:03: Meaningless means it doesn't change the meaning of the text, whether it's Christ Jesus or Jesus Christ, that's a variant, but it doesn't matter because it doesn't change the meaning.
01:20:10: Or if it says the Lord Jesus Christ or if it just says Jesus Christ or if it just says Christ, it doesn't change the meaning, but that's all a variant.
01:20:17: That's a meaningless variant.
01:20:19: And then you have, on the other side, what we would say are unviable variants.
01:20:26: Revelation 16.5, that's an unviable variant.
01:20:28: It does not have historic viability.
01:20:31: It cannot be part of the original.
01:20:32: If it is, there's no reason to trust anything in the handwritten manuscripts because if something can be not there and magically produced 1,600 years later, then we have no reason to trust the manuscripts at all.
01:20:45: That's my argument for 1 John 5.7 because it ain't in the manuscripts until the 13th century.
01:20:49: If it weren't there and then it comes into the manuscripts, how was it lost? Did no one see it for 1,300 years? Why didn't Athanasius use it when he defended the Trinity? I asked Thomas Ross that.
01:21:06: Thomas Ross is a King James advocate.
01:21:08: I interviewed him on my show, and I asked him, I said, why is it that Athanasius, in his defense of the Trinity, did not use 1 John 5.7? It says, there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit.
01:21:19: These three are one.
01:21:20: That's like a slam dunk.
01:21:22: That's like, oh, Jordan fades back.
01:21:23: That's a slam dunk for Trinitarianism.
01:21:27: Not one early church father who was defending the Trinity used that text.
01:21:37: All of this, and Thomas Ross told me, well, I don't believe Athanasius is part of the true church.
01:21:45: Athanasius, the man who stood against the Arians and the Arian controversy in the 4th century, the man who literally, the phrase, Athanasius contramundum, Athanasius against the world, that man, not part of the true church.
01:22:01: Again, because we have an a priori position, we have a position we've already determined is true.
01:22:06: Everything else has to be determined by that.
01:22:11: That's a problem.
01:22:13: That's a problem.
01:22:17: So what we have now, because when I say, well, you have the Alexander manuscripts, the Western manuscripts, the majority manuscripts, the Byzantine, and the TR.
01:22:25: What we have now, actually, is we have all of the manuscripts that we can look at in our apparatuses and things that we have, tools that we can now see what's the most likely reading based upon several factors, several factors such as factors like conflation, textual emendation, accidental exclusion, and inclusion.
01:22:52: I showed you this back in our Old Testament class.
01:22:56: Remember in the Old Testament class I showed you how one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Deuteronomy Scroll, had a portion from Deuteronomy and Exodus put together? I don't remember if you guys were here for that, but in one of the scrolls that was found in the Dead Sea Scroll, the portion about the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy included a portion from Exodus that wasn't a part of Deuteronomy.
01:23:17: Why? That's called expansion, and it's something that does happen.
01:23:21: It's a scribal error.
01:23:24: Expansion and conflation happens, and we see it.
01:23:28: When it starts, this is why you'll hear someone say, well, the TR has this many more Greek words than the eclectic text.
01:23:36: Well, yeah, it certainly has this many more words, because in some places where it says Jesus, in other manuscripts it'll say Christ Jesus, and in other manuscripts it'll say the Lord Christ Jesus, and in other ones it'll say the Lord Christ Jesus, Son of God.
01:23:49: And by then you've increased the one phrase.
01:23:52: Six different words are added.
01:23:55: You understand the difference? So the argument that these texts were written by heretics and uncovered by corrupt men is not a reasonable argument, in my opinion.
01:24:15: And here's the other thing.
01:24:17: I know we've got to finish, so I'll make it clear.
01:24:20: Desiderius Erasmus is the fountainhead of the TR.
01:24:23: I think I showed that earlier, right? It was his editions that Stephanas used, Stephanas, Baza used.
01:24:28: Desiderius Erasmus, fountainhead of the TR.
01:24:31: Desiderius Erasmus was a Roman Catholic humanist who argued against the Protestants and wrote against Martin Luther.
01:24:42: So if you want to take issue with somebody, if you want to say there's a man we can attack, I don't.
01:24:49: I think what he did was awesome.
01:24:52: I look at his historic situation, and I think, you know, he did a lot of awesome things, even though he was wrong about some things.
01:25:03: He has a phrase, and some of you maybe have seen this.
01:25:07: It's attributed to him.
01:25:10: He says, when I have money, I buy books, and if I have any left over, I buy food and clothes.
01:25:18: So Erasmus was a brilliant man.
01:25:20: I don't take anything away from him.
01:25:22: But historically, Roman Catholic, humanist, which is not the same as modern humanism, but humanist scholar, meaning he believed in the importance of ancient languages and things like that.
01:25:33: So he wasn't as bad as a modern humanist, but he was a Roman Catholic humanist and an opposer, a hard opposer of the Reformation.
01:25:41: And he and Martin Luther debated one another, and it's in the book, The Freedom of the Will.
01:25:48: Bondage, I'm sorry, you're right.
01:25:49: Freedom of the Will is Jonathan Edwards.
01:25:50: Thank you.
01:25:50: Bondage of the Will.
01:25:53: So in the end, where do we find ourselves? Well, if you prefer the King James, God bless you.
01:25:57: I think it's wonderful.
01:25:59: I think it sounds great.
01:26:00: I think it's certainly not something that I would make you say, don't use it because of this variant or whatever.
01:26:09: I would never do that.
01:26:12: But the danger lies in someone who would say, if you don't use the King James, you're wrong.
01:26:20: Because I think that's unfair to history.
01:26:23: I think it's unfair to the men who have done great work in modern translations.
01:26:31: And next week for our final class, we are actually going to study the variation in translation and why certain translations are better than others.
01:26:42: Because even though I'm not saying you should use the King James necessarily, I would say this, the King James is superior to many modern translations.
01:26:54: And if you had a choice between this and many of these over here, just go with this.
01:27:00: So don't take anything I've said tonight to be a shot to say I hate it.
01:27:05: Because some people, oh, he's a Bible hater, he hates King James.
01:27:07: No, I'm trying to be fair to everything.
01:27:11: And if I only had one choice and it was between the King James and the Message Bible, there's no question.
01:27:19: Even something like the New Living Translation, because I think the King James is more faithful to the literal rendering.
01:27:30: I just want the original King James because it had the textual notes.
01:27:34: All right, guys.
01:27:35: If you have questions, send them to Brother Mike.
01:27:40: I meant the other Mike, not that Mike.
01:27:43: Seriously, though, and I'm going to give some more information after we finish.
01:27:46: We need to pray for our brother who was here teaching last week.
01:27:49: And I'll share more about that once we finish.
01:27:51: So let's pray.
01:27:53: Father, I thank you for your word.
01:27:55: I thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight to talk about the history of the text.
01:28:00: I pray that I've been faithful to the truth.
01:28:02: And anywhere I've been unfaithful, Lord, I pray that we point it out so I can correct it.
01:28:06: And, Lord, that your people might be edified by it.
01:28:09: In Jesus' name, amen.
01:28:10: All right, real quick.
01:28:11: Here are the three videos, and I will post these.
01:28:14: I did a podcast on the preface to the King James version.
01:28:18: That one you would do well because the King James translators would not be King James only.
01:28:23: Yeah, that's in the preface.
01:28:25: Number two, James White and Steven Anderson did a two-and-a-half-hour discussion about this sitting on a couch, and it's awesome.
01:28:31: And they didn't argue.
01:28:32: They didn't fuss.
01:28:32: They didn't cuss.
01:28:33: It was just a great conversation.
01:28:35: It's a two-and-a-half-hour conversation.
01:28:36: Last but not least, the John Ankerberg Show.
01:28:38: If you watch it, you get extra credit.
01:28:39: It won't matter, but you'll still get extra credit because it's good stuff.
01:28:42: 1,000 points.
01:28:43: 1,000 points.
01:28:44: Thanks.