What's the Big Deal with King James Onlyism? Part 2

Antioch, Syria, and the Appeal to New Testament Origins

What do you know about from the Bible? What do you know about Antioch and Syria? I think it was the place where the disciples were first called Christians. Absolutely. Our name Christian comes from Antioch.

It was also the head of the New Testament Church. When the Apostle Paul, when he went out on a missionary journey, he left from Antioch. When he came back, he came back to Antioch. That was the center of New Testament Christianity.

In fact, many of the originals that we have today may have been penned there.

Originals? Did he just say some of the originals that we have today may have been penned there? We don't have any originals. In fact, the earliest truly Byzantine manuscripts are four centuries down the road.

We have some gospel manuscripts from around that time period. But originals? We don't have originals. I have no idea what he's referring to. This is a part of the King James only argument that if it's from Antioch, it's good.

If it's from Alexandria, it's bad. Again, the fact of the matter is we don't know. No one put a time stamp on things. It's not like an email where it says you can trace the headers or something like that.

Very rarely do we have colophons or notes that identify the dating of the manuscript, the origination, where it was done, who did it, anything like that at all. Especially in those early periods. So it's a meaningless thing to say that we have originals today that were written at Antioch.

And by the way, the use of the term Christian was probably not a positive thing at Antioch. There were heresies. There was compromise of the gospel at Antioch. This whole idea of Antioch good, Alexandria bad, not only is it not biblically sustainable, but historically it is not sustainable.

Because as I mentioned, there were lots of folks who flourished in Egypt whose theology was really bad. But there were lots of folks who flourished everywhere in the Roman Empire whose theology was bad, including in Antioch.

And in fact, there were some Christological weaknesses amongst people in Antioch. So do we automatically assume that if we even could trace a manuscript to Antioch specifically, at that time period, in that early time period, which we really can't, do we automatically assume that the manuscript is to take on the errors, sort of a genetic fallacy here, the errors of people who lived at that time?

Again, this is not how you do serious history. This is how you substantiate a tradition. And that's what King James Onlyism is. It's a human tradition, a modern human tradition, and history is now being made to try to serve that modern human tradition.

The Number of Greek New Testament Manuscripts

All right, today in existence on this planet are 5909 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Some entire books, some pieces of manuscript the size of this sugar pack. The vast majority read with what is known as the Texas Receptus.

That is the Greek that comes out of Antioch.

Okay, that number is a little high. The number is between 56 and 57, 57 and a half, as far as 57, 150, around that area. The reason being, the number keeps changing. And the reason the number keeps changing is, A, we continue to have new manuscripts being found.

The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, Dan Wallace and the guys doing a great work, they found, I don't know, 70 some odd just recently. But also, a part of that review process and discovery process tells us that some of the manuscripts that are in one library are actually part of manuscripts that are in another library.

And they've been listed separately before, and now you start photographing and you go, hey, wait a minute, this fits here, oh, this is one manuscript. And so then the number goes back down, because now it doesn't actually change how much of the New Testament we have witness of there, but it does change the number of actual manuscripts.

So that's one of the reasons, is we're combining some that we thought were separated and finding new ones. So, number 59 .9, a little bit high. Anyway, this idea that the Antioch manuscripts are the TR is utterly false.

Completely unsubstantiatable on any historical foundation whatsoever. The true statement would be that the majority of manuscripts found that we have that date after 1000 AD are Byzantine in their character.

And that makes sense. When you think about what happened in history, you think about the fact that the Western Church abandons Greek and adopts Latin as its primary language. The Eastern Church is constricted down to the area around Byzantium, Constantinople, modern day Istanbul, because of what happens in the 7th century, and that is the Islamic expansion from 632 to 732.

All over North Africa, up into Spain, Portugal, the Holy Lands, all these areas, Islam has now taken over in those areas. And there was an impact upon the production of New Testament manuscripts in those areas, because there was an impact upon the Christian population in those areas.

And so, after AD 1000, the majority of the manuscripts that we have, and a good 90 of all manuscripts we have, are Byzantine in character. That is not the Texas Receptus. The Texas Receptus is also Byzantine in character, but the TR has many unique readings in it.

And remember, keep one fact in mind, always ask King James Only advocates. Because see, what King James Only advocates do is, and sometimes they will borrow Byzantine priority arguments or majority text arguments to make it look like their text has that kind of support.

Remember, the Texas Receptus here, this is the one that underlies the King James, or actually comes from the King James, as we explained in the first video. 1 ,800 differences, almost 2 ,000 differences between this and what's called the majority text.

And so, there are unique readings in the TR that are in the King James. And this is how you can detect a King James Onlyist, is when you find a reading where the Texas Receptus goes off on its own. It sometimes has no manuscript evidence behind it at all.

Goes completely against the Byzantine manuscripts. In fact, ironically, goes against the very manuscripts that Sam Gipp is claiming came from Antioch. Will Sam Gipp change the King James to match those manuscripts?

He will not. That shows that they're using these arguments, but they don't really believe them. Because it really doesn't matter where these manuscripts came from. In fact, to be honest with you, to a Rachmanite like Sam Gipp, it doesn't matter what these Greek manuscripts say at all.

There is one inspired, infallible translation, one language at one time, and right now it's the King James version of the Bible. That's what Sam Gipp said in 1995. So, the reality is, to say that the Texas Receptus, a text that in this form that it has today, did not come into existence until the translation of the New Testament of the King James itself.

Not a single manuscript has ever been found that matches this identically. This was not taken from a text. This is an eclectic text. This is a compilation drawn from seven printed manuscripts, which were drawn from a number of handwritten manuscripts.

That's what it is. So, to say the TR is what came from Antioch, just simply has no meaningful historical basis to it at all. The facts are totally against what Sam Gipp is saying. We'll continue our examination and refutation of the many errors in this King James only video in the next segment.

Thanks for watching.