Call this is an update of the post I wrote on Thursday, Does the New King James Version Deviate from the Textus Receptus, the Text Behind the King James Version?  Mark Ward wrote Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible, which he said was a different approach to the English translation issue.  King James Version (KJV) Only folks of whatever stripe weren’t going to change based on reason of the underlying text, because it’s too difficult for them.  He thinks they’ll move from the King James Version to a modern version based on readability, which is his stated motive, that is, getting them to move to a modern version.

I would probably want to be called a “One Bible” man (not KJVO), since there is only one Bible.  God gave it to us in one set of exact words in Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament and Greek in the New Testament.  Scripture teaches a one Bible position.  That one Bible can be translated into any language and even be updated in a particular language, such as English.  The King James Version is an update.  It could be updated again.  There would still only be one Bible.  God wrote one.  One.  I’m more concerned about the one Bible than I am about the update.  Some either don’t care or don’t seem to care about that same concern of mine.  Mark Ward is one of those.  He says he doesn’t care.

Since there is one Bible, it can’t change.  Changing it would make it different, not the one Bible.  This seems simple, but it is still missed.  Enter this New King James Version (NKJV) issue.

Ward has been doing a series at his blog answering the objections to the thesis of his book.  I didn’t know he was doing it, but I check on the blog, SharperIron, every day, and they linked to one of his posts in which he made the following point.  King James Version advocates, who won’t follow Ward’s desires for them to move to a modern version, say that the NKJV deviates from the same underlying original language text as the KJV, when it doesn’t.  The NKJV translators said they didn’t deviate, he purported, and they not only have not deviated, but the KJV advocates don’t have any list of deviations as proof.

Mark Ward starts off his essay by saying that the above KJV advocates are sinning.  He charges us with sin.  Here are the two sentences:

I am going to charge my theological opponents with sin—though a sin of omission rather than of commission. But I can’t avoid it: the KJV-Only movement as a whole, and many individuals within it, are not telling the truth, and the leaders at least should know better.

Maybe I’m a leader.  I’m sinning, he says.  I want to confess the sin.  It’s interesting here, because I’ve thought the opposite as Ward.  I have seen some of the NKJV translators as sinning.  They know they did deviate from the underlying text of the NKJV and then said they didn’t.  When asked, they’ve said they didn’t.  It might be a Clintonian lie, it’s all a matter of what deviation is.

Years ago, I provided a short list of deviations, almost as a test case. 

I deleted the rest of this post, because Mark Ward posted my comment with the list of deviations in his comment section and he has also answered that post.  I am respecting the work that he and others have done there, and I will be writing an answer to it soon, maybe as I write this edit.