Years ago, as a member of Lehigh Valley Baptist Church, I was introduced to the Scriptural pattern of doing evangelistic Bible studies with the lost as well as simply preaching the gospel to them at their doors. There are a number of good evangelistic Bible studies that have been written; the ones available here are in use in a number of churches in the United States and internationally. Video presentations of these Bible studies are now becoming available. If you use these studies in your church already, the video presentations can help people become skilled in teaching others one-on-one. They also can help with those who you may not be able to do one-on-one studies. If you use different evangelistic Bible studies, these video presentations may serve as a supplement that you can offer seekers after truth.
To that end, please note the video for study #1: “What is the Bible?” Study #1A deals with the inspiration of Scripture while 1B deals with preservation and canonicity. Part #1A had an issue and is getting reprocessed to go live, so part 1B is here first; you will survive if you view them in the reverse order. The studies can be accessed on the Bible studies page on my website here or on YouTube (link to part 1B) as well as through the embedded video below. I would encourage you to “like” the video on YouTube as well as commenting on it both there and here if you believe it contains good content.
Study #1B: Preservation and Canonicity
The studies can be downloaded as a Word document for use in your Baptist church here.
By the way, if you have heard the canard that no two Biblical NT manuscripts contain the same text, note that the video displays copies of several MSS that are identical to the letter over the course of entire Biblical books.
By the way, if you have heard the canard that no two Biblical NT manuscripts contain the same text, note that the video displays copies of several MSS that are identical to the letter over the course of entire Biblical books.
Brother Ross, do you believe God preserved His Word in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek as originally written, or do you believe He preserved it in English?
And has your position on this question changed over time?
Dear Bro Gleason,
I believe the position advocated in Thou Shalt Keep Them, that jots and tittles, original language words, are preserved (Matthew 5:18). I also have a knee-jerk reaction to defend the translation choices in the KJV, although I have no specific text to argue for that, other than the principle of church recognition and providential guidance in all things, then much more so in translation of God's Word and in the world language.
I do not believe my position on this has changed for a long time.
In this video, which is designed for lost people who are just learning about the Bible, my goal is not to get into the textual debate but to give them confidence that they can trust the KJV as they continue in these Bible studies.
Thank you, Brother Ross. You may wish to review the wording of the fifth sentence of the introduction in the Bible study from your site. "You can be confident that when you read the KJV, you are reading the very Word of God preserved intact for you in English."
That doesn't come across as consistent with what you've just said. (Nor with what I understood your position to be, which is why I asked.)
Perhaps instead you might want to say something like "reading the completely preserved Word of God translated accurately for you in English"? Just a suggestion, I am sure there are other good ways you could say it, but the current wording does suggest an English preservationist position.
If you look at the sentence construction, it is ambiguous whether "in English" is part of the object itself or not. Maybe an equivalent sentence construction would be "You can be confident that when you read the KJV, you are reading [in English] the very Word of God preserved intact for you."
In other words, the words "in English" could be modifying the verb "reading," to "reading [in English]" as opposed to describing the object being "preserved intact [in English]."
But still, the ambiguity along with the strengthening term "intact," which implies singularity of preservation in whatever form is being suggested, might be addressed.
I also think that the best way to support translations in general is the existence of the word of God in multiple different languages in Acts 2, and to support English translation in specific, is the fact that many of our earlier dictionaries such as the Johnson 1755 [British] and the Webster 1828 [U.S.] used the A.V. for their word definitions, thus causing the English language itself to be standardized/defined around the 1611/1769 translation. In other words, if we've already agreed through proper textual criticism on using the Greek T.R. as a source, then, in order to still object to the translation choices you'd have to argue that the language itself is wrong (as defined by the dictionaries) and that English itself needs to be changed in a lot of cases, if you are going to dispute the word equivalencies and definitions. This might diverge into epistemology if you're dealing with a relativist who sees language as being definable at will; in this case you can simply ask the person why they are trying to argue for the truth value of anything in that case, if they believe all things are relative and language is meaningless.
Dear Bro Gleason,
Thank you, I will plan to look into that.
I would also add to the above that, whether or not someone accepts that words and language have actual meaning, seems to be tied to whether or not they believe in objective truth existing or not. Whether or not they receive the love of the truth or not, as it says in 2 Thessalonians 2:10.
Often times, these same will be the people who want to argue that you can't translate the Greek words. Even if we were speaking Greek, they would still be arguing over the definitions of words, so objecting to the concept of translation just helps them to disguise that underlying difficulty.
In turn, this hinges on either leaning on one's own understanding of things, or else on ceding authority to what is now a largely controlled 'scholarship' (which is becoming more of a priesthood) that is instructed, via funding by its handlers to come to predetermined conclusions. This is where all of these modern translation-attempts starting with the ERV-ASV-modern versions as well as the relativist ideology behind them is coming from. I would kindly inform them of this fact as well as the fact that truth can/will make a man free.
Dear Anon,
I agree that the wording was somewhat ambiguous and that Brother Ross's position could be found in it. If I were to use the material, though, I'd feel obligated to explain that sentence carefully, because I think a reader who didn't know would take the alternate interpretation.
As to supporting translations, for me there are multiple passages beyond Acts 2. I would first cite II Peter 1, where Peter tells Greek readers, writing in Greek, and referring to the Old Testament, that they "have a more sure word of prophecy." In II Timothy 4, Timothy is told to "preach the Word" to believers in Ephesus, and the entire context (going back to chapter 3) clearly includes the Old Testament — most would not have known Hebrew, so would have to have been using translations.
It's likely, if not certain, that Timothy had known the Holy Scriptures from a child in a Greek translation.
I'd also add Romans 16:25-26, which tells us the Gospel is made manifest and made known to all nations by the Scriptures. For that to happen, the Scriptures have to be communicated to all nations, which certainly supports translations, and the belief that the divine nature and life-giving power of the Scriptures is carried over into accurate translations. If faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, and faith comes to people of every tongue, then the very Word of God must come to other languages besides Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
Brother Ross and I have both written at some length on this so I'll leave it there.