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The Biblical Presuppositions for the Critical Text that Underlie the Modern Versions, Pt. 2
Modern textual criticism advocates and contemporary version proponents have fractured churches and caused division between professing Christians over the last one hundred fifty years. They brought the new and different view, a modernist one, in the 19th century to undo the one already received. English churches used the King James Version, believed in the perfect preservation of the original language text, and in the doctrine of the preservation of scripture. Starting with academia and especially influenced by German rationalism, doubt took hold and grew through the professors of seminaries to their students and into churches.
Through history certain men have come along who provoke even greater division that invokes a bigger response. They undermine faith in the authority of the Word of God. My writing arises in answer to men who attack scriptural and historical bibliology, whether it be Ruckmanites or critical text supporters. I would rather consider doctrines and biblical subjects other than this one, such as the gospel, but Satan uses both witting and unwitting subjects to attack God’s Word.
I rarely hear a gracious style or tone from multiple version onlyists. They mock, jeer, speak in condescension, misrepresent without retraction, roll their eyes, vent out with anger, employ heavy sarcasm, and shun. They use these tactics constantly. At the same time, they talk about the poor behavior of their opponents without ceasing in the vein of calling Republicans “fascists” in the political arena.
It continues to be my experience that modern critical text and English version defenders never begin with biblical presuppositions for their position. They say the Bible says nothing about the “how” of preservation, when the entire Bible records the how. Perfect preservationists of the standard sacred, ecclesiastical, traditional, or confessional text view elucidate the how in many essays, papers, and podcasts. The “how” leads to the received text of both the Old and the New Testaments.
Men calling themselves The Textual Confidence Collective become the latest iteration of naturalist influence on the text of scripture. As part of their profession of delivering people from their contention of a dangerous extreme of textual absolutism, they attempt to undo the historical, exegetical teaching of verses on preservation. They address Psalm 12:6-7, Matthew 5:18, 4:4, and 24:35, concluding that these four verses at the most imply preservation of scripture and in an unspecific way. It is a superficial and incomplete representation that runs against historic and plain meaning of these texts.
Our book, Thou Shalt Keep Them, covers all four of the above references, each in their context. No textus receptus advocate would say that any single one of these verses alone buttresses the doctrine of preservation. The doctrine does not rise or fall on one verse. Many times I notice that men such as those of The Textual Confidence Collective treat each verse as though it is the one verse supporting the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation. If they can undermine the teaching of preservation in one verse, the doctrine falls. The Bible contains a wealth of fortification for the doctrine of perfect preservation of scripture, equal or greater even than its teaching on verbal plenary inspiration.
For all of the following passages, I’m not going to exegete them all again, when that’s done in our book in a very suitable, proficient manner. I’ve referred to them many times here at What Is Truth. I will make comments that address the attacks of others.
Psalm 12:6-7 (Also See Here, Here, and Here)
Thomas Strouse wrote our chapter on Psalm 12:6-7. Yes, the title of our book came from those verses, “Thou Shalt Keep Them.” Mark Ward rejects that “words” in verse 6 is the referent of “them” in verse 7. “Them” in “Thou shalt keep them,” he says, is not “Thou shalt keep ‘words,'” but “Thou shalt keep ‘the poor and needy'” of verse 5. If you look at commentaries, they go both ways. Commentaries often differ on interpretation of passages.
Some say “words” and some say “poor and needy” as the antecedent of “them” in verse 7. In a strategy to see if commentaries provide a historical, biblical theology, it’s best as historians to find the original commentaries to which other later writers referred. Ward doesn’t do that. He leaves out the earliest references in the history of interpretation, such as one attributed to Jerome by Luther and those by two preeminent Hebrew scholars Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1164) and David Kimshi (c. 1160-1235). In his commentary, John Gill refers to Ibn Ezra’s explanation.
John Gill makes an error with the Hebrew, supporting his point with the fallacious gender discord argument. Scripture uses masculine pronouns to refer to feminine “words,” when the words of God. Gill doesn’t seem to know that, so he misses it. This construction in the Hebrew scriptures is a rule more than the exception. I can happily say that Ward at least barely refers to this point that I’ve never heard from another critical text proponent. I can’t believe these men still don’t know this. Ward should park on it, and he doesn’t. It’s rich exegesis when someone opens to Psalm 119 to find repeated examples. Ward points only to arguments he thinks will favor a no-preservation-of-words viewpoint. This strategy will not persuade those on the opposite side as him, if that is even his purpose.
God uses masculine pronouns to refer to feminine words, when they are the “words of God.” A reader could and should understand the singular to point out the preservation of individual words of God. It’s not assumed that “him,” a masculine, must refer to people. That’s not how the Hebrew language works, and it is either ignorant or deceptive on the part of Ward and others to say it. They also refer to a notation from the KJV translators as if they’re making that point, when that’s sheer speculation. Ward says in mocking tones that a masculine pronoun, “him,” cannot refer to words. It’s a Hebrew rule. Masculine pronouns refer to words. I’m sure Ward knows that “she” can refer to a ship. Everyone knows that a ship isn’t a woman! Come on men! Please.
The “poor” and “needy” are both plural so someone still has a problem of a lack of agreement in number. A masculine singular suffix, however, coupled with a previous masculine plural suffix provides two points of preservation. God will keep all of His Words, plenary preservation, and He will preserve each of them, verbal preservation.
Neither does Ward mention once a rule of proximity. Proximity guides the antecedents of pronouns. Pronouns normally refer to the closest antecedent. It’s an exception not to do so. If gender discord is the rule when referring to God’s Words, then someone should look for the closest antecedent, which is words. That’s how the verses read to, which is why believers and Hebrew scholars from the medieval period celebrate the promise of God’s keeping and preserving His Words.
I don’t doubt that Psalm 12 teaches the preservation of God’s people. We should believe God would keep His people, because we can trust His Words. The chapter contrasts the untrustworthiness of man’s words versus the trustworthiness of God’s. If God can’t keep His Words and doesn’t, how do we trust that He would keep His people?
God’s people believe and have believed that His Word teaches perfect preservation. It’s not an ordinary book. It is supernatural. God’s Word endures. It is in character different than man’s words. Why do men like those of The Textual Confidence Collective labor to cause doubt in this biblical teaching? They do it to conform to their naturalistic presuppositions in their trajectory of modernism, where truth must conform to man’s reason. You should not join them in their journey toward uncertainty.
When I write the word, “modernism,” I’m not attempting to take a cruel shot at men who do believe in the deity of Christ and justification by grace through faith. I’m saying that they swallowed among other lies those spawned by the modernists of the 19th century.
More to Come
The Biblical Presuppositions for the Critical Text that Underlie the Modern Versions
Whatever people believe about the preservation of scripture, they operate according to presuppositions, either natural or supernatural. If they start with the Bible, they come to one view, and when they start outside of it, they come to a different one. Neither side is neutral. Their presuppositions direct their conclusions. They always do.
The Textual Confidence Collective just published part 3 at youtube, a part they called, “Its Theology.” They did not provide scriptural presuppositions of their own, but they attacked those of whom they call, “textual absolutists,” mixing together various factions of King James Version advocates. Their trajectory does not start from the Bible. As a result their position does not reflect the teaching of the Bible.
The four men of the collective attacked just four different preservation passages that underlie a biblical presupposition for the preservation of scripture. They attacked the preservation teaching of one in Psalms, 12:6-7, and three in Matthew, 5:18, 4:4, and 24:35, before they veered into personal anecdotes. I’ll come back Wednesday to write about the four passages they hit.
With an apparent desire for a supernatural presupposition for modern textual criticism, the collective used a basis I have never heard. These men called modern textual criticism, “general revelation.” Contemporary Christian psychology similarly says it relies on general revelation, equating it to human discovery. They elevate laboratory observations, clinical samples, to the level of revelation. In their definition, they say that revelation is general in is content, justifying the terminology. However, general revelation is general in its audience. God reveals it to everyone.
General revelation by its very nature is non-discoverable. By labeling God’s revelation, human discovery, they contradict its root meaning. If it is revelation, God reveals it. Man doesn’t discover it.
If modern textual criticism functions according to general revelation, everyone should see it. It wouldn’t narrow to a caste of experts operating on degrees of probability or speculation. The collective corrupts the meaning of general revelation to provide a supernatural presupposition. Presuppositions don’t wait for an outcome. They assume one before the outcome.
Listening to testimonies of the collective, at least two of the men said they gave up on the doctrine of preservation. They came back to a position of preservation that conformed bibliology to naturalistic presuppositions. They can provide a new definition, like they have with general revelation. This is akin to another historical example, the invention of a new doctrine of inerrancy by Benjamin Warfield in the late 19th century. No one had read that doctrine until Warfield invented it to conform to modern biblical criticism. He expressed an identical motive to the collective.
You can explore history for biblical or supernatural presuppositions for modern textual criticism. You won’t find any. They don’t start with a teaching of scripture. Just the opposite, they begin with a bias against a theological trajectory. Theology would skew their perspective. Rationalism, what the collective now calls “general revelation,” requires elimination of any theological bias when examining manuscripts.
The collective alters their expectations based on naturalistic presuppositions. One said something close to the following, “I have never preached the gospel in a perfect way, yet it is still the gospel. God still works through my imperfect communication to the salvation of souls. God can still work through an imperfect Bible in the same way. He doesn’t need a perfect text to do His work.” The collective anticipates the discovery of textual variation and to ward away unbelief, they capitulate to error in the Bible.
I couldn’t help but think of 1 Peter 1:23-25, where Peter ties the gospel to a perfect text of scripture:
23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. 24 For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: 25 But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
Actual physical elements, such as flesh and grass, corrupt, wither, and fall away. The “word of God” does not. Unlike those, the word of God endures. “This is the word by which the gospel is preached unto you.” Peter alternates between logos and rhema to indicate these are specific words, not word in general. Concrete words do not disappear like flesh, grass, and flowers do. His specific Words can be trusted. Their authority derives from this.
The Apostle Peter ties the gospel to perfection. The most common argument in evangelism against scripture is that it was only written by men. The idea of course is that men are not perfect, so scripture then cannot be trusted. I think I have preached the gospel in a perfect way. That confidence comes from the scripture from which that preaching comes. It is perfect. I’m an imperfect vessel, but I’m not preaching as a natural man, but a spiritual man. God uses me in a perfect way to the saving of men’s souls.
Some of what I heard from the collective some today call epistemological humility. I see it as a form of “voluntary humility” the Apostle Paul warned against in Colossians 2:18. John Gill writes:
True humility is an excellent grace; it is the clothing and ornament of a Christian; nor is there anything that makes a man more like Christ, than this grace; but in these men here respected, it was only the appearance of humility, it was not real; it was in things they devised and willed, not in things which God commanded, Christ required, or the Scriptures pointed at; they would have been thought to have been very lowly and humble, and to have a great consciousness of their own vileness and unworthiness to draw nigh to Christ the Mediator immediately, and by him to God; wherefore in pretence of great humility, they proposed to make use of angels as mediators with Christ; whereby Christ, the only Mediator between God and man, would be removed out of sight and use; and that humble boldness and holy confidence with God at the throne of grace, through Christ, which believers are allowed to use, would be discouraged and destroyed, and the saints be in danger as to the outward view of things, and in all human appearance of losing their reward.
This imperfect gospel presentation is only a pretense of great humility, as someone having a great consciousness of his own vileness and unworthiness. Humility should come in holy confidence, trusting that God would do what He said He would do.
Mark Ward said that he could not trust an interpretation of Psalm 12:7 he had never read from the entire history of the church. He referred to “thou shalt preserve them” (12:7b) as meaning the words of scripture. I can join Ward in doubting a brand new interpretation of one part of a verse. This does not debunk, “Thou shalt keep them.”
I have never read the doctrine of preservation proposed by contemporary evangelical textual criticism in the entire history of the church. They function in an entire doctrinal category against what true believers have taught on preservation. Can he and the rest of the collective join me by taking the theological presuppositions of God’s people for its entire history?
To Be Continued
A Defense of the Trail of Blood by James M. Carroll as Accurate Landmark Baptist History
Have you ever read the pamphlet The Trail of Blood by James M. Carroll? It is a classic presentation of the true history of Baptists–that they had an actual succession of churches from the time of Christ, who founded the first Baptist church, throughout the patristic, medieval, reformation, and modern eras until today. If you have not read it, you should do so. I have a link to a free electronic version in the ecclesiology section of faithsaves.net. You can buy a physical copy at the Lehigh Valley Baptist Church bookstore, among many other places. You can even get a copy at Amazon (affiliate link):
However, Amazon will probably charge more than what you would pay from a church-run Baptist publisher, although if you are getting a bunch of other stuff at Amazon anyway, maybe with free shipping their price will be acceptable.
The Trail of Blood gets a lot of criticism. However, that criticism is unjustified.
1.) The Trail of Blood is narrow-minded!
The Trail of Blood is criticized for its teaching that only Baptist churches are true churches, the kind established by Jesus Christ and preserved from Christ’s day until today. However, Baptist churches are the kind of churches established by Christ, a fact validated by their doctrine and practice, and the Bible promises that the churches Christ established would continue until His return (Ephesians 3:21; Matthew 16:18; 28:20, etc.). The promise of succession for Christ’s churches is not given to the “universal church,” for there is no such thing. Scripture, in the Great Commission and other passages, promises an actual succession of true churches. Scripture teaches what is called the Landmark Baptist view of church succession, and Scripture teaches that each true church is Christ’s bride, and so a “Baptist bride” (an ecclesiological, not a soteriological, assertion–one is in the kingdom through repentant faith alone, not through baptism into the Lord’s church).
2.) The Trail of Blood claims non-Baptist groups were Baptists!
First, one must keep in mind that the Trail of Blood is a large pamphlet, designed for a popular-level audience, not a scholarly book. It is too short to give nuance to every single statement that someone might argue about. Second, Roman Catholicism liked to lump everyone together who was not a Catholic and put the worst possible interpretation on their beliefs, something ancient pagans and post-Reformation Protestants were also not immune to doing. To consider some generally accepted examples, ancient pagans who asserted early Christians were cannibals who committed incest because Christians talked about the “body of Christ” in conjunction with “eating” and “drinking,” and they referred to each other as “brother” and “sister” were grossly inaccurate. Reformation-era opponents of Baptists who said that they were violent people who wished to overthrow the State grossly misrepresented the fact that a huge percentage of the Anabaptists were outright pacifists to smear the entire body of those who practiced believer’s baptism with the actions of a few at the city of Munster (many of whom were not even practitioners of believer’s baptism there). So we should not be surprised if Roman Catholics painted groups of dissenting Christians in the worst possible light.
Think about it this way: if by “Anabaptist” a Catholic simply means someone who baptizes believers, he would classify people who believe like a strong independent Baptist church, people who believe like the Watchtower Society, people in the American Baptist Convention who support sodomy and follow woman preachers who deny the inspiration of Scripture, Pentecostals who handle snakes and drink poison, people in the Iglesia Ni Cristo who think Felix Y. Manalo is the final prophet from God, and Mormons as “Anabaptists.” The Catholic could say that “Anabaptists” deny the Deity of Christ, believe in extra-scriptural revelations, believe Satan and Christ are brothers, believe sexual perversion is acceptable, deny the Bible is the Word of God, and handle snakes in their church services. However, that people who do these evil things also baptize believers does not mean that there are not thousands and thousands of people in independent Baptist churches that follow Scripture faithfully. If the situation is such in our day, should we be surprised that medieval Catholics painted those Anabaptists whom they slaughtered and tortured in the worst possible light?
There are many groups of non-Catholic believers in Christianity before the Reformation. Historical sources on some of them are better than for others, but there is sufficient evidence to believe that among groups such as the Waldenses, Cathari, and Anabaptists Christ’s promise of church perpetuity was fulfilled. That does not mean that every person who identified with these groups had sound beliefs, any more than it means that everyone in Oklahoma who says he is a Baptist has sound beliefs. But it is absolutely rational to believe that the line of true churches promised in Scripture is contained among such groups.
3.) The Trail of Blood takes quotes by historical sources out of context or makes up quotes!
Lord willing, we will deal with a few of these quotes in upcoming weeks. If you want a preview, please see the quotations by non-Baptist historians here in their context.
In summary, the Trail of Blood is a valuable historical source demonstrating the Scriptural truth that Christ has kept His promise to preserve His churches. It does a good job for a large pamphlet. If you have not read it, I encourage you to do so, and to share it with others, so that everyone in the world who is born again sees his need to unite with a Bible-believing Baptist church through baptism and serve the Lord Jesus Christ in His New Testament temple.
–TDR
Romans 5:1 As a Consideration for Taking a Scriptural Position on the Preservation of Scripture
The Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1 shows that attack on the authority of scripture is a major explanation or reason for apostasy. The authority of scripture proceeds from the supernatural nature of the Bible. It is inspired by God and then preserved by God. When someone attacks scripture, the first wave is that it was only written by men and the second, that it isn’t preserved. Leading away from a doctrine of preservation is evacuating divine and supernatural preservation for something naturalistic.I received an advertisement for the Center of the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, written by Daniel Wallace, and it read like a bit of a cliffhanger, using a manuscript presently residing for view at the National Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, the oldest known, surviving hand copy of Romans 5:1. He writes:
Among the many ancient treasures held by The Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, there is a tattered fragment of parchment containing the oldest known text of Romans 5:1. Most modern translations render the verse, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Some scholars believe, however, that the underlined portion should read, “let us have peace,” because many of the best manuscripts do, indeed, bear this text.In biblical Greek, the difference comes down to a single letter within a single word. And the difference of that one letter makes all the difference.The manuscript fragment in Washington, known to scholars as GA 0220, is dated to the 3rd century (between AD 200 and 300.) Unfortunately, the critical letter in question has been obscured by a fold in the parchment and a hole in the very worst place. Nevertheless, traces of the letter appear to remain, and we believe that our high-resolution, multispectral imaging equipment can reveal the truth.
The Misuse of James 1:20 and the Wrath of Man
Does the wrath of man work not the righteousness of God? It would seem that this was true because of James 1:20 and it’s saying that explicitly: “For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” How could anyone question that? It’s the entire verse.
You see someone get angry, this verse comes to mind, and you quote it to the angry person. Yet, what if I saw that you weren’t angry, and I quoted instead, Ephesians 4:26, “Be ye angry, and sin not”? This verse seems to require anger not to sin. James 1:20 seems to require no anger not to sin. Are they contradicting one another?
2 Corinthians 7:11, a classic passage on repentance, includes as part of repentance over sin, “indignation.” It’s obvious that the indignation is over someone’s personal sin, which is also what Ephesians 4:26 is about. Anger at one’s own sin is useful for not sinning.
John 2 doesn’t say that Jesus was angry when He cleansed the temple, but of his disciples, who were present and witnessing this occurrence, John 2:17 says, “And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” Jesus reached down, picked up strands of leather to form into a make-shift whip, and started whipping people, animals, and overturning tables. It looked like He was angry. The Greek word translated, “zeal,” which is a quotation of Psalm 69:9, BDAG calls “an intense negative feeling.” There was sin all over that temple, and Jesus was angry over it. He had an intense negative feeling about it.
Let’s return to James 1:20 and look more at the context, seeing verses 18-22:
18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. 19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: 20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. 21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. 22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
James lays out tests of faith so that someone can know that he’s been converted, that he has saving faith. Saving faith proceeds from the “word of truth.” See that in verse 18? God begat us “with the word of truth.” A test of faith is what someone does with the word of truth. The context is about hearing scripture and doing it. It is obvious that the hearing of scripture is the preaching of the Word of God.
In the context, when the Word of God is preached, since it is the agent of our regeneration, our conversion, turning us into a ‘firstfruits of God’s creatures,’ every man should “be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (v. 19). There is one positive and there are two negatives. If someone is receptive to the Word of God being preached in a positive way, he is “swift to hear,” and then in a negative way, he is “slow to speak” and “slow to wrath.” He is listening and not debating or getting angry with what he is hearing.
James directs his writing to “beloved brethren.” Are these saved people? I believe they are unsaved and saved Jews, a mixed multitude attending a church. “Brethren” in this case refers to Jewish brethren, people in the nation Israel. Some of them are saved and some of them are unsaved. If they are unsaved, listening to the preaching of God’s Word could result in their being saved, or in other words, ‘work the righteousness of God.” On the other hand, if they were to debate and get angry with the preaching of scripture, that would not work the saving righteousness of God.
If these are saved Jews hearing James’s epistle, they could acknowledge that they have a saving response to preaching. They are swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. Their response to scripture is a test of their faith, and they pass that test.
The “wrath” of verse 20, that “worketh not the righteousness of God,” is the wrath of verse 19, “slow to wrath.” It’s not just any wrath. It is anger at the preaching of scripture. That anger, that wrath, worketh not the righteousness of God. It results in a person not receiving imputed righteousness by faith. If this is a saved person, it results in his not receiving sanctifying righteousness.
A man, who is angry with the preaching of scripture, will not “lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness” (v. 21). As a result, he will not receive the saving of his soul. He’s not listening to scripture. He’s arguing with it and angry with it. As a result, he is not begotten by the Word of Truth.
James continues in verse 22 on the same theme. A true believer will not just hear but also do what the Bible says. He will hear it and practice it. This all connects to his relationship to God. God is the source of every good and perfect gift (v. 17a). He spoke the world into existence by His Word and He doesn’t change (v. 17b), so He is still giving good things through His Word, including His righteousness.
When someone uses James 1:20 in a general way to say that no wrath works the righteousness of God, that is false. We know that some wrath, righteous indignation, does work the righteousness of God. This is the wrath of man against the Word of God when it is preached. That is the wrath of James 1:20 and that is how James 1:20 should be used or applied. When it is isn’t used that way, it is being twisted or perverted. You could even say it isn’t working the righteousness of God.
The King James Bible: Too Hard to Understand?
“The King James Version is too hard for people to understand! It is written in Old English. Therefore, we need to use a modern Bible version that is easier to understand.”
Is this true?
Before dealing with the most important question–what Scripture says on the subject–a few brief words on a secondary but related question.
The King James Version: Is it Old English?
First, the King James Version is not in Old English. Old English is the language of Beowulf. If you want to hear Old English, watch this:
Is the King James Bible easier to understand than that?
Maybe the King James is Middle English if it isn’t Old English. Here is someone reading from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which was written in Middle English:
Here you can probably make out something here and there, but it is clear that the King James Version is not in Old English, nor is it in Middle English. It is much easier to read than the Canterbury Tales. (Side note: I enjoyed my college class on Chaucer’s classic at U. C. Berkeley.) The King James Bible is in early modern English. English has changed less between 1611 and today than it did from the days of Chaucer in the 1400s to the KJV.
So the King James Bible is not in Old English, nor in Middle English, but in modern English–early modern English. That does not mean, however, that it is necessarily easy to understand. Perhaps it really is “too hard,” and we should overlook the fact that the New King James Version is soft on sodomy, removes “hell” from 22 verses in the Bible, replacing it with easier words to understand, and ones that are in common use, like “Sheol” and “Hades” (2 Samuel 22:6; Psalm 18:5; Matthew 11:23, etc.), is not actually translated from the same underlying language text, and contains other problems. Maybe since the King James Bible is “too hard” to understand we need to just deal with these sorts of problems in the NKJV.
“Too hard”: What is it?
Biblically, what does it mean that language is “too hard” to understand? In the New Testament, the Greek of the book of Hebrews is much harder to read than the Greek of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of Luke and Acts are harder to read than 1 John. Sometimes the New Testament contains really long sentences, like Ephesians 1:3-14, which is all just one sentence in Greek. Why did the Holy Ghost dictate such long sentences? Wouldn’t they be too hard to understand?
The vast majority of people in the first century were simple rural people; farmers, shepherds, and the like, not highly educated urbanites. Literacy was sketchy in many places. What was Paul doing when he wrote Hebrews under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? What was Luke thinking? Didn’t they know that their Greek would be too hard to understand?
What about the Old Testament? Significant portions of the Hebrew prophetic and poetical books are much more challenging Hebrew than many of the narrative sections of the Hebrew Bible. Why did the Holy Spirit write hard Hebrew and hard Greek in some parts of the Bible? Shouldn’t it all have been easy to understand?
Is there more literacy in the English speaking world now than there was in the first century world of the New Testament, or in the world where God gave the Hebrew Old Testament? When was learning to read–or improving one’s reading level–easier? Surely now.
The question, then, should be: “Is the English of the King James Version significantly more complex and harder to understand English than the Greek of the New Testament was to the New Testament people of God or the Hebrew of the Old Testament was to Israel”? The King James seeks to replicate the syntax of the original language texts as much as possible. That is why every verse from Genesis 1:3 to Genesis 1:26 begins with the word “And”–we may not write that way in non-translation English, but the KJV accurately represents what the Hebrew given by the Holy Spirit says here. We can’t simplify the syntax of the King James Bible without moving it further away from the original language text. If we have to leave the syntax alone, does the King James Version have more archaic words than the Greek of the New Testament or the Hebrew of the Old Testament? There are over 680 hapax legomena or words that occur only one time in the Greek New Testament and close to 1,500 hapax legomena in the Hebrew Old Testament. While not all of those hapaxes would have been rare or archaic words to first century readers, many of them would have been. By way of contrast, there are nowhere near that many archaic words in the King James Version.
Evaluated by the standard of Scripture itself–by the standard of the Greek and Hebrew text God gave to His people–the English of the Authorized, King James Version is indubitably not “too hard.” People who claim that it is too difficult to read should be enthusiastically promoting the Defined King James Bible, which leaves the actual King James Version text unchanged but defines the few archaic words at the bottom of its pages for readers, or works such as David Cloud’s Way of Life Encylopedia of the Bible and Christianity, where all the rare KJV words are defined, instead of encouraging readers to reject the KJB’s fantastic translation of the perfectly preserved Hebrew and Greek Textus Receptus for corrupt modern Bible versions.
So is the King James Bible too hard to understand? If we employ the only objective standard–Scripture itself–the answer is “no.”
Learn more about Bibliology here.
–TDR
Answering “Conservative Christianity and the Authorized Version,” part three
In the third post in his series (one, two, three), Michael Riley at Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) argues that the degradation of the English language at its present state does not stop the modern versions from being conservative in consistency with being a conservative church with conservative worship like RAM teaches. It seems that pastors in the UK when Scott Aniol visited there brought this as an argument against, that a translation into modern English conflicted with conservatism, unlike the King James Version. Riley to his credit sympathizes with the argument and shows understanding of it for the first five and a half paragraphs before disavowing it.
I don’t know what arguments the UK conservative pastors bring about the inability of the present English language to represent the original text of the Bible. I have my own thoughts about it that are not what I would consider to be akin to very poor and even false KJV only style arguments. I’ve written a lot about it recently because of the new book by Mark Ward, where he argues that the English of the KJV is unable to communicate sufficiently to a contemporary English audience — they won’t get most of it because of various reasons, especially what Ward calls “false friends,” words or phrases that people do not understand anymore, yet that they think they do understand.
Riley agrees that English has degraded. The almost entirely English audience that reads English has also taken a major decline with a steep trajectory downward. Linguists with no skin in the issue of the translation of scripture have agreed that modern English has lost the ability of past English to communicate a formal social standard — a particular structure, seriousness, and governing of rules of discourse. Is the English of today a craft that can transmit adequately or appropriately the content of scripture? Is there an interchange in priority from God to man, a diminishing of divine character by a casualness and commonality past suitability? Even if the modern English hasn’t become incongruous with the Word of God, is it so close to being so, should the godly of the culture put on the brakes to further erosion?
The new translations have not arisen from church agreement to the degree that a standard, single Bible could come from the unified effort, proceeding with reverence, respect, and holy motives. In the opinion of many, they have reeked of pragmatism and pandering. Do those doing the work not see the damage done by producing multitudinous translations? Is all the variation and the plausible subjectivity of it an even worse friend than the apparent false friends?
Lawyers still understand the need for the precision of formality, that functions according to certain codes that do seem to proceed from natural or moral law. We still follow the same Constitution of the United States without calls of updates. We don’t modernize the Declaration of Independence. If we do change the Constitution, add an amendment, it is very difficult and so also very seldom. Amendments read like the original, keeping it in the same spirit with a similar tone.
The Bible is a document of exponentially greater value than any other book or literature. It deserves the veneration of scarce change. Modern versions don’t give it that. Modern translators fiddle and fiddle as if they were Nero and Rome burned. They scamper through the graveyard across the burial plots of sorts. It contributes to lack of respect like we see in almost every institution. If we can’t take scripture seriously, when God is of highest value, then everything else will be lost as well. This all flies in the face of conservatism.
Answering “Conservative Christianity and the Authorized Version: Introduction”
Is the recommendation of, usage of, or belief in modern versions of the Bible, which translate the modern critical text, compatible with or representative of conservative Christianity? Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) board member Michael Riley writes at their blog site in essence an answer to that question in a series entitled, “Conservative Christianity and the Authorized Version,” of which he completed the introduction in a post on October 8, 2019.
Riley explains that a primary motivation for starting the series was a consequence of a sabbatical that RAM executive director, Scott Aniol, took in the UK and found that the conservative pastors with which he found the greatest unanimity also use the King James Version. These British conservative evangelical church leaders see modern versions clashing or contradicting with conservative Christianity. RAM uses modern versions.
I have already written here that the modern versions are at variance with true conservatism. In the most fundamental way modern versions undermine a conservative view. Riley represents the criticism:
The argument that conservatives should also embrace the AV is not one that is entirely new to us; others have poked at the apparent inconsistency between using old hymns and new translations.
That sentence, I contend, misses the point. I can’t imagine that the conservative pastors of Britain think this is the issue. I will explain.
I’ve linked to the post above, but Riley lists what he sees as three different positions of criticism. The first he says comes from contemporary worship advocates who criticize RAM for conservative music inconsistent with their modern version usage. The second he says comes from those who say that RAM loses their natural audience that overlaps on the authorized version and traditional worship. The third he says are the TR/AV proponents, who also believe in traditional worship and see the RAM position as inconsistent. Riley is targeting this last group, even as that represents the British conservative pastors Aniol met.
Riley introduces the series by telling us where he will head. He’s going to deal with the argument of the ecclesiastical text view and its relationship then to worship out of a high view of God, apparently showing a disconnection between those two things. The second aspect hearkens to the sentence at the beginning of his piece, regarding the clash of modern language with conservatism. Third, he’ll address the proposition that the Authorized Version is more reverent. All of these are interesting, but they do not lay at the foundation of the clash between modern versions and conservative Christianity. The first one comes the closet, but it still doesn’t get it. Maybe these are what Aniol heard. I can’t imagine that, but I haven’t talked to pastors in the UK about their support of the KJV.
The essay ends with this sentence:
I want to make the case that there is no necessary connection between conservative principles of worship and the use of the TR/AV as one’s Bible.
And I’m going to follow along with this series and give it a critique and analysis. I want to start now though, because I’ve written that I don’t see these as the fundamental arguments. I agree with the parallel between the AV and traditional worship that Aniol and Riley propose, but they miss the connection to conservatism. I could incorporate the three they gave to an overall presentation, but they don’t buttress the point. What does? Not necessarily in this order, at least these do:
First, both the text of scripture and true worship of God proceed from objective truth or beauty, which are inseparably related.
Two, how we know what we know must be presuppositional, assuming that we can apply and are to apply scripture. Since no one is neutral, knowledge comes from the pure mother’s milk of God’s Word, where there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning.
Three, there is one God, one truth, and one beauty.
Four, the Holy Spirit guides to truth and beauty, so neither will or should change. This relates to no total apostasy.
As Riley moves along, I’ll deal with what he writes, Lord-willing, but I’ll also bring in those four and more.
My Liking of Jordan Peterson Is Not Fellowship or an Endorsement of Him: Why?
Maybe every next generation is a new and troubling day. I don’t want to overestimate the degree of perversity of the present generation. However, I think we have taken a unique plunge into the abyss.
You’ve perhaps heard of Moore’s law. The Wikipedia article states:
The observation is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and CEO of Intel, whose 1965 paper described a doubling every year in the number of components per integrated circuit and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. In 1975, looking forward to the next decade, he revised the forecast to doubling every two years.
His “law” has proven true, but in 2015 Moore “foresaw that the rate of progress would reach saturation,” and said, “I see Moore’s law dying here in the next decade or so.”
Perhaps as Moore’s law has materialized, to the same degree of progress in technology has occurred a parallel spiritual regression. Moore’s law portrays a steep trajectory upward as we have fallen off a cliff in the other direction morally and biblically. The two might even be interrelated.
In a day such as today, Jordan Peterson could seem to be a bright alternative. Only in such darkness would he come off as light, when in fact he is a near or sort of modernist. I’ve read modernists. I know how they read. I hear modernism in Jordan Peterson. Only in such dark days does a possible modernist seem bright in comparison to postmodernism, nihilism, and political correctness.
I wrote here that I attended a Jordan Peterson speech in San Francisco, and I did on May 2. I had written some things about him since he burst into public awareness a short time ago (here, here, here, here, and here). Someone gave me his book for a gift for my birthday, which was a little less than a month before the San Francisco speech, and I read it before his speech. His speech isn’t posted at youtube yet, and we were told it was unlawful to record, so I didn’t even though I had a digital recorder with me. I listened carefully and got the gist of what he said, and can remember it.
Someone wrote two critical articles about Peterson at The Federalist that would be worth reading (part one, part two). I’m not suggesting myself that someone look to Jordan Peterson for his theology or interpretation of scripture. He’s a problem. I’m glad The Federalist, not a Christian organization, recognized it and allowed the articles they published.
Peterson used Genesis as his authority for his San Francisco speech. I would not have thought that he would have done that, even though I know he’s been renting out and filling a theater for his teaching through Genesis up in the Toronto area of Canada. His first Genesis lecture is his most watched youtube video.
I agreed with every one of Peterson’s points, even though I know he does not have a true or right view of the Genesis account. The title of his speech was “The Meaning and Reality of Individual Sovereignty.” I think the founding fathers of the United States would have proceeded from similar thinking as Peterson, which some might call “natural law.” He said, one, that God created order, two, that God created man in His image with the Word, so, three, God wants man to bring order through the Word just like God. All that is true. Everything Peterson says isn’t true, but those three points are true, which were the points of His speech.
In addition to Genesis, Peterson mixes in historical thinking and the evidence from other cultures. He doesn’t interpret all of that, just reports it. I have titled this type of proof, “feeding off the carcass.” I don’t think Peterson understands it in a right way, but he is right to promote it. Other cultures borrowed from the Genesis culture, because they were perversions of the original culture God created. Based on God’s grace, unfaithful people sustained aspects of what God instituted originally with faithful people. Noah brought a culture to the other side of the flood and was alive at the time of the tower of Babel. Abraham sent a servant back to Mesopotamia to find a wife for his son, because there was something still there to find.
Peterson explains through his understanding of science, being widely read in peer-reviewed materials. He warns of danger and destruction from departing from ways established and constituted in Western civilization. They didn’t succeed on a whim. These ways made their way through, revealed in historical archtypes that stand as laws regulating success for people. Western civilization capitalized on these and in contrast with the failings of the East. Good enough? No, and by far not good enough.
From my watching and listening to Peterson, he seems himself like he knows something important is missing in his own life. He cries more than ever. Perhaps the internal contradiction breaks him, especially someone who puts such an emphasis on telling the truth. There is an underlying lie to all of what Peterson says, that is crucial. One could call it the big lie in contradistinction to little truths that Peterson bravely tells.
The Independent Institute, which sponsored the event in San Francisco with Peterson, asked ticket buyers and members for questions. In the end, they read none of them, because all of the question and answer time was taken up by a small panel of board members of the Institute and Peterson riffed so long on his answers that he ate up all the time. Peterson often gives long answers and goes off on related tangents. However, I sent in this question:
What do you think of what scripture says, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:17, that if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins? Is not meaning lost with mere symbolism and not historic reality and then fulfillment of Jesus’ own saying in Matthew 17:22-23 that the Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men, they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day?
I didn’t directly quote the King James Version. I put the question in more modern vernacular, but my point was to evangelize Jordan Peterson and maybe the crowd there.
Peterson at best improves temporal life on a disposable planet with no future. He doesn’t prepare mankind for eternity, so he misses the point of man’s existence. Man can’t please God with Peterson’s way. Peterson’s common sense brings no power of sustainability, because man can’t be or stay good or better on his own. He needs the gospel. Without justification, real salvation, man is lost in his sins, and as a result is not close to better off. His worst days are still ahead practicing Peterson at his best. This is a lie, a deceitful lie.
I watched Peterson’s speech to Prager U and then the interview with Dennis Prager. Peterson cried a lot. The tears remind me of the tears of John in Revelation 5, when no man can undo the seals on the inheritance of all things. The strong angel tells John not to weep, because the Lamb is worthy to redeem the lost world. All the problems of the world are rescued by a true and real Jesus, not a metaphorical one that is a mere antitype. Jesus actually died, was buried, and rose again. God could wipe away Peterson’s tears if he turned to Jesus Christ.
WHAT IS TRUTH, INDEX BY SPECIFIC TOPIC: PRESERVATION OF SCRIPTURE AND VERSIONS
(J) for Jackhammer article [all of my articles from Aug 2006 to Feb 2011]
(T) for Thomas Ross article
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