Mark Ward made a video about me, and then SharperIron linked to it with my name.  Is this a case of my living rent free in Mark’s head?  I don’t know.  I’m fine with his letting it go.  He can’t do it though.  Maybe I’m bringing him more audience.  His numbers go up when he uses me in his presentations.  They go way up.  The terminology is “clickbait.”

In this edition of the Mark Ward show, he says that I helped prove his point about his “false friends” in the King James Version.  He titles the episode:  “Let a Leading KJV-Onlyist Teach You a False Friend!”  Oh so clever, Mark Ward, the Snidley Whiplash of Multiple Version Onlyists.  Yet, “Curses, foiled again!”  Foiled again, because Dudley Do-Right of TR Onlyism is of course not in fact jumping on the Snidley false friend train track.  What happened?

1 Peter 2:2

For many years, I have used and still use 1 Peter 2:2 as a major Christian worldview reference and helping understand the word “sincere.”  Mark says “sincere” now is a bad translation in 1 Peter 2:2 and a “false friend.”  I ask, “How can there be any sin in sincere?”  Answer:  By stretching the truth.

Mark dug deep into this blog to find a post and an exchange in the comment section as the highlight of his program.  Here is 1 Peter 2:2:

As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.

I’ve referred to “the sincere milk” many times as the “pure mother’s milk” (here, here, here, here, and here among other places).  Ward says “sincere” is a false friend to a reader of the King James Version, because sincere means something different today than it did in 1611 (or 1769).  Instead, he says (and says that I say) it means “pure.”  He reports that I think it should mean pure too, but because I’m KJVO, I won’t admit that, even though I believe it.  He’s saying I’m not sincere about sincere.

Sincere Milk

Welcome to the Snidley Whiplash mindreading class, SW101.  I said that “sincere milk” is not common language for today.  It isn’t.  Almost nobody would know what that means without explanation.  Perhaps people knew better in 1611.  Still, I don’t think another translation today would be better than “sincere” in 1 Peter 2:2.  “Pure milk” doesn’t get it done.  It misses the point of that expression in the original language.  I talk about the meaning in the comment section of the post to which Ward referred:

The mother’s milk goes to her baby without any other intervention, no human intervention, straight from mom to baby, unlike other milk. God changes us through revelation, not through our discoveries. With God and His Word there is no variableness or shadow of turning. His Word and God are not relative as is everything else. It comes direct and so undiluted or affected unlike our eyewitness or findings. We can’t trust these lying eyes or that there hasn’t been some kind of intervention in nature. This is why faith is superior to human discovery, because it depends on God.

The sincerity, the purity, is that it comes as one, which is the meaning of the Latin “sin,” one. There is oneness to the nature of God and to His revelation. It is entirely cohesive, non-contradictory, not mixed with any kind of error.

Mark Ward doesn’t include this part in his presentation.  Why do I think “sincere” is still a good translation that needs no update in 1 Peter 2:2?

Pure or Sincere?

Play On Words

The Greek word translated “sincere” is adolos.  The “a” portion of the Greek word means “no.”  It’s called an alpha privative, expressing negation or absence.  The previous verse, 1 Peter 2:1, uses dolos, the King James translators translated it guile.  Guile could also mean deception.  I believe there is a purposeful play on words by Peter between dolos and adolos, emphasizing the contrast between the speakings of men and the speakings of God.  The speakings of men have dolos and the speakings of God have adolos.

Does adolos strictly mean “pure”?  No.  Sincerity conveys that someone speaks without deception, the error that enters into the speech or writing for a man-engendered reason.  “Pure” doesn’t communicate that.  In this sense, when the modern translators translate adolos as “pure,” that’s a false friend to those who read the word.

Meaning of Pure

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says in Matthew 5:8:

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Is “pure” here adolos?  Is it without guile or not deceptive?  No.  This is the Greek word katharoi.  An English word that comes from this is “katharsis.”  This is what people think when they hear “pure” today.   Yet, that’s not what Peter is saying in 1 Peter 2:2, that the Word of God is pure in that sense.

What I thought and wrote in the one post to which Mark Ward refers is that “sincere milk” is the “pure mother’s milk.”  That is different than saying it is “pure milk.”  He says that I wrote that “sincere” means “pure.”  I wasn’t saying that and I didn’t say that, which is why I believe Mark Ward left off the latter context of what I wrote and really focused on my reference to the Oxford English Dictionary.  He isn’t sincere about my position ironically.  That adulterates his commentary on what I wrote.

Christian Worldview

From a Christian worldview standpoint, God’s Word is revelation so it goes from God directly to the hearer like a breast-fed baby gets his milk directly from his mother.  There is no intermediary.  Evidence on the other hand involves, one, someone’s lying or deceived eyes, and, two, a context that is not neutral.  I like to the say that the crime scene is contaminated.

When human beings look at evidence, they don’t see it clearly.  God’s Word or will, therefore, can’t come through human discovery, but through the direct undiluted revelation of God.  Revelation by nature is non-discoverable or else it wouldn’t be revelation.  Revelation is “sincere milk.”

“Sincere” is still the best translation, but we also still have to explain it.  If we translated adolos “pure,” that would more likely, I believe, lead someone astray on the meaning of the word, a false friend to the one reading it.  I really do think this and Snidley Whiplash, someone who rejects the perfect preservation of scripture, misrepresents me on this.  He’s a false friend to me.

Me a King James Onlyist?

I want to say one more thing about what Mark Ward does.  He also deceives his audience by calling me a leading King James Onlyist.  Calling someone King James Only, he knows is a pejorative.  Mark Ward knows that double inspirationists (Ruckmanites) and English preservationists don’t see me as a leading King James Onlyist.  Why?  Based on the most fair understanding of that label, I’m not.  Why not?

One,

I  believe that translations should come from the original language texts, the Hebrew and Greek, not from the English.  That means that I vouch for translations that are not the King James Version.  Hence, I’m not King James Only.  True King James Onlyists won’t do that and don’t believe that.

Two,

I do not reject an update of the King James Version.  The only ones who do not know that are those who read misrepresentations from people like Mark Ward.  I believe preservation is found in the original language text from which an update would come and did come in 1769 already.  We do not use the 1611 today.  An update already occurred.  How could I be against that?

Three,

I don’t think an update of the King James Version is wrong, so I also think some words in the King James Version are archaic or out-of-use.  I’ve said this again and again.  It doesn’t mean I support an update.  I have other reasons why I want to keep the King James Version.  The main one is its underlying textual differences between the King James and modern versions, something Mark Ward says he won’t debate.

Four,

I say all the time that I think someone could make a different translation of certain words in the King James Version.  Someone could translate the Hebrew and Greek words in a different way and they’d be right.  The translation of the King James isn’t the only way or ways to translate the original language text.  I know I would make different choices than the King James translators, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re wrong either.

A False Friend

When I study the Bible, I study the original languages.  False friends don’t occur to me, because I’m studying the words in their original languages.  I also know because of studying the original languages that translated words very often are false friends.  Mark Ward exaggerates the importance of these words.  He treats himself like he’s come upon something highly significant.  He hasn’t.  I don’t think his point about false friends means nothing, but there are greater concerns by far than these.

Mark Ward is a false friend about the King James Version.  He poses like he really wants to help those who use it.  I don’t see it.  By far, he’s a greater danger because of the doubt he casts upon the BIble that people use.  He relishes those who start using a contemporary translation that varies from the underlying text of the King James Version vastly more than the total number of false friends he reports.