Part One     Part Two

Prayer for Apology?

List of 5 Concerns

Mark Ward apparently prays for KJVO leaders to make a public apology about their sin of an official use and promotion of the English Bible translation.  One charge he makes is that they aren’t telling the truth in their defense of the King James Version.  In part one, I said that, I believe based on listening to him for awhile, Ward alleges the following five points as a main concern of his:

• One, these men don’t sufficiently acknowledge archaic English in the King James Version, semantic changes, the worst of which Ward calls “false friends.”
• Two, these men say God preserved every Word in the original language text, but they won’t point out the preserved printed edition of the Textus Receptus that represents that.
• Three, these men keep using the King James Version, so making the Bible opaque to the average reader, even though modern versions from the same underlying text are available.
• Four, these men won’t admit that church men have long recognized textual variants and acknowledged their existence.
• Five, these men ignore that underlying text behind the King James Version didn’t exist in a single edition until Scrivener in the late 19th century, who himself didn’t support the Textus Receptus.

I said I would deal with these five after I was done addressing those things Ward said were his reasons for a prayer for an apology.

Acknowledgement Already

Churches that still use the King James Version (KJV) as their church Bible have many varied explanations and positions for advocating for the KJV.  As Ward knows, users of the KJV are not a homogenous or cohesive group, even though Ward often lumps them altogether as one.  A large mainstream of King James Version defenders long acknowledged semantic changes of several words in the King James Version.  Rather than retranslate the same underlying text, leaders of KJV using churches (and others) published a list of these words with their definitions, put them in the margins of the biblical text, and write pamphlets with explanations of these words.

One, Semantic Changes

Long Available Resources

The following is a list of books or pamphlets (and their publication date) already written to deal with word meanings in the King James Version:

1960, 1994 — The King James Bible Word Book:  A Contemporary Dictionary of Curious and Archaic Words Found in the King James Version of the Bible
1999 — The King James Bible Companion
2011 — Archaic Words and the Authorized Version
2017 — Bible KJV Plus:  King James Version Plus [with Archaic KJV Words Translated and Appended in Brackets]
1998 — The Defined King James Bible
2002 — King James Bible Wordbook
2010 — The King James Version Dictionary
2003 — 4,114 Definitions from the Defined King James Bible
2012 — A King James Dictionary
2018 — List of archaic words in the KJV and their modern equivalents
No Date — KJV Archaic Words
No Date — Archaic Words in the King James Bible
2020 — Archaic and Outdated Words in The King James Bible (KJV)
2019 — King James Bible Word List & Definitions
2016 — Archaic Words in the King James Version

Wright

Others already noticed this in 1884 with the mammoth The Bible Wordbook:  A Glossary Of Archaic Words And Phrases In The Authorized Version Of The Bible And The Book Of Common Prayer by W. A. Wright.  In a recent episode by Mark Ward, he mentions “closet” from the Sermon on the Mount.  On page 140, Wright writes (yes, Wright writes):

Closet, sb (Matt vi. 6) Lat. claudo, clausum, whence close, cloister.  A private apartment, generally a bedroom. Latimer uses it with a punning allusion to its derivation:
Shall any of his sworn chaplains? No: they be of the closet, and keep close such matters. Serm. p. 98
Ah! Gloucester, hide thee from their hateful looks!
And, in thy closet pent up, rue my shame.
Shakespeare, 2 Hen. VI. 11. 4. 24.
From hence he raiseth his studies to the knowledge of physics, the great hall of nature, and metaphysics, the closet thereof.
Fuller, Holy State, XXII. p. 57.

An actual closet isn’t too bad unless yours looks something like Fred Flintstone’s closet with its requisite bowling ball.  This is just a private place though.

Reference Bibles, Etc.

Above is only a sample.  Many more of these exist.  The Westminster Reference Bible, the Reformation Heritage Study Bible, Holman KJV Study Bible, and the KJV Word Study Reference Bible, among others, have these same words defined or explained in them.  All of these various books and helps in addition to the unpublished ones done by churches for decades tell a different tale than what Ward says.  Churches and their leaders help and helped people with these words, know they exist, and talk about them.

Deeper Concern

The deeper concern that I’ve had for decades now is the horrific preaching among independent Baptists.  This related less to the King James Version itself as it was the poor training among these churches.  Concerning all of evangelicalism, doctrinal matters themselves don’t matter.  Our area has many different Christian denominations that botch, twist, and pervert the Bible when they teach it.  This is rampant all over the country.  As an example is the popularization of Jordan Peterson as a Bible scholar and teacher.  Tens of thousands listen to him and don’t have the discernment to know how bad it is what he is saying.

Not because they have used the King James Version, young people sit in such places as the University of North Carolina and hear the corrupt teaching of Bart Ehrman.  The Great Classes curriculum also features his New Testament courses.  Popular teaching across the United States misses what the Bible says, more concerned about what will titillate and keep the audience.  Professing preachers use the Bible, but don’t teach what it says.  This is not because of the King James Version.  This is rampant all over evangelicalism.

A Test

Mark Ward produced a test to give to those using the King James Version to investigate whether they know what the obsolete or archaic words mean.  He included pastors in the testing.  Overall they did poorly on his test.  I’m not surprised.  Ward concludes this is a KJV problem.  I would disagree with him.  It’s worse than that.  They don’t know what the Bible means because they aren’t exegeting scripture.  That’s not their approach to the Bible.  In their “study,” if they do look up a word, they go to an English dictionary.  They don’t know how to do a word study.  Their colleges have spent much more time on church growth methodology than knowing what the words of the Bible mean.

Two, Printed Edition of the Textus Receptus (TR) Criticism

Presuppositions and the TR Question

Ward and those on his side are not honest brokers on the TR edition question.  They still talk like men haven’t answered and don’t answer this point, the “Why TR?” one.  I’ve written on it again and again, and yet he’s never acknowledged it.  That’s a kind of dishonesty in this debate.  He ignores the answer and then says no one gives one.  The TR edition question is not a problem with the biblical presuppositions.

TR Editions are printed editions.  This is a new phase in the history of the Bible in the original languages.  There was no printed edition of the Greek New Testament available until Erasmus in 1516.

The TR Edition period went from 1516 with Erasmus to 1633 with the Elzevir brothers.  There was great homogeneity to those editions, which is why they’re all called Textus Receptus.  However, they do differ in a relatively small number of ways.

Scriptural presuppositions say that all the words were available to God’s people in the printed editions of the TR.  Availability is a presupposition.  True churches received those words, another presupposition.  God’s people with inward testimony of the Holy Spirit agreed on the Textus Receptus, another presupposition.  Translations came from the TR.

Settled Text

Points One through Three

I make several other points about the TR that I’d like to enumerate.  One, the words of the Greek New Testament existed and were available, even as translators translated from something.  Two, church leaders wrote exegetical commentaries and referred to the underlying Greek words.  When they wrote a commentary in English, they used both the King James Version and their own translations and then pointed to the underlying Greek words.  They had the underlying Greek words in mind.

Three, scripture teaches canonicity and it is a canonicity of words as I argue in a chapter of Thou Shalt Keep Them (please get book and read chapter).  Many other men have since repeated that argument, calling it what I coined then, the canonicity argument.  Scripture doesn’t teach a canonicity of Books, but a canonicity of Words.  Canonicity of Books proceeds from Canonicity of Words.  This recognition of scripture continues through church history and the TR edition period was a part of that until men settled on the words.

Points Four through Six

Four, the explanation of the variants among saved people was “a scribal error in one copy was corrected in another.”  This was not a large corruption of God’s Word, although that did happen.  This was part of God’s preservation work.  Five, an attack on the Words of God has always been occurring since the beginning in Genesis 3.  The TR editions represent biblical preservation.  Finally, six, churches settled on a text.  Scripture teaches a settled text.  Every word matters.  Man lives by every word (Matthew 4:4).  God’s people should expect to have every word available (Isaiah 59:21), just like God inspired every word and all of them (verbal plenary inspiration and then preservation).

Which are the words of the settled text?  The TR edition era ended in 1633.  As Hills so aptly put it:  “the King James Version ought to be regarded not merely as a translation of the Textus Receptus but also as an independent variety of the Textus Receptus.”  Those words were preserved and available in every generation of true believers since the completion of the New Testament.  This is, again quoting Hills, “the logic of faith.”  You can’t keep sampling interminably into the future.  If you believe, you bite down on the truth, that is, accept it.  The alternative, naturalistic uncertainty or doubt, is not acceptable.  Believers should reject it.

More to Come