As What is Truth? readers may know, Dr. Mark Ward, Bob Jones University graduate and Logos Bible software employee, produced a series of three videos (5/2/2024; 5/9/2024; 5/16/2024–note that I am making it quite easy to find his videos if you want to do so, while he made it difficult to locate the video of mine that he was responding to, which is unfortunate) on his YouTube channel entitled “More New KJV-Only Arguments” in which he responded to my “Is the King James Version (KJV) Too Hard to Understand? James White / Thomas Ross Debate Review 11” video (also here on Rumble, or here at FaithSaves). Here is the video as an embed:

I summarized my argument in the video here at What is Truth? in a previous post. Dr. Brandenburg wrote a post about how Dr. Ward said in these videos, concerning me, “I regard him as an extremist of a particularly dangerous kind, the kind that is super intelligent.”  This comment by Dr. Ward definitely made me laugh.  But watch out–this post is written by a particularly dangerous extremist. Has Dr. Ward warned about the Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, theologically modernist, and other sorts of damnable heresy that is published by Logos Bible software for whom he works?  Maybe he has called this content that his employer publishes “dangerous” somewhere–I am not aware of it if he has.  So I suppose all of that is fine, but saying English speakers should continue to use the Bible that has served them so well for 400 years–that is very, very dangerous.  Millions of people are going to hell because of Roman Catholicism and theological modernism, but what is truly dangerous is anyone who would advise English speakers to use the Authorized, King James Version, despite a small number of archaic words it contains.

I pointed out in my video that the KJV’s English fits within the parameters of the linguistic difficulty of the original language texts of Scripture.  Thus, since the KJV’s English is not harder than the Greek of the New Testament or the Hebrew of the Old Testament, we have an exegetical basis for concluding that we do not need, at this time, to revise the English Authorized Version.  We also have an exegetical basis for determining when it would be appropriate to revise the English of the KJV–if it ever becomes significantly harder to read than the original language texts, then it is time for true churches to come together to produce a revision.

There are some serious problems in Ward’s response to my argument, although I appreciate that he actually offered a response. (James White just ignored it, so good for Dr. Ward.) I am not going to point out in this post all of the problems in his book claiming that the English of the KJV is too hard, or his serious inaccuracies in his three videos.  I will, however, share with blog readers a comment I offered to part two of his three-part series.  I have italicized my comment below and have added some explanatory words within it in bold.

Dear Dr. Ward,

Thank you for taking the time to review my “Is the King James Version (KJV) Too Hard to Understand? James White / Thomas Ross Debate Review 11” video in two videos (and apparently a third video coming).

In my comment I specified the name of the video he was critiquing so that people could actually watch it instead of just hearing his critique with a very limited ability to even find and hear first hand what he was arguing against.

Someone brought these videos to my attention and so I thought I should take a peek. I hope that both my video–which, of course, was not about anything you said in particular, but about Dr. White’s comments in our debate–and your response will contribute to Christians thinking Biblically about the issue of Bible translation, and evaluating their philosophy of Bible translation from a sola Scriptura perspective, instead of just creating whatever standard they wish. If my video and your responses lead to that happening, then something useful for God’s kingdom will certainly have been accomplished for His glory.

I really do mean that.  I am glad that he made his videos, and I hope that people who are anti-KJVO will start to approach the question of Bible translation exegetically.  Of course, if they do, they just might end up becoming perfect preservationists who use exclusively the KJV in English.

Lord willing, at some point I will create a response to your videos. You may not be surprised that I have not found your responses especially compelling, although I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say in part three.

Part three was also less than compelling. Brother Ward did not seem, in some places, to even grasp my argument accurately.  For example, in part three Dr. Ward argued that if I was right then we should just add in archaic words when we make new translations, but my point was not about making new translations, but about when it is appropriate to revise an already extant translation. The idea that one should randomly decide to add in archaic words for fun has nothing to do with my argument.  For the large majority of the time since God has given the canon of Scripture God’s people would have found more rare or hard-to-understand words in the Hebrew and Greek texts than there are in the KJV, but God never instructed His Apostles and prophets to make a revision of the Hebrew or Greek texts.

I was wondering if you would be so kind as to let me know: 1.) If, before I produced my video, you had written or set forth in any setting an exegetical basis for your position on Bible translations, other than your claim that the KJV is in a different language and so violates 1 Corinthians 14 on not speaking in foreign tongues in the church without an interpreter. I must say that I find the idea that 1 Corinthians 14 teaches that we must abandon the KJV, or at least its exclusive use in English, most unconvincing exegetically. I would like to confirm that you view my claim that we should evaluate what is appropriate for English Bible translations based on the level of difficulty of the Old Testament and New Testament Hebrew and Greek texts as a claim that is indeed “novel” or new to you, and thus as something that you never considered before writing your book Authorized?

It is not good if someone has written an entire book arguing that the KJV’s English is too hard to understand and has given a significant part of his life to turning people away from the King James Bible, and yet has never even thought about comparing it with the lingustic difficulty of the text God gave His people directly by the dictation of the Holy Spirit.

Dr. Ward’s argument that because 1 Corinthians 14 forbids utilizing the miraculous gift of tongues to speak Japanese in 1st century Corinth if there were no Japanese speakers present and no translation into the common language–Greek–or forbids miraculously speaking in the tongue of Zulu if there are no Zulu speakers present, therefore we need to reject the KJV because it is really a foreign language.  This, to be kind, is less than convincing.  To be blunt, it is ridiculous, and a painful abuse of 1 Corinthians 14.  However, that is all the Scripture Dr. Ward has for his position that the English of the KJV is too hard.  Would his argument prove too much–would it prove that the Jews in Ezra’s day should have revised the books of Moses, or that the Apostles should not have used the LXX, even when it is accurate?  Yes.  So we can be thankful that his claim from 1 Corinthians 14 is astonishingly off base.  It was fine for the Jews in Malachi’s day to just read the Hebrew Pentateuch, even though their language had changed much more than the English language has between 1611 and today.

2.) If you could please also let me know how many times you have read the Greek NT cover to cover and / or the Hebrew OT, as well as what training in the languages you have, I would appreciate that as well. It will help me to be accurate in what I say in response to you, as I am sure we both believe accuracy is very important, as our God is a God of truth.

Dr. Ward never answered this question, and I suspect the answer is “zero” for both how many times he has read through the Greek NT or the Hebrew OT.  There are not a few things that he says in his videos that make me rather strongly suspect this.  They are not things one would say were he closely acquainted with the original language texts of Scripture.

Thank you very much. Let me say that I also appreciate that you provided a significant quote from my video and appeared to want to accurately represent me. I thank you for that.

I do appreciate that, as far as I can tell, Dr. Ward did not intentionally misrepresent my argument.  Did he misrepresent it?  Yes, but I think this was a matter of inaccuracy, not intentionality.  I also need to keep in mind that his anti-KJVO side does not approach issues like this through exegesis, through looking at Scripture first to see what it says about preservation and Bible translation, so he is rather like a fish out of water here.  I am glad he is trying.  I wish he had plainly told his audience where they could find my argument so they could go ad fontes and compare what I actually said with what he argued against.

3.) I would also be interested in seeing if you have any grammatical sources for your claim that the difficulty in Luke-Acts, for example, versus the Johannine literature, is mainly because participles are placed in different locations, as well as your other grammatical claims. Some of the claims seemed quite unusual to my mind, and I would like to know if any Greek grammarians make such affirmations as you made.

He never provided any sources for his claims.  I suspect that is because there are no such sources, as people who write Greek and Hebrew grammars are likely to be quite surprised by not a few of the arguments that Dr. Ward made.  I do not think that those who have actually read Luke-Acts and the Johannine literature in the New Testament would say that the main or even the chief difficulty in harder NT Greek is knowing what adverbial participles modify.  This statement sounds to me like the claim of someone who is not very familiar with the Greek of these books.

I may be into having sources for my claims more than most people who make YouTube videos, but I did not notice any grammatical sources cited in your videos.

 

That is the problem with producing YouTube videos instead of writing things down, or instead of doing face-to-face debate.

4.) When you spoke about a test that you had given to KJVO pastors that definitively proved that they did not understand the KJV themselves, I was interested and took the test, and had some KJVO folk take it as well. I must say that they did much, much better than did the people whom you surveyed. (I myself got a 19 out of 20, and I think that the one I got wrong was a problem with the question.)

I had never heard of his test, which he mentioned in part 1 of his video, until examining his video, part 1. I decided to take his test.  One of the questions was:

This is a poorly designed question, because more than one of the answers fits both the meaning of the Hebrew word and the English translation in the KJV. Commenting on why the word “remove” here is (allegedly) archaic, Ward affirms:

However, the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew defines the Hebrew word here (in the tense used, the Hiphil) as follows:

Hi. 6.0.9 Pf. Q ‏הסיג‎; impf. 2ms ‏תַּסִּיג‎ (‏תַּסֵּג‎); ptc. ‏מַסִּיג‎, ‏מַסִּיגֵי‎ (Q ‏מסגי‎, ‏משיגי‎); inf. cstr. ‏הסיג—1a. remove, move back, <SUBJ> Israel(ites) Dt 1914, seducer of wife 4QInstrb 2.46; subj. not specified, Pr 2228 2310 4QInstrb 2.38. <OBJ> גְּבוּל border Dt 1914 Pr 2228 2310 4QInstrb 2.38 2.46. <COLL> סוג hi. :: גבל set a border Dt 1914.

b. ptc. as noun, one who removes a boundary, <SUBJ> ארר pass. be cursed Dt 2717, דבר pi. speak CD 520, נבא ni. prophesy CD 520, עמד stand CD 520, שׁוב hi. cause to turn CD 520, תעה hi. cause to err CD 520. <CSTR> מַסִּיג גְּבוּל remover of a border Dt 2717, מַסִּיגֵי removers of Ho 510=CD 1915 4QDa 14 CD 520 (הגבול; =4QDa 3.27 גבול) 4Q424 39, משיגי הגב[ו]ל removers of the border 4QDf 12; כול מסיגי all the removers of 4Q424 39. <PREP> לְ of benefit, to, for 4Q424 39; introducing object 4QDa 14; כְּ as, like, + היה be Ho 510=CD 1915.

2. remove, carry away, intrans., <SUBJ> Israel(ites) Mc 614 (or em. תַּסֵּג you shall carry away to ‏תַּשֵּׂג you shall reach, i.e. increase wealth; or em. ‏תִּסָּגֵר you shall be delivered up, i.e. ‏סגר ni.; unless סוג II hi. surround with fence). <COLL> סוג hi. || פלט hi. save Mc 614.

Note that this standard Hebrew lexicon–volume 1 of which was published in 1993–includes the actual English word “remove” in its definition of this word, but, supposedly, the KJV’s “remove” in Proverbs 22:28 is archaic. Has English changed a great deal since 1993, so that this Hebrew dictionary includes this alleged archaism, “remove”?  Note as well that more than one of the options in Dr. Ward’s questionnaire would both fit the meaning of the Hebrew word and the English word.

Thus, his survey includes at least this allegedly “archaic” word in the KJV that is not archaic.  The word is defined as “remove” in modern times in a modern standard Hebrew lexicon (one that, I might add, is never cited anywhere in Dr. Ward’s quiz–maybe he should have studied the Hebrew text a bit more carefully before producing his test, or at least before publishing it and making claims that are easily shown to be inaccurate.)

I am wondering if it is possible to get more information about who these people are. Are they Baptists? Are they people who believe in justification by works or baptismal regeneration and do not even have the Holy Spirit, as one finds even among various denominational “Baptist” groups if one goes house to house regularly in evangelism? Would they claim to be fundamentalists?

Who these people are is rather important. Dr. Ward said that only 7% of them knew the differences between “thee/thou/thy” as singular in the KJV and “ye/you” as plural.  What?  Seven percent?  Who are these people?  In our church the preachers all know, the adults are instructed, the children are instructed, and it is even in Bible study #1 in our evangelistic Bible study series. 93% of those who took his survey did not know this?  Are his survey results verifiable, reproducible, and falsifiable–or are they none of the above?  Why should we trust them?

Let me note that Mark Ward’s solution to people not knowing the difference between thee/thou/thy and ye/you is not to instruct them in the difference–it is to reject the KJV so that they are reading some modern version where you can NEVER know the difference.  Quite a solution, no?

5.) I would be interested if you have done anything to encourage KJVO saints to do something like read KJVs that have the (small number of) archaic words defined in the margin of their Bibles, as do many study Bibles, the Defined KJV, etc.

I would love to find out I am wrong, but I think he has done exactly nothing to encourage saints who are going to cleave to their KJVs to understand them better by having them read editions of the Authorized Version where the archaic words are defined in the margin.  I will applaud Dr. Ward when he donates the profits from his book against exclusive use of the KJV to purchasing copies of works that define its archaic words, such as David Cloud’s Believer’s Bible Dictionary, and donating those books to KJVO Christians.  But I am not holding my breath.

If not, could you explain why you believe such a solution to your “false friends” idea is insufficient, and why what needs to be done is to replace the KJV with a multiplicity of modern versions that do things like take “hell” out of the Old Testament and replace it with that easy to understand and commonly used word “Sheol,” or attack the classical doctrine of the Trinity by changing the Son from being “only begotten” to being “unique,” or change the Son’s going forth from the Father in His eternal generation from being “from everlasting” to the Arian “from ancient days,” and so on, that would be appreciated. If you do not appreciate such changes in modern versions, I am wondering if you have any written sources or videos warning about them.

I am aware of exactly nothing written or taught by Dr. Ward warning about any of these serious corruptions–really evil “false friends”–in many modern Bible versions.  Nor am I aware of Dr. Ward ever explaining why such a solution is more than sufficient to deal with the small number of KJV archaisms–just like there was not one word of criticism of Dr. James White’s inaccurate claims, the ones I was actually dealing with, in my video “Is the King James Version (KJV) Too Hard to Understand? James White / Thomas Ross Debate Review 11.”  Only KJVO people deserve criticism, it appears.

 

I at least would rather have a Bible that teaches Athanasian Trinitarianism but uses “conversation” in an older sense meaning “conduct” than a Bible that has a nice new “conduct” translation but undermines the holy Trinity in some verses (while, thankfully, still supporting it in others).

Wouldn’t you?

Also, please feel free to get in touch with me if you ever change your mind about being willing to publicly dialogue or debate on this matter.

I have offered to debate him multiple times and he has refused.  Could it be that his position is not defensible in open debate?  Could it be that his whole case would fall apart if he had to do what Christ and the Apostles did in the Gospels and Acts, namely, debate and refute their opponents face-to-face?

I happen to think there would be more profit from a face-to-face encounter where we both have equal time to present our case than there is in your producing videos on your YouTube channel that are mainly preaching to your choir while I do the same on my KJB1611 channel with videos that will mainly be watched by people who are already convinced of the perfect preservation of Scripture. Finally, thank you for complementing me as being “super intelligent.” That was very kind of you. The “very dangerous” part, maybe not so much, but I suppose we can’t have everything. I am not planning to respond to any comments here, as I am not convinced that YouTube comments are the best place to engage in scholarly discussion, but I will look forward to hearing from you if you are able to answer my questions. Thanks again, Thomas

Dr. Ward did respond to my comment as follows:

Ross has said he won’t reply here. So I’ll reply to just two items for the sake of my viewers. (No reply on nos. 1, 2, and 5.)

Why do you think he does not want to answer questions #1, 2, and 5?  It isn’t because I won’t reply on his YouTube channel in the comment section.  Doesn’t he want me to have the best and most accurate information for when I actually respond to him, God willing?  Surely it is not because he does not have a good answer to those questions.  Right?

3. I mentioned in the video that I was offering my thoughts as a reader of the Greek New Testament; I self-consciously chose not to cite authorities here.

Does he cite authorities somewhere else, then?  Where?  Anywhere?  I thought it was interesting that after I asked this question in part 2 of his three part series, in part 3 he mentioned that he had started reading a book on Hebrew discourse analysis.  Great, good for him.  He never said a word about my actual question–how much of the Hebrew Old Testament itself, and Greek New Testament itself, has he actually read?

4. All of the information I am able to release publicly about the participants in the study is available at kjbstudyproject.com, on the Demographic Data page that is linked in the main navigational menu. I refer interested viewers there.

The demographic data seems to indicate that the people who took his survey were not Mormons or Oneness Pentecostals, if the people who took the survey told the truth.  So that is useful, and I appreciate that he pointed that out.  But there is still something very wonky with his survey results.  And, of course, we have no way of verifying, corroborating, or falsifying that whatever people said in the survey is actually the truth.  Dr. Ward claimed his survey was “definitive,” when it is incredibly far from anything of the kind.  But I do appreciate him pointing to that “Demographic Data” page, even though I wish he had taken the time to make sure that words like “remove” are actually archaic by spending just a bit longer looking at standard Hebrew lexica before putting his survey out.

Let me end this blog post by reiterating that, while his attempt to deal with my Biblically-based case for the English of the KJV is solely reactive, in that he never thought of actually seeing what God’s objective standard is for Bible translation by looking at the language level in Scripture until I brought this to his attention, by the grace of God, I am thankful if his videos at least get people to start to thinking that way.

Also, again, this is by no means a comprehensive response to his three videos or to his book–just a few thoughts to whet your appetite.

Finally, let me point out that this exchange illustrates why those who believe in the perfect preservation of Scripture and the Authorized, King James Version should learn the Biblical languages, especially if they are spiritual leaders.  The large holes in his argument are much more easily visible if one knows Hebrew and Greek.

–TDR