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So, no apology is necessary for saying there’s one Bible.  Why?  There’s one Bible.  Is that Bible the King James Version?  It is the underlying text.  I recently heard someone say, the underlying text for the King James Version text didn’t happen until 1881.  That’s someone not telling the truth.  He’s at least not speaking to those who don’t believe that.  He’s talking to his echo chamber or those who know little about the underlying text.  It is not steelmanning the opposition, but purposeful misrepresentation — a work of the flesh.  Call it what you want.

I’ve said again and again, the King James translators translated from something.  They translated.  The King James translators weren’t making the words up.  The many English commentators for those centuries after the King James Version didn’t treat the translation like a text didn’t exist.  They commented on that text, because they possessed it.

Men who didn’t write commentaries knew the original languages and they were preaching from a text they believe was kept pure through all the ages.  They believed that because God promised it.  So it wasn’t?  By faith we understand that it was.

Recognition of Textual Variants

A fourth concern I’ve heard is the reality that church men have long recognized textual variants and acknowledged their existence.  I don’t know who doesn’t know this.  Since we know that variations exist between printed editions of the Greek New Testament, then we know scribal errors were made in hand copies.  Come on!  This is a red herring!

Our scriptural presupposition is not that individual manuscripts or printed editions are perfect.  It isn’t even the ink or parchment, one perfect physical manuscript that survives from the beginning.  The opposite.  We believe in the perfect preservation and availability of the words of scripture.  That’s what the Bible talks about.  Godly church leaders called this, an error in one copy is corrected in another.

Error in One Copy Corrected in Another

Richard Capel wrote:

[W]e have the Copies in both languages [Hebrew and Greek], which Copies vary not from Primitive writings in any matter which may stumble any. This concernes onely the learned, and they know that by consent of all parties, the most learned on all sides among Christians do shake hands in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. . . .

As God committed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.

Another presupposition is attack on scripture.  Sometimes errors are purposeful.  It took the providential handiwork of God to ensure preservation occurred through the means revealed in scripture.

Gaslit Arguments

Critical Text New Consensus, Voice of Holy Spirit

Certain various arguments seem like gaslighting to me.  Here’s one:  the critical text is or could be the consensus text among believers now, and this is the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking.  I don’t think anyone really believes this.  What’s wrong with it though, if anyone even takes it seriously?

Preservation means availability.  A text not available isn’t preserved.  The critical text isn’t a text that ever existed.  It’s a “Frankentext” with hundreds of lines of text with no manuscript evidence.  It was not available.

The church believed in perfect preservation and agreed on the text.  It was settled.  Modernism came up with a new text based on rationalism.  That wasn’t the Holy Spirit or the church.

You don’t have something preserved, that’s the Holy Spirit, and then men replace it and now that’s the Holy Spirit.  A close parallel would be restorationism.  That means something is lost and the Holy Spirit returns it to what it was.  The modern text doesn’t proceed from preservation or agreement of the church.  It is an invention used just for what seems like gaslighting from people who don’t believe in any of what they’re saying.

English Prejudice?

Another faux argument considers an accused English prejudice.  Again, these are all just reactions to already established scriptural presuppositions.  Reformation era Dutch, German, Spanish, and French translations come from slightly different TR editions that some say belie a settled text or perfect preservation.  Why English and not these other language translations?

Other major world languages have the similarity of all with long-time translations from the Hebrew Masoretic for the Old Testament and Textus Receptus for the New.  None of them translated a critical text.  That narrows it down to essentially the same text, but it’s true that each of them does not translate from an identical text.  For some critical text supporters, this apparently opens a gap to drive through a critical text.  To them, this must needs indicate some level of eclecticism or acceptance of it.

Again, I don’t think the critics are serious when they make the accusations of English prejudice toward an apparent bias toward the King James Version.  English speaking people are embracing the King James Version.  Those supportive of the King James Version also celebrate the availability of these Reformed era translations from essentially the same underlying text.  They are happy about the similarity and the availability.  They’re all much better than a modern critical text.  There isn’t fighting between these various language translations all from the similar text.

Critical text supporters and King James critics are the ones highlighting the few differences in underlying text.  They’re doing this only to undermine a doctrine of perfect preservation.  They’re also trying to make it an issue of English prejudice, which there isn’t.

Why the King James?

I hate answering this question, because I doubt the sincerity of those asking.  They don’t believe in the same presuppositions or even the same source for the contradictory presuppositions.  I’ve been asked many insincere questions, especially teaching jr. high for decades in our school.  Those kids liked asking the same type of questions to attempt to pit the teacher against their parents.

Maybe some KJV supporters have an English bias.  Myself and many, if not most, don’t have one.  I am just reading and calling what happened.  Biblical Christianity took hold through the English and then the English sent missionaries to the whole world.  English in fact became the lingua franca of the whole world.  It would be like saying that there was a Roman bias for a thousand years.  No, the Roman Empire ruled the then-known world.  It’s just reality.  The dollar is the world reserve currency.  Neither is this an English bias.

Scriptural presuppositions require a settled text.  To believe what God said on this, people have to bite down on what occurred.  It’s like acknowledging fulfilled prophecies.  What God said would happen did occur in the real world.  Believing requires accepting this.  If acceptance or reception (the canonicity argument) and the testimony of the Holy Spirit through believers direct to the very words, then there must be those words.  It really isn’t a hard call to say it’s the English.  This isn’t a prejudice.  It is a conclusion.  Faith requires a conclusion.  Rejecting that is faithless.

More to Come