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The average non-church going person and even church goers see the glut of English Bibles and often say, “There are different Bibles.” I’ve heard it dozens of times through the years. Is that true? Is there really more than one Bible? The answer is “no.” God inspired only one Bible, certain exact words, and then He also preserved one Bible with the same exact words in the same language in which they were written. The so-called existence of “many Bibles” undermines authority for the one and only Bible. Believing in one Bible doesn’t require an apology. That belief is a true one.

An Apology

Mark Ward just wrote the following:

One of my life’s long-term prayers is that someone of stature within KJV-Only circles will publicly apologize for promoting false doctrine.

Then he explained the reason:

Ultimately God only knows what moral culpability individuals bear for teaching things that aren’t true and thereby dividing the body of Christ. God only knows who is a victim and who is a perpetrator, or what proportions of perpetrator and victim a given person represents. But I just can’t imagine that all this untruth and division that’s been generated by KJV-Onlyism could occur without individual people sinning—sinning against the teaching of 1 Cor 14 that edification requires intelligibility, sinning against commands for unity and for sound doctrine, sinning against God’s providential opportunities for doing better study.

In part one, I examined Ward’s charge of division for which he prays for an apology. Above you can also see he charges men with not telling the truth. That I know of, I haven’t taught anything on this subject that isn’t true. No one has shown me one thing that I’ve said that is false, which is an important prerequisite for apologizing about saying something not true. That’s all I can say on that part as an answer to Mark Ward’s prayer. He’ll have to get more specific with me if he wants that particular apology. I’m a phone call away for any apology if he’s been praying for one.

Logic and Ambiguity

In recent days, Ward declared that KJVO leaders sin for having the KJV as their church Bible. For you reading, who don’t know much about Ward, this explains his use of 1 Corinthians 14. There is a kind of syllogism that with Ward gets this to the sin category for me and others. I’m trying to help you understand Ward’s thinking here. I’ve made his logic into a syllogism.

Major Premise: Knowing to do good and not doing good is sin.
Minor Premise: Edification is good and because unintelligibility prohibits edification, allowing or causing unintelligibility is not doing good.
Conclusion: Therefore, allowing or causing unintelligibility is sin.

I can agree with the soundness of the syllogism. What’s wrong? There’s an informal logical fallacy called, equivocation.

The equivocation fallacy refers to the use of an ambiguous word or phrase in more than one sense within the same argument. Because this change of meaning happens without warning, it renders the argument invalid or even misleading.

Intelligibility and unintelligibility of themselves are ambiguous. Like many other words and even concepts in scripture, someone can make them mean what he wants them to mean. A believer should define a word in scripture based on how the author uses it. Mark Ward defines intelligibility in a particular way that does not fit 1 Corinthians 14. Many people have explained that to him. I haven’t seen him listen on this and almost anything else. He has a bias toward his own thinking.

Language and 1 Corinthians 14

Paul portrayed a situation in 1 Corinthians 14 where someone spoke in an unknown language. People couldn’t understand it without a translator. Only with an accurate translation could someone understand a foreign language. The conclusion: stop speaking in an unknown or foreign language. There it is.

1 Corinthians 14 is in a three chapter section (12-14) on spiritual gifts. It especially deals with an abuse of the gift of tongues. The actual gift of tongues, as seen in Acts 2, means known languages. The point is understanding the language. Those chapters are not about semantical changes in the same language, but about reining in the abuse of tongues.

Semantic changes occur in the Bible itself and the Bible doesn’t sin when it does that or allows it. Words change in meaning as one reads through the Bible itself. Sometimes the progression of the biblical narrative results in some changes in meaning.

I’m not writing to protect semantic changes in an English translation of God’s perfectly preserved words. We want to know what those words mean and all the other ones too. 1 Corinthians 14 deals mainly with speaking in gibberish, that is, in a language that can’t be know at all. It’s not even a language. That doesn’t edify.

Real Concerns

Even if someone spoke an actual foreign language in a miraculous way, he wouldn’t edify the hearers if they didn’t know the language. That or unintelligible gibberish is the context of verse 9, when Paul says, “utter by the tongue words easy to be understood.” He is not talking about a word here and there of the same language as the hearers, which has endured a semantic change. Edification would still occur with that. I’m not saying it’s not a problem. It is. But it isn’t a sin.

Calling sin the continued endorsement of the King James Version as the English Bible for a church is such an exaggeration, so excessive, by Mark Ward, that it reminds me of the games Pharisees played with words, as recorded in the Gospels. It is blowing a concern way out of proportion.

I’ve written a lot about this through the years, but my bigger concern is a distortion of the gospel and perverted preaching. Many, many who use the King James Version for decades and longer have preached a false gospel and now for half a century at least have just used the King James. It’s not because of archaic words that they do this. They do it because of perverted theology and probably in many instances a lack of conversion. I hear almost nothing about that from Mark Ward. No. Even when he is with someone who massacres the true gospel, he says nothing as long as that person gives an inch on his false friend teaching.

More to Come

A Sincere, Accurate Assessment Contrasting Translational Choices Versus Underlying Original Language Text

November 19, 2024 / 37 Comments on A Sincere, Accurate Assessment Contrasting Translational Choices Versus Underlying Original Language Text

Sufficient Intelligibility and False Friends

The most prominent recent conversation about the Bible (that I’ve seen) revolves around “sufficient intelligibility” of the King James Version. Some words used by the King James translators have changed in meaning since their translation. Podcaster Mark Ward declares about one hundred words as “false friends.” As an overview of the definitional usage, “false friend” means the following provided by an AI aggregation:

A false friend is a word in one language that sounds or looks similar to a word in another language, but has a different meaning. It is also known as a false cognate or bilingual homophone.

Unlike the new Mark Ward usage of the terminology, false friend does not refer to a word in the same language that over the centuries radically changed in its meaning. Instead, linguists call this a “semantic change.” Mark Ward did not originate the concept of “false friend.” He simply uses the two word phrase in a different, inventive way that alters its original and definitional usage. It does not refer to the changing meaning of the word. The words for that are semantic shift or semantic change.

History of False Friends Versus Semantic Change

At the same time, Ward was not the first to use “false friend” in the novel way that he does. British linguist, David Crystal, began using the term “false friend” to refer to words in William Shakespeare’s writing that have now changed in meaning from their original understanding in Elizabethan English. He accumulated an appendix of these words as long ago as 2010. As far as I know, Crystal and Ward are the only ones using “false friend” like they have and do. In some ways, it’s an either rhetorical or marketing tool. Others are now imitating this new usage, but Crystal coined “false friend” for Shakespeare and then Ward for the King James Version.

Semantic shift or change is real. Ward and his host of assistants have searched for words with semantic changes in meaning in the King James Version. However, they’re a little late to the party, because those using the King James Version already provided these lists of words and their meaning for decades. They all know about this already, so they don’t need a lecture! In 1998 the late D. A. Waite and his Bible For Today at great effort published The Defined King James Bible. Even before Waite’s book, men wrote helps in this way. Thomas Nelson Press published The King James Version Wordbook in 1994.

In 1978 in An Introduction to Language, Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman wrote (p. 314):

In the King James Version of the Bible (1611), God says of the herbs and trees, “to you shall be for meat” (Genesis 1:29). To a speaker of seventeenth-century English, meat meant “food,” and flesh meant “meat.” Since that time, semantic change has narrowed the meaning of meat to what it is in Modern English.

Two Actions

You can see that Fromkin and Rodman referred to this alteration of meaning, as do many others, as a “semantic shift” (not false friend). This occurs in every language over time. Words take on a new meaning and contemporary readers should be informed of this in an older book or translation. Two different actions could alleviate the possible confusion for one hundred or so words most egregiously affected by semantic changes.

One

One, the meaning of these one hundred or so words could be placed in the margin. The Trinitarian Bible Society definitely does that in their classic and Westminster reference Bibles. Why should someone do a total retranslation of the King James Version, when this simple solution exists? It does not even require a giant group of Hebrew and Greek scholars to put in thousands of hours to accomplish this task. That work is done already.

The 1611 King James translators placed into their translation marginal notes. Marginal notes are not new. There were 7,342 of them in the 1611 KJV. The marginal notes were designed to provide readers with additional insights into the text. They often included alternate translations, explanations of obscure passages, and clarifications on specific terms or names found within the biblical text. Some notes defined biblical terms or provided context for certain characters, enhancing the reader’s understanding of the scriptures. When I say scriptures, I mean what God inspired, the original language text.

As some of you reading here might know, providing a definition in the margin is unacceptable to Ward. I’ve never heard him give an answer as to why. He defames and castigates any church leader who opts for public continuation of usage of the King James Version, even with provision of definitions. Ward recently said these leaders are sinning by continuing to have the KJV as their church Bible. The Inquisitor General has spoken. Sin! The only arbitrary option for Ward that would avoid sinning, besides changing to a modern version, is the next one.

Two

Two, someone could update the translation of the King James Version in the spirit of the Blayney edition of 1769, that almost everyone already uses. Some will say, “That’s already been done.” People will mention The New King James Version first. I’ve already written here in many posts how that the underlying text is different for the NKJV, which eliminates it as a possibility. I believe there are over one hundred places where the NKJV translators came from a different word, not identical to the King James Version.

Another new translation that claims the same underlying text is the Modern English Version. This was started in 2005 under the leadership of James Linzey, a Southern Baptist. Many men worked on the MEV from a lot of different denominations with many different doctrinal and gospel positions. It was published in 2014 by Passio, an arm of Charisma Publishing House, a Charismatic organization. I haven’t looked into the MEV like I have the NKJV, so I don’t have much to say about it.

Some have given the Modern English Version a good review and some bad. It seems like originally it was meant to meet a concern of chaplains in the British military and what they should give to their soldiers. The MEV does question the underlying text of the KJV in its footnotes, calling into doubt the text preserved and available to the Lord’s churches. I can’t in good conscience hand to someone or recommend to him a translation that denounces the very text from which it was translated. The MEV does that.

Semantic and Translational Choices Versus Underlying Text

With everything said so far about semantic and translational choices in the English translation of the original languages of the Bible, how does that contrast with a different underlying text? The modern versions don’t translate from the same Hebrew and Greek words. There are thousands of differences in words between the critical text, the underlying text behind the modern versions of the New Testament, and that of the Textus Receptus, the underlying text behind the King James Version. Thousands. Those are different words, not words that could have variation in meaning, a semantic change, so someone could understand them in different ways.

It’s important to translate words right. Translating the original language words into intelligible language is also good. If you can, you want to translate into words that people can understand. You don’t want to translate into words that have a different meaning now than the word in the underlying text. This is called “getting it right.” When someone translates, if possible he should try to get the English word with the same meaning as the original language word. At the same time, having the wrong underlying word is worse.

Having a hundred words with a translation with a changed semantical meaning is not as bad as actual wrong words. Someone can learn the old meaning of the word that has had a semantical change. A totally different or wrong word is still different and wrong, even if it’s translated right and intelligible. No explanation or translation can change the wrong word in the underlying text. That’s worse than a “false friend.”

Important Consideration

100 Versus 5,000

I ask that you also take the next obvious truth into consideration. Someone such as Mark Ward and others, but especially him, will say it is sin to distribute one hundred words he assesses as unintelligible in translation. Yet, he will not consider or call it sin to distribute five thousand wrong words. This comparison should qualify the outrage over intelligibility. I’ll let you judge. Those one hundred misunderstood words look like more of a red herring next to five thousands wrong words.

Ward himself to his credit won’t say that semantic change is an error in translation. It isn’t. However, the wrong word is an error. You can never translate the right word from a wrong word.

The Hodgepodge

What’s lost with the hodgepodge of English translations on the market today? It dismisses the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation of scripture. Among other things, that is what is most unacceptable in an evaluation of this issue. In the late nineteenth century, B. B. Warfield at Princeton Seminary invented a new doctrine of inerrancy to compensate for this very betrayal of the doctrine of preservation.

I see two ironies at least. One, false friends itself is now a semantic change. Mark Ward and David Crystal use “false friend” with a different meaning. Ironic. Two, Warfield changed the meaning of inerrancy to induce acceptability to thousands of changed words in the text of the Bible. In fact, the critical text brings known errors into scripture. What was without error is now error and yet called, inerrant. The irony is not lost on me in either case.

Mark Ward speaks with certainty about a sin of unintelligibility. He isn’t certain about the words of scripture though. He calls it confidence, something less than being certain. According to Ward: confidence good, certainty bad. So that’s fine to Ward and others, to be expected from his and others’ perspective. The only thing wrong to them is questioning him and them on this issue. You must bend the knee to their fallacy or at least join in unity with them as if nothing occurred. Nothing to see, just move along.

Assessing the New Appalling Slander of Thomas Ross

May 6, 2024 / 13 Comments on Assessing the New Appalling Slander of Thomas Ross

Mark Ward Says in a Recent Youtube Video Concerning Thomas Ross: “I Regard Him as an Extremist of a Particularly Dangerous Kind, the Kind that Is Super Intelligent”

Thomas Ross debated James White last year with White arguing in the affirmative the proposition that a new translation, the Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), was superior to the King James Version (KJV). Ross took the opposition. Since White was in the affirmative, Ross refuted White’s arguments for that proposition. The above quote from Ward comes from an introduction to the first of three videos he is producing to answer ones Thomas Ross made after the White debate.

Answering Thomas Ross gets far more traffic for Ward at his site. I don’t want to make it easier for him, so I’m not linking to his series. You can find it on your own, if you want to see it. He also mentions me in the video.

An Extremist of a Particularly Dangerous Kind?

So why does Ward say Thomas is “an extremist of a particularly dangerous kind”? He gives no reasons. None. The definition of ad hominem is this: “(of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.” Like James White himself, Ward attacks Thomas Ross as a person and not his position. He does not explain. I’m saying this is appalling slander of Ross by Ward.

What does Ward mean, “extremist”? The definition of “extremist” itself is derogatory. Collins Dictionary defines extremist:

1. a person who favours or resorts to immoderate, uncompromising, or fanatical methods or behaviour, esp in being politically radical. adjective. 2. of, relating to, or characterized by immoderate or excessive actions, opinions, etc.

And then Ward says Ross is “of a particularly dangerous kind.” So Thomas Ross is not just “dangerous,” but “particularly dangerous.” Those words themselves are extreme. Their very mention of another person, a truly saved person as Thomas Ross, requires explanation. Ward gives none. He just makes the claim.

What Ross Does

Thomas Ross is careful first to come from scripture. He exposes or exegetes scripture very carefully for his positions. Second, he backs his positions with historical doctrine. He shows how that others in the past take the position, so his doctrine is not new or innovative.

In his debate with White, Ross dismantled White’s position with evidence, point by point. White himself resorted to ad hominem style arguments by regularly pointing out how fast Ross talked and judged his motives. He never answered Ross’s primary argument against the underlying text of the LSB and other modern versions of the Bible. Ross showed plainly how that in hundreds of places, lines of underlying Greek text behind the LSB had zero manuscript evidence. Instead of answering, which he couldn’t, White insulted Thomas Ross as a person, just like Ward is doing. This shouldn’t help White or Ward. It should warn off their listeners.

Ward Poisons the Well

Ward is free to go ahead and make statements like he did about Thomas Ross. He can do that, but anyone reading should take note of what he is doing. His statement should discredit him. It is a classic, informal logical fallacy called, “poisoning the well,” which means the following:

Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a type of informal fallacy where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. Poisoning the well can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem, and the term was first used with this sense by John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864).

Ward and his audience very often attack the persons of their opposition. Ross offered a face-to-face discussion or debate with Ward and Ward refused. He says it is because Ross is an extremist and dangerous, and then he proceeds to treat Ross as though his arguments were legitimate, needing addressing. Do you see the obvious contradiction there? Ward contradicts his own fallacious reasoning.

Any Reasons for Ad Hominem Attack by Ward? None

The only possible reason one could ascertain for why Ward poisons the well and uses the ad hominem against Ross is because Thomas Ross is “super intelligent.” Why would intelligence and even super intelligence be a negative for someone on a subject matter? Ross doesn’t claim super intelligence for himself. Ward made that claim for Ross and gave it as the only reason for Ross’s extremism and danger.

Mark Ward explained that when Ross offered him an in person debate, his counsellors told him that it was not worthy of Ward’s own personal gifts and the purposes of his work. And yet Ward has plenty of time to produce three videos dealing with “super intelligent” Ross, where Ross cannot answer him in person. What evaluation could someone make of such a dodge of Ross by Ward?

Think of Wards accusations if it were a court of law, where the accused “extremist” and “particularly dangerous” individual cannot answer his accuser. Only the prosecution speaks. Ward sits alone and makes slanderous declarations against Ross with no cross examination. This is unjust treatment of unbiblical and sinful manner.

Injustice toward Ross

Psalm 89:14 says:

Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face.

Proverbs 21:3 says:

To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.

It is not just to make a false, slanderous accusation against a godly Christian man like Thomas Ross, no explanation or reasons, and not give him a face to face opportunity to answer his accusation. This is not due process. It is not justice. Mark Ward treats Thomas Ross in a manner of contempt like Jesus warned against in Matthew 5:21-26, akin to murdering someone in his heart. A man claiming to be a Christian like Ward should not treat another man, whether Christian or not, with contempt. Ward treats a believer like Ross with contempt.

Doubling Down on Appalling Slander of Ross

Someone in the comment section dealt with Ward’s appalling slander of Ross, when he wrote:

It seems interesting that you would make the claim that Ross is a “extremist of a particularly dangerous kind” because he is “super intelligent”. When the same could, and probably should, be said about you. Btw. This comment meets your comment requirements because it is no more of an ad hominem attack than you yourself made.

To that, Ward answered: “I stand by what I said. Every word.” He had a great opportunity to retract, and he didn’t. Instead, he doubled down on his appalling slander of a Christian gentleman and scholar.

Ross wasn’t even dealing with Ward in the videos to which Ward refers. He was elaborating on the arguments of the White debate.

Ross Not Extreme or Dangerous

What makes anyone an extremist and dangerous and then on this issue of the intelligibility of the KJV? Ross takes the position that God preserved all of the words of God in their original language for every generation of believer. Is that really an extreme and dangerous position now? It is the biblical and historical position of the church.

Ross answers arguments against the intelligibility of the KJV made by White in the debate. Truly saved people all over the United States still use the KJV in their churches. It is still the most commonly used version of the Bible in conservative Bible believing churches in the United States. It’s not extreme to do so. And it is not extreme to defend the intelligibility of the KJV. There are good arguments for its continuation, which is why so many people still do use the King James.

Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray Recently on the KJV

I was listening to Jordan Peterson in an interview with British conservative journalist Douglas Murray. Peterson asked Murray:

I have a friend who is extremely erudite and literate and charismatic and maybe Canada’s most remarkable journalist. . . . He has the knowledge a vast corpus of poetry and its evident in the manner in which he speaks, because he has that lilt and cadence and rhythm that’s part and parcel. And you’re very very well spoken.

And Peterson asks Murray to what he attributes that quality of his. Murray answers:

In my case it is the great good fortune of having been brought up with the King James Bible, . . . . which if you have [that] in your head and you recite [it] every Sunday, gives you a pretty good idea of how to cadence the English language.

Murray characterized this as ‘furnishing his mental furniture and having to furnish it well.’ Murray didn’t see the King James Bible as extreme and dangerous to his public usage of language and understanding how to speak to a modern culture. No, it was a great help, the greatest help to his speaking ability, communicating to a contemporary people.

It is not good at all to slander your Christian opponents as a strategy to discredit them with ad hominem attacks. This is what Ward and White do and very often from which I’ve seen and read. I call on Ward to cease, desist, and retract such appalling slander about Thomas Ross and others.

WHAT IS TRUTH