Part One   Part Two   Part Three   Part Four   Part Five

Through the years, I’ve heard many in my audience of evangelism give this answer: “So many Bibles out there!”  Is that true though?  Are there really multiple Bibles and you can choose which Bible you want?  It truly is not true, but that’s what many think because of the glut of English translations.  There is only one Bible, yet people think of there as many Bibles.  Is anyone responsible for causing this wrong thinking?  Yes, the multiple versionists, who promote numerous “Bibles.”

Let’s say I agree with Mark Ward and his hundred plus “false friends” in the King James Version, so I decide I’ll do a Kent Brandenburg Version, the KBV.  I add my KBV to modern English translations from the same text as the King James Version.  Would that be good for me to do?  Doing an update like that would seem to follow a Mark Ward suggestion.  My doing my own update, I believe, is not good.  I wouldn’t do it, even though I could.  It would be right for many reasons.  Could some good reasons prohibit another English translation of the Bible?  I say, yes.

Biblical Criteria for an Update

Before someone tries an update, he should put together a list of biblical criteria for that undertaking.  I’ve thought about it and have in the past produced that list.  Several scriptural reasons would keep me from presently doing my own English translation and publishing it.  What is the criteria for an update and what makes a translation a standard?  Mark Ward has not produced such a list (that I know of).  I haven’t seen it.  The Bible has the principles that will form a list of criteria as a basis of a standard translation.  If an update were justifiable, the leadership for a translation should follow a list with biblical criteria for that update.

What is the purpose of the update?  From Mark Ward’s perspective, it’s these false friends or semantical changes that disallow an average person from understanding the Bible as well as he could.  I’ve already said that we can address that with marginal notes or footnotes.  We could also have a few page guide or booklet to accompany a Bible without notes in it.  What is bad about that choice?  Who would be against it, whose main concern is semantical change?  Apparently marginal notes and footnotes are great for textual variants, but not good for translation explanations?

Scrivener’s Greek New Testament

In my list of five concerns that I’ve read Mark Ward to express, the fifth is the following (as coming from him):

The 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 agree with this point that many, many men have made, who attack my position.  What they’re saying is true.  No single printed edition of the Greek New Testament that matches the underlying text of the King James Version existed until Scrivener’s (actual text).  Is there some kind of legitimate point to what Mark Ward and others say, using this as an attack of our position on the preservation and availability of the original language New Testament?  I don’t see it, have explained it many times, and I will explain it again here.  There are a few different points to the answer.

The Scrivener Greek Text Already Existed Before the Printed Edition

I am differentiating between the Greek text and the printed edition.  Printed editions of the Greek New Testament did not exist until the invention of the printing press.  Please, please get that statement.  The text of the Greek New Testament existed before the printing press, but no one printed it until the 16th century.  The Bible existed before the invention of the printing press.  This is the same issue.  It would seem simple to understand.

Kurt and Barbara Aland

The early printed editions of the Greek New Testament are known as the Textus Receptus (TR).  The TR never meant one printed edition. Even Kurt and Barbara Aland the famed textual critics, the “A” in “NA” (Nestles-Aland), wrote (“The Text of the Church?” in Trinity Journal, Fall, 1987, p.131):

[I]t is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century orthodoxy’s doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed this Textus Receptus. It was the only Greek text they knew, and they regarded it as the ‘original text.’

He also wrote in his The Text of the New Testament (p. 11):

We can appreciate better the struggle for freedom from the dominance of the Textus Receptus when we remember that in this period it was regarded even to the last detail the inspired and infallible word of God himself.

His wife Barbara writes in her book, The Text of the New Testament (pp. 6-7):

[T]he Textus Receptus remained the basic text and its authority was regarded as canonical. . . . Every theologian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and not just the exegetical scholars) worked from an edition of the Greek text of the New Testament which was regarded as the “revealed text.” This idea of verbal inspiration (i. e., of the literal and inerrant inspiration of the text) which the orthodoxy of both Protestant traditions maintained so vigorously, was applied to the Textus Receptus.

Theodore Beza, Richard Capel, and Edward Hills

The specific editions of the Textus Receptus, published in the 16th century, almost identical (but not identical) to Scrivener’s, were those produced by Theodore de Beza, particularly his 1588–89 and 1598 editions.  The differences between those of Beza and the underlying Greek text of the KJV were like those between each of the editions of the printed editions of the Textus Receptus.  It represents the common belief of the saints, communicated by Richard Capel, “what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.”  This also corresponds to the well-known expression of Edward Freer Hills in his The King James Version Defended:

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.

Scriptural Presuppositions

According to scriptural presuppositions, God preserved every Word and all of His Words in the language in which they were written, and made them available to every generation of believer.  Read that last sentence again.  That doesn’t say that God promised to preserve one printed edition.

I don’t want to go through this again.  The King James Translators translated from a text.  They used the Textus Receptus.  It was available.  They didn’t turn it into a printed edition.  Why?  I don’t hear the critics answering that question, maybe because they don’t care.  The text was available.  King James himself made an explicit instruction that his translators proceed from manuscripts written in the original languages of the Bible, Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament.  He explicitly instructed that the translation should not alter the originals.

Commentators

Commentators wrote from 1500 to 1800 and referred regularly and constantly to the last twelve verses of Mark, 1 John 5:7, and John 8:1-11, including as examples, John Gill, Matthew Henry, and Albert Barnes.  They say, “God was manifest in the flesh,” instead of “he was manifest in the flesh,” in 1 Timothy 3:16.  They very often refer to the Greek words that are not included in the modern critical text.  What were they looking at to refer to these words, but the Greek text that they possessed?

John Berriman quotes the Greek text of 1 Timothy 3:16, using Theos (“God,” not “he”) in his 1741 dissertation on 1 Timothy 3:16.  Commentator after commentator refers to the “book of life” in Revelation 22:19.  You know what I’m saying.  People referred to, exegeted, exposed, taught, and preached the same underlying text of the King James Version.  They weren’t waiting for the publication of Scrivener’s.

“Where Is the Printed Edition?”

Men ask as a part of an rhetorical argument:  “Where is the printed edition?”  I’ve never said once that we believed in the preservation of a printed edition, so the question is a strawman.  Scripture teaches the preservation of words and their availability.  That happened.  Those were presuppositions upon which succeeding generations depended.

Another presupposition is a settled text.  This required settling on a text.  The presupposition guides the interpretation of history.  On what text did believers settle?  All of these presuppositions become a matter of faith as an epistemology (“by faith we understand”).

The presupposition of a settled text also relates to the canonicity argument.  The inward testimony of the Holy Spirit in believers becomes the guiding factor.  Where is the agreement of believers?  It isn’t a critical text or eclecticism, which contradicts the presuppositions.  One can see this is a so-called text not received by the churches.  I say “so-called” because an eclectic text has no historical precedent.  It never existed until its doctors constructed it, hence the nickname, “Frankentext.”

Requests

I would like, even request, three things from this series of posts.  One, I would like the other side of this debate to steelman my position.  I’m pretty done with the misrepresentations.  The worst thing to the other side is not distorting what I say, but being called a liar for their distortions.  Two, cease bringing up counters like no one answers their questions.  Three, please try to stop the judging of motives.  I read one yesterday, a pastor who says that the King James Version is an idol.  Really?  This really is coming from the side that incessantly touts its own humble tone.

The other side does not start with scriptural presuppositions.  At the best, it has tried to answer our biblical ones.  These are also historical presuppositions and we’ve proven that.  The other side fulfills themselves this statement:  “you overplayed your hand and committed the classic error of an ideological extremist by refusing to give me a millimeter.”  I don’t see them give a millimeter to historical and biblical presuppositions.  They’ve got to deny them with all their being, and attack, attack, and attack.