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How Can There Be Any Sin in Sincere? Mark Ward Strikes Again
Mark Ward made a video about me, and then SharperIron linked to it with my name. Is this a case of my living rent free in Mark’s head? I don’t know. I’m fine with his letting it go. He can’t do it though. Maybe I’m bringing him more audience. His numbers go up when he uses me in his presentations. They go way up. The terminology is “clickbait.”
In this edition of the Mark Ward show, he says that I helped prove his point about his “false friends” in the King James Version. He titles the episode: “Let a Leading KJV-Onlyist Teach You a False Friend!” Oh so clever, Mark Ward, the Snidley Whiplash of Multiple Version Onlyists. Yet, “Curses, foiled again!” Foiled again, because Dudley Do-Right of TR Onlyism is of course not in fact jumping on the Snidley false friend train track. What happened?
1 Peter 2:2
For many years, I have used and still use 1 Peter 2:2 as a major Christian worldview reference and helping understand the word “sincere.” Mark says “sincere” now is a bad translation in 1 Peter 2:2 and a “false friend.” I ask, “How can there be any sin in sincere?” Answer: By stretching the truth.
Mark dug deep into this blog to find a post and an exchange in the comment section as the highlight of his program. Here is 1 Peter 2:2:
As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.
I’ve referred to “the sincere milk” many times as the “pure mother’s milk” (here, here, here, here, and here among other places). Ward says “sincere” is a false friend to a reader of the King James Version, because sincere means something different today than it did in 1611 (or 1769). Instead, he says (and says that I say) it means “pure.” He reports that I think it should mean pure too, but because I’m KJVO, I won’t admit that, even though I believe it. He’s saying I’m not sincere about sincere.
Sincere Milk
Welcome to the Snidley Whiplash mindreading class, SW101. I said that “sincere milk” is not common language for today. It isn’t. Almost nobody would know what that means without explanation. Perhaps people knew better in 1611. Still, I don’t think another translation today would be better than “sincere” in 1 Peter 2:2. “Pure milk” doesn’t get it done. It misses the point of that expression in the original language. I talk about the meaning in the comment section of the post to which Ward referred:
The mother’s milk goes to her baby without any other intervention, no human intervention, straight from mom to baby, unlike other milk. God changes us through revelation, not through our discoveries. With God and His Word there is no variableness or shadow of turning. His Word and God are not relative as is everything else. It comes direct and so undiluted or affected unlike our eyewitness or findings. We can’t trust these lying eyes or that there hasn’t been some kind of intervention in nature. This is why faith is superior to human discovery, because it depends on God.
The sincerity, the purity, is that it comes as one, which is the meaning of the Latin “sin,” one. There is oneness to the nature of God and to His revelation. It is entirely cohesive, non-contradictory, not mixed with any kind of error.
Mark Ward doesn’t include this part in his presentation. Why do I think “sincere” is still a good translation that needs no update in 1 Peter 2:2?
Pure or Sincere?
Play On Words
The Greek word translated “sincere” is adolos. The “a” portion of the Greek word means “no.” It’s called an alpha privative, expressing negation or absence. The previous verse, 1 Peter 2:1, uses dolos, the King James translators translated it guile. Guile could also mean deception. I believe there is a purposeful play on words by Peter between dolos and adolos, emphasizing the contrast between the speakings of men and the speakings of God. The speakings of men have dolos and the speakings of God have adolos.
Does adolos strictly mean “pure”? No. Sincerity conveys that someone speaks without deception, the error that enters into the speech or writing for a man-engendered reason. “Pure” doesn’t communicate that. In this sense, when the modern translators translate adolos as “pure,” that’s a false friend to those who read the word.
Meaning of Pure
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says in Matthew 5:8:
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Is “pure” here adolos? Is it without guile or not deceptive? No. This is the Greek word katharoi. An English word that comes from this is “katharsis.” This is what people think when they hear “pure” today. Yet, that’s not what Peter is saying in 1 Peter 2:2, that the Word of God is pure in that sense.
What I thought and wrote in the one post to which Mark Ward refers is that “sincere milk” is the “pure mother’s milk.” That is different than saying it is “pure milk.” He says that I wrote that “sincere” means “pure.” I wasn’t saying that and I didn’t say that, which is why I believe Mark Ward left off the latter context of what I wrote and really focused on my reference to the Oxford English Dictionary. He isn’t sincere about my position ironically. That adulterates his commentary on what I wrote.
Christian Worldview
From a Christian worldview standpoint, God’s Word is revelation so it goes from God directly to the hearer like a breast-fed baby gets his milk directly from his mother. There is no intermediary. Evidence on the other hand involves, one, someone’s lying or deceived eyes, and, two, a context that is not neutral. I like to the say that the crime scene is contaminated.
When human beings look at evidence, they don’t see it clearly. God’s Word or will, therefore, can’t come through human discovery, but through the direct undiluted revelation of God. Revelation by nature is non-discoverable or else it wouldn’t be revelation. Revelation is “sincere milk.”
“Sincere” is still the best translation, but we also still have to explain it. If we translated adolos “pure,” that would more likely, I believe, lead someone astray on the meaning of the word, a false friend to the one reading it. I really do think this and Snidley Whiplash, someone who rejects the perfect preservation of scripture, misrepresents me on this. He’s a false friend to me.
Me a King James Onlyist?
I want to say one more thing about what Mark Ward does. He also deceives his audience by calling me a leading King James Onlyist. Calling someone King James Only, he knows is a pejorative. Mark Ward knows that double inspirationists (Ruckmanites) and English preservationists don’t see me as a leading King James Onlyist. Why? Based on the most fair understanding of that label, I’m not. Why not?
One,
I believe that translations should come from the original language texts, the Hebrew and Greek, not from the English. That means that I vouch for translations that are not the King James Version. Hence, I’m not King James Only. True King James Onlyists won’t do that and don’t believe that.
Two,
I do not reject an update of the King James Version. The only ones who do not know that are those who read misrepresentations from people like Mark Ward. I believe preservation is found in the original language text from which an update would come and did come in 1769 already. We do not use the 1611 today. An update already occurred. How could I be against that?
Three,
I don’t think an update of the King James Version is wrong, so I also think some words in the King James Version are archaic or out-of-use. I’ve said this again and again. It doesn’t mean I support an update. I have other reasons why I want to keep the King James Version. The main one is its underlying textual differences between the King James and modern versions, something Mark Ward says he won’t debate.
Four,
I say all the time that I think someone could make a different translation of certain words in the King James Version. Someone could translate the Hebrew and Greek words in a different way and they’d be right. The translation of the King James isn’t the only way or ways to translate the original language text. I know I would make different choices than the King James translators, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re wrong either.
A False Friend
When I study the Bible, I study the original languages. False friends don’t occur to me, because I’m studying the words in their original languages. I also know because of studying the original languages that translated words very often are false friends. Mark Ward exaggerates the importance of these words. He treats himself like he’s come upon something highly significant. He hasn’t. I don’t think his point about false friends means nothing, but there are greater concerns by far than these.
Mark Ward is a false friend about the King James Version. He poses like he really wants to help those who use it. I don’t see it. By far, he’s a greater danger because of the doubt he casts upon the BIble that people use. He relishes those who start using a contemporary translation that varies from the underlying text of the King James Version vastly more than the total number of false friends he reports.
“It’s Alive!” — The Modern Creation of a FrankenText
Mary Shelley and Frankenstein
Mary Shelley, born in 1797 in London, completed her novel, Frankenstein, in 1818. The lead character in her novel, Victor Frankenstein, succeeds at piecing together parts from dead corpses. He sews them together and brings them to life with electricity.
In the original novel by Shelley, the words, “It’s alive!”, don’t appear. They came into the public consciousness in the 1931 film adaptation of the novel. In the book, when Victor first animates his creature, he is horrified by its appearance and immediately flees from it. The scene is described with a sense of dread and regret rather than excitement or triumph.
Frankenstein was a fictional monster built from parts from various dead bodies. The pieces don’t fit because they come from all different bodies. In the same way, a Frankentext constructs a brand new text, using words plucked out from many different manuscripts.
Thomas Ross, Dwayne Greene, and the Frankentext
On a few different occasions, people used the term “Frankentext” to describe a brand new, diverse text from many varied sources. In recent days, I’ve heard a man, Dwayne Greene, use it in a podcast. He titled some of his episodes with the word. Greene refers to a practice that Thomas Ross earlier pointed out in his debate with James White about the modern critical text of the New Testament. The fifth of United Bible Society’s edition of the Greek New Testament, the same as the Nestle-Aland 28th edition, is a Frankentext.
I wrote in a post about Ross’s debate with White:
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.
Talk about the Frankentext
I talk about this again in something else about the debate:
In every place the USB/NA has no extant manuscript support for its lines of readings (again, over 100), the TR has manuscript support. This should end White’s manuscript argument. Ross pointed this out in the debate in a very clear fashion. White would not recant of his position.
In a post to review the debate and explain how Ross won, I wrote:
White asserts no manuscript evidence for one NT reading, the one in Revelation 16:5. He says there is light evidence for one word in Ephesians 3:9 and the Comma Johanneum in 1 John 5:7. Ross shows there is no manuscript evidence for at least 41 separate lines of text in the NA, evidenced by Swanson in his New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant Readings Arranged in Horizontal Lines against Codex Vaticanus. None of this occurs in the TR. Based on the ratio of Matthew and Mark text to the rest of the New Testament, that would result in 191 total for the NT.
A Further Description from Me
In another post, referring to this, I wrote to describe this:
The other side, the critical text and multiple modern version position, does not follow scriptural presuppositions. It proceeds from naturalistic and relativistic ones. This is especially seen in the hundreds of lines of Greek text for its New Testament with no manuscript evidence. Critics pieced together lines of text that never existed in any copy anywhere and anytime.
The above is what I (and others) mean by a FrankenText. Mark Ward in one of his recent podcasts interviews a friend of his getting his PhD in textual criticism, and he asks the man about this Frankentext problem, referring to Dwayne Greene. He uses the term with the man. In answer to the question, Ward’s friend says that all Greek New Testament texts are Frankentexts, including the Textus Receptus. This is an outright, utter falsehood. It isn’t true and it deceives or misleads people.
Lies Including the Textus Receptus As a Frankentext
The Textus Receptus does not contain hundreds of lines of text with absolutely zero manuscript evidence. Those lines in the critical text of the New Testament (the UBS and NA) have no manuscript support in any manuscript. That doesn’t occur with the received text of the New Testament, the basis of the King James Version. Manuscripts actually have those readings. There is minority support for certain words, but lines of text are found in manuscripts for the Textus Receptus.
A common line of argument today, people term, “Whataboutism?” It is defined:
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in “what about….?”) is a pejorative for the strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of a defense against the original accusation.
Ward’s friend does this. Instead of dealing with the problem of these lines of text with no manuscript evidence, he uses whataboutism. In fact, even his whataboutism isn’t true, which sometimes is the case with this sort of argumentation.
CBGM
More Frankentexts are bound to arise because of a new method of modern textual criticism, given the shorthand CBGM. It’s going to sound impossibly technical, but it means, “Coherence Based Genealogical Method.” To try to put it simply, someone wrote this:
The computer application itself aggregates relationships between readings based on agreement with other readings as well as based on their disagreements. Basically, it compares Greek manuscripts, finds the similarities and differences, and then uses an algorithm to decide which is “probably” the right reading.
This same article said this about CBGM:
CBGM is a relatively new approach to textual criticism using a computer program in order to determine the validity of a reading (somewhere between 1997 and 2000). By “reading”, we are referring to anything from a single word of Scripture to a phrase, or even a more substantial section of the Scriptures. In this method, the computer becomes a tool in determining which readings are “most likely authentic”. Having said that, it should be noted that it still requires much interaction from the users.
Frankentexts will increase. Is that a concern? It looks like, not so much. That criticism that your line of text has zero manuscript evidence doesn’t matter as much as it once did. All of this sadly departs from a supernatural, divine presupposition about preservation of scripture, embracing instead a naturalistic, humanistic viewpoint about lost scripture in need of restoration.
The Greek Text Underlying the NKJV Is Different Than the KJV
Another Video from Mark Ward
Mark Ward made another video about the underlying text of the NKJV, differing with the KJV. He brought back the blog discussion he, some of his followers, and I had (see this, this, and this) in an original assertion that King James users make this claim, but they give zero evidence. In the comment section, I started by giving five examples (that’s called giving evidence). Mark argues with those, so I provided more, and this occurred until I gave 19 of them (no wonder people may not want to try to give their evidence).
I did not put a lot of work into looking for my 19 examples. It did take awhile, however, to write the comments at his blog and argue with Ward (and some other men who assisted him) in his defense. Ward finally relented and concluded that the two underlying texts were not identical. So there we were. Deep breath. Go back to normal life.
Changing Tune
Now Ward changes his tune and he says he can defend all nineteen I showed (the video is here). His treatment of me was about a third, a little less or more, of his video. He takes a personal shot by saying that it’s the only time he’s ever seen me defer on anything (what’s the point of that?). Ward spoke of four of the examples on which I deferred. My listing of nineteen was not intended as a scholarly paper. The examples convinced me the two texts (the ones behind each the NKJV and the KJV) were not identical.
Mark Ward doesn’t try very hard to use his resources to find the answer on the text underlying the NKJV from its translators. He seems to favor burying his head in the sand and just trusting whatever the translators said, rejecting every other critic. Many of those translators still live. Why not just ask some of them? Instead, someone such as myself must look up these examples for him to shoot down.
My Comments Blocked Under Bad Faith Video
Now when I comment on Ward’s video, he blocks my comments. He cancels me, thereby keeping his false claims unrefuted. He creates the bubble in which acolytes might abide in ignorance of the facts. I’m not insulting him with comments, unless proving him wrong is an insult.
I thought everyone could see my comments, but I noticed I got zero thumbs-up from anyone. Since I didn’t see this as possible, I logged in with a different account and found that none of my comments appeared to anyone. Ward for sure has the right to block me. However, he really should make it known he’s blocking my comments, and at least explain why he won’t allow them. That would be Christian behavior.
Ward did not make an even-handed presentation with his latest video. It was not a pursuit of the truth, but an attempt to buoy up his own indefensible position. I would also call it a bad faith video, since the discussion is not about the use of variants from other TR editions. Never ever have I taken that view of preservation, that God preserves the exact words from among all the TR editions. He misrepresents me in that way. I’ve explained all this in a recent series I did here. I would assess that he doesn’t care if he represents his contestants correctly.
Underlying Text Different
The NKJV translators should have used the identical text as the KJV. Not doing so is a form of false advertising in my opinion. The NKJV publishers are fooling people into thinking that it’s the same as the KJV except with updated language. It’s just not the case. I still prefer the NKJV to almost every other modern version. Of course I like it better than most. It’s closer to the KJV than most modern versions. But the translators went ahead and did this thing. Ward should be upset at them, not at me. He should give them the comeuppance they deserve instead of beating this dead horse with me and others.
Because of Mark Ward’s video, I again started looking for more differences, except this time in a more systematic fashion. I did not do that to find my 19 examples, published in the comment section of his blog and repeated here on mine. What I am doing now is beginning a series of posts in which I provide more evidence that the NKJV uses a different underlying text than the KJV. I don’t mind if someone wants to argue with my conclusions, but I’m being careful with my observations. I can only look at the two translations and then some textual evidence found in the United Bible Society Greek New Testament, the Greek text behind the KJV, Stephanus 1550, and even Robinson-Pierpoint “Majority Text” New Testament. I’ve started to do that.
More Examples of Textual Variation Between NKJV and KJV
So far I looked only at Matthew 1-17, and I’ve found over ten examples of textual variation between the underlying Greek text of the NKJV and the KJV. At this rate, I’m going to get far more than 19 for the whole New Testament. Mark Ward now behaves as if there are three total differences, even though he’s never looked for differences. He doesn’t care.
I don’t get Mark Ward. It would take a list several pages long to explain. He admits that he gets angry privately over all people like me, as if he is a persecuted saint. His statements and attitude show that it’s more than private. He rails on people who take my position and treats them like trash. His followers in the comment section seem almost entirely clueless. Almost none of them know what’s going on, and he’s happy to keep them in the dark. Even though they don’t even understand, they still defend him rabidly. He accepts many of their falsehoods, leaving them uncorrected — almost no push back against serial slanderers.
Mark Ward’s followers don’t understand even this NKJV text issue among many others, because he doesn’t represent properly those he opposes. No one would know the real problem, because Mark Ward doesn’t tell them. He caricatures his foes and knocks down strawmen.
With everything above being said, I want to end this post by beginning to give other example I’ve found of textual variation between the underlying text of the NKJV and the KJV. Know this. There is not published underlying text of the NKJV. To find it, I’ve got to look probably like Scrivener had to cull printed editions and manuscripts to represent the text behind the KJV. Ironic, huh?
Matthew 9:17
I’m only in Matthew, so look at Matthew 9:17, an example somewhere in the middle of my list. Here is the quotation from the KJV first, the NKJV second, and the ESV third.
KJV — Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.
NKJV — Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.
ESV — Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.
The NKJV and the ESV agree. They both follow the Nestle-Aland 27th edition present-indicative-passive verb from apollumi, appolluntai. The underlying text for the KJV is apolountai, future-indicative-middle from apollumi. I would think Ward would find difficulty denying this example, because it follows his KJV parallel Bible online for Matthew 9:17. Here in Matthew 9:17 the NKJV follows the critical text reading, not the TR. Both Stephanus 1550 and Robinson-Pierpoint have the same verb as the underlying text of the KJV, seen in Scrivener’s text.
More to Come
Mark Ward / Thomas Ross Videos on King James Version English
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:
“Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.”
(Proverbs 22:28 KJV)
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:
The Hebrew here means “to displace [that is, to ‘cause (something) to move from its proper or usual place’] a boundary mark.” (HALOT/NOAD)
In 1611 “remove” in a context like this meant “to change position; to move a short distance or in a certain direction.” (OED)–just like the Hebrew. That sense, however, is marked as “Obsolete” in the OED.
Today, “remove” means to “take (something) away or off from the position occupied” or to “eliminate or get rid of” (NOAD).
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
Normal Now Extreme and Dangerous
Extremism
In the first year of living back in Indiana, my wife and I tried fried chicken at two regional, renowned restaurants. When I say that, get in your mind very homey places like Wagner’s Village Diner in the small town of Oldenburg. It won the James Beard award in 2023 for its chicken. Why do these restaurants do better than others? They are extremists, compared to others. Each goes to far reaches to prepare the best chicken.
In reading through the Bible again, today I read in 2 Chronicles, where my schedule has me. In 2 Chronicles, Solomon builds the temple and at the dedication he offered God 22,000 oxen and 20,000 sheep. I was thinking, “That’s extreme. . . . in a very good way.”
Where I left off in my Bible reading today in 2 Chronicles 15, it says in verses 15-16:
15 And all Judah rejoiced at the oath: for they had sworn with all their heart, and sought him with their whole desire; and he was found of them: and the LORD gave them rest round about. 16 And also concerning Maachah the mother of Asa the king, he removed her from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove: and Asa cut down her idol, and stamped it, and burnt it at the brook Kidron.
Today most people would call that extreme. Yet, it’s what God wanted — what should be normal behavior, but isn’t.
Extremism, a Pejorative
What is extremism anyways? Like when someone such as Mark Ward calls a godly individual an extremist and dangerous? Extreme compared to what?
In general, when someone calls someone extreme, he means it as a pejorative, a personal shot, probably implying some craziness to the person. However, Christianity has so declined, what was once normal is now extreme. Regular preaching of the gospel in our community, I’ve found, is extreme where I live in the Bible belt. For sure, it was extreme in California.
I attended public elementary school. My fifth grade teacher had a paddle hanging from his wall. He regularly swatted students for bad behavior. Now no public schools do that. Our Christian school was the last one to use corporeal punishment in California, a state of almost 40 million people. It’s considered extreme.
A “Balanced Approach”
One of Mark Ward’s favorites, Mark Minnick, preaches that ladies must wear head coverings in church. In 2015, he did an eight part series on it and is a favorite in “the head covering movement.” Is that practice extreme? Really, what Ward expects for non-extremism is something he wrote in support of fundamentalism in the MarchApril2017 of the FBFI magazine:
I am not willing to say that all Christians who listen to contemporary styles of Christian music are living in active, conscious rebellion against God. I do not believe that every Christian whose church has a praise band, a drum set, and tattooed worship leaders that I must abandon to Satan a la 1 Corinthians 5.
1 Corinthians 5, I agree, isn’t the best passage to use for separation over false worship, that is, offering the thrice holy God fleshly and worldly music as worship. He could use 2 Thessalonians 3, 1 Timothy 6:3-6, or 2 Timothy 2:20-22, because among other places that church violates Romans 12:1-2, 1 Peter 2:5, and 1 John 2:15-17 among other places. I know though. What I now believe and practice, men like Ward call an extreme form of separation. Expect more rock bands in church with the association of Mark Ward and others. It’s too extreme now to stand up against that like his alma mater once did. Now they take, what their newest president calls, a “balanced approach.”
Anyone who isn’t “balanced” is now extreme. Balanced means that you look at the “extremes” and find the sweet spot in the middle. The Bible doesn’t teach that. Interestingly, it’s only one extreme that gets most of the attention even from evangelicals such as Ward, who slides further from even a former fundamentalist mooring.
Jesus the Extremist and Danger to Religious Society
Jesus, while on earth, told people these things:
Matthew 5:19, “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Luke 14:26, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
Matthew 22:37, “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”
Mark 9:42, “And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.”
So much of the Bible is extreme compared to what people teach or say today. Jesus was considered an extremist by the religious people of his day.
When someone is dangerous, I believe Mark Ward means that he’s leading someone astray from the truth into something harmful. Nothing is more harmful for someone than eternal damnation. Thomas Ross mentioned how that Ward works for Logos Bible Software as a “ministry.” Logos publishes “Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, theologically modernist, and other damnable heresy.”
Ross is exactly right. Apparently Ward sees those groups as part of “the church” that Logos equips to grow (his words). They get silence, while those propagating and protecting faith in the perfect preservation of scripture receive reproach. This manifests the priority of keeping together ungodly coalitions instead of the truth. To use KJV terminology, making money off a false gospel is “greedy of filthy lucre.”
The Divine Expectation
Jesus in His culture was an extremist and dangerous. He was dangerous to the religious leaders. He threatened their popularity with the people and brought potential wrath of the Roman Empire. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus provided the Divine expectation of every “jot and tittle” of His Word. The Pharisees diminished the Divine standard so they could attempt to keep it on their own. Jesus illustrated the paucity of the Pharisaical approach in Matthew 5 and 6. It wasn’t just the keeping of God’s Word, but also the internal attitude and motive. You could murder someone by hating him in the heart and treating him with contempt.
I’m sure Ward would agree with the above verses from Jesus: their practice in real life though, extreme and dangerous. This is not believing what Jesus and the Apostles said. The author of Hebrews writes in 13:13: “Let us go forth therefore unto him [the Lord Jesus] without the camp, bearing his reproach.” I invite others to go forth unto Jesus without the camp and bear the reproach of “extremism” and “dangerous.” Return to normal and stand against the decline of true, biblical Christianity. While those reproaching double down on their reproach, remain steadfast in God’s will for the cause of Christ.
Should True Churches Ascribe Perfection to the Apographa of Scripture? pt. 2
Confidence, Absolutism, or Skepticism?
A recent panel of friends decided on three categories of faith in the text of scripture: confidence, absolutism, and skepticism. They chose “confidence” and determined the other two to be false. Further explained, our present text of the Bible has what they consider minimal errors, which yields overall maximum confidence.
Absolutism posits zero errors, relying on a presupposition from a biblical and historical doctrine of preservation. The panel said no one can be, nor should be, absolute or certain with the text of scripture. The Bible may say that the text is certain, but the facts or the science say otherwise. Scripture may say that God preserved every Word, but since He didn’t preserve all of them, those passages must mean something else.
Those just confident in the text, but not certain, foresee a sad future for absolutists. In their experience, they witnessed other absolutists go right off the cliff after the awareness of errors in the text of scripture. They love those people. They are trying to save them. The key is to manage expectations. By encouraging the expectation of only minor errors, but overall stability (what is often called “tenacity”) of the text, they will prevent a doomsday mass exodus of future absolutists. This reads as a kind of theological pragmatism, using human means to manipulate a better outcome. Remaining fruit requires human adaptation.
Skepticism, like absolutism, the panel of friends said also was bad. There is no reason to be skeptical about a Bible with minor errors. Not only do we not know what all the errors are, but we do not know how high a percentage there is. The confidence collective says, “Don’t be skeptical and don’t worry either, it won’t affect the gospel; you can still go to heaven with what’s leftover from original inspiration.”
Faith in Preservation of Scripture Not Arbitrary
The words of God are not arbitrary in their meaning. If scripture teaches that God preserved every one of His words for every generation of believers, then He did. You must believe God. You do not say you believe Him and then put your head in the sand. Let me further explain.
If someone asks, “So what were the words that God preserved?” you give an answer. If you will not (and I mean “will not”) give an answer, then you do not believe what He said He would do. Denying is the opposite of believing. You also don’t answer with something like the following: “I know God preserved every word, but I don’t know which words they are. I just hope that at some time in the future — ten, a hundred, a thousands years from now — I can say I do know what they are.
Furthermore, if you say that you believe what God said about His preservation of His inspired words in the language in which He inspired them, your position must manifest that belief. Standing, as Mark Ward did in his latest video production, and saying, “I do not have a perfect copy of the Greek New Testament” [I typed that verbatim from his latest production (at 48 second mark)], does not arise from faith in what scripture teaches on its own preservation. For the believer, the teaching of scripture forms the standard for his expectation of what God will do. This is his presupposition.
No Percentage of Preservation Less Than 100 Percent
Scripture does not teach the moderate preservation of scripture. It does not teach a high percentage of preservation. The Bible does not reveal nor has historic Christianity believed that God preserved “His Word,” an ambiguous reference to the preservation of something like the message of God’s Word.
When you start reading the New Testament, it refers to Old Testament predictions of Jesus. Based on those presuppositions, you receive Jesus. The Old Testament presents the correct ancestry. Jesus fulfills it. It prophesies a virgin birth. He again fulfills it. And so on. Then in the real world, you receive Jesus Christ. This is a model for faith. This is how Simeon and Anna functioned in Luke 2.
If you read Daniel 11 and the predictions there of future occurrences, as a believer you would believe them and then start looking for their occurrence in the real world. Faith follows a trajectory that starts with scripture. Scripture does not say how many books the Bible would have. Various truths in scripture guide the saints to the sixty-six canonical ones.
The Scriptural Expectations of Churches
The church, so the historical belief of true churches, expected a standard sacred text, a perfect one, based on scriptural principles, despite the existence of textual variants. Then they received that text. They believed those principles, the doctrine which proceeded from scripture, during an era of slightly differing printed TR editions. They still believed in one settled text.
In Mark Ward’s orbit, the bases for rejecting a perfect text are the variations either between manuscripts or early printed editions. That is enough for him and others to say that we do not have a perfect copy of the Greek New Testament. They mock those who believe in a single perfect Bible. They only accept multiple differing Greek New Testaments and multiple differing versions. Scripture doesn’t teach this.
As I wrote earlier, the doctrine of preservation is not arbitrary. An actual single Bible in the real world comes with it. When you don’t believe the latter, you don’t believe the former. Not believing the latter is akin to saying you know (so believe in) God and then not as a practice or lifestyle keep His commandments (cf. 1 John 2:3-4). John says this person is a liar.
Mark Ward can mock the fact that I and others believe the perfect text is the one behind the King James Version, but that belief proceeds from all the various truths in scripture about preservation (which we explicate in Thou Shalt Keep Them). We start with scripture. Ward starts, like a modernist, with sensory experience or what one might call empirical evidence. This approach to knowledge brings constant revision. It is why James White will not rule out future changes in the text based on potential new manuscript discoveries.
A New Line of Attack on Scriptural Doctrine of Preservation
A new line of attack from Ward is pitting the King James against an early Dutch translation of the textus receptus. He imagines a Dutch believer offended when an English one calls his Statenvertaling (translated in 1635) “corrupt.” The translators of that Dutch version attempted to produce a translation for the Dutch like the King James Version. English believers applaud that. They haven’t and they wouldn’t call it corrupt.
Ward is correct in pointing out that the two translations come from a slightly different TR edition of the New Testament. That means they cannot both be right. Both could not represent perfect preservation. One is slightly wrong. Ward puts “corrupt” in the mouths or minds of King James Version advocates against the Statevertaling. They wouldn’t call it corrupt anymore than they would any TR edition.
I don’t know of any angry Statevertaling supporters, standing on its differences from the King James Version. No Dutch reaction to the English exists, such as that when Peter Stuyvesant stomped his wooden leg upon New Netherland becoming New York in 1664. Instead, the Dutch followed a Christian belief in the received text and its faith in divine preservation.
Abraham and Bonaventure Elzivir were Dutch. Their printings of the textus receptus (1624, 1633, and 1641) were essentially a reprint of Beza 1565. Their printings were elegant works, a grand possession for a Bible student. They wrote in Latin in their preface: “Therefore you have the text now received by all in which we give nothing altered or corrupt.” That sounds like textual absolutism to me.
Hints at English Supremacy?
Ward suggests a charge of English supremacy in a sort of vein of white supremacy or English Israelism. Advocates of capitalism do not proceed from Scottish supremacy. Majority text supporters do not arise from Eastern Roman supremacy or Byzantine supremacy. Beza and Stephanus were French. Are TR onlyists French supremacists? I don’t follow a French text of scripture. Or maybe better, Huguenot supremacy. This is another red herring by Ward. It’s sad to think this will work with his audience.
I do not see the trajectory of true churches passing through the Netherlands and the Dutch Reformed. I don’t trace it through the Massachusetts Bay Colony either. Each has a heritage with important qualities. Ward tries to use this argument to justify errors in the Greek New Testament, the mantra being, “various editions differ with errors found everywhere.” This is not what the Christians of that very time believed. They did not believe like Ward and his textual confidence collective. These 17th century believers were absolutists.
False Equivalents and Historical Revisionism
Ward calls the differences between the Dutch Bible and the King James Version with their varied TR editions, “text critical choices.” He uses another informal logical fallacy called a “false equivalent.” He takes modern critical text theory and projects it back on the textual basis of the Statevertaling. The translation proceeded from the Synod of Dort as a Dutch imitation of the King James Version. The point wasn’t changing anything.
Labeling the differences in TR editions “text critical choices” is also historical revisionism. Ward revises history to justify modern practice. Modern historians deconstruct the past to challenge the status quo. History does not provide the desired outcome. They change the history and construct new meaning in the present.
I see modern textual critics undermine a true historical account by exaggerating certain historical details or components. Two examples are the so-called backtranslation of Erasmus in Revelation and then a conjectural emendation of Beza. Advocates of modern textual criticism latch on to these stories and construct them into a revision of the historical account.
While men like Ward and others use false equivalents and historical revisionism, it does not change what the Bible, perfectly preserved for believers, says about its own preservation. Everyone will give an account for their faithfulness to what God said. He will make manifest the damage teachers do by creating or causing doubt or uncertainty concerning the text of His Word.
The Biblical Presuppositions for the Critical Text that Underlie the Modern Versions, Pt. 3
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five
I have never heard a critical text proponent care about the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation. Most just ignore it. It doesn’t matter to them. Others attempt to explain it away, as if guilt exists over denying the obvious. Professing theologians, pastors, and teachers deal with this doctrine differently than any other and in many varied ways. Circumstances and experience should not engineer the interpretation of scripture.
Serious About Words of God, Plural
Many years ago, I listened to a sermon by John MacArthur, titled, “The Doctrine of Inspiration Explained.” At one point, he took off against “thought inspiration” of scripture by saying:
This is a denial of verbal inspiration. If this is true, we’re really wasting our time doing exegesis of the text because the words aren’t the issue. Like the gentleman said to me on the Larry King Show the other night, which I mentioned, “You’re so caught up in the words you’re missing the message of the Bible.” That’s a convenient view. The idea that there’s some idea, concept, religious notion there that may or may not be connected to the words, but the Bible claims to be the very words of God.
First Corinthians 2:13, “We speak not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches.” Paul says when I give the revelation of God, when I write down that which God inspires in me, it is not words coming from man’s wisdom, but which the Spirit teaches.
In John 17:8 Jesus said, “I have given unto them the words which You gave Me and they have received them.” The message was in the words, there is no message apart from the words, there is no inspiration apart from the words. More than 3800 times in the Old Testament we have expressions like “Thus says the Lord,” “The Word of the Lord came,” “God said,” it’s about the words. There are no such things as wordless concepts anyway.
When Moses would excuse himself from serving the Lord, he said, “I need to do something else because I’m not eloquent.” God didn’t say, “I’ll give you a lot of great ideas, you’ll figure out how to communicate them.” God didn’t say, “I’ll be with your mind.” God said to him this, “I will be with your mouth and I will teach you what you shall say.” And that explains why 40 years later, according to Deuteronomy 4:2, Moses said to Israel, “You shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.” Don’t touch anything I command you because this is from God.
He continued later:
In fact, the opposite is true. Bible writers wrote down words they didn’t understand. In 1 Peter chapter 1 we are told there that the prophets wrote down the words and didn’t understand what they meant. The prophets, verse 10 of 1 Peter 1, who prophesied of the grace that would come made careful search and inquiry, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. Here they are writing about the sufferings of the coming Messiah, writing about the glory to follow the suffering of the Messiah, and then they’re searching what they wrote. They’re inquiring in the very words which they were inspired to write, to figure out what person and what time is in view. They couldn’t even interpret fully the meaning of the words they were actually writing. God did not give ideas without words but in some cases He gave words without complete ideas.
Taking Matthew 24:35 honestly, he says:
In Matthew 24:35 the Scripture is very clear, “Heaven and earth shall pass away but My words…My words shall not pass away.” When God speaks, He speaks with words and the Bible are the…is the representation in writing of the words that came from God…the words that God spoke.
In the same sermon, he later preaches:
It was Jesus who emphasized the importance of every word…every word and every letter when He said, “Not a jot or tittle will ever fail.” He said in Luke 18:31, “All the things that are written through the prophets shall be accomplished.” He even based His interpretation of the Old Testament on a single word…a single word. The words do matter.
Jesus was answering the Sadducees in Matthew 22 and He said to them, “You are mistaken, not understanding the scriptures, or the power of God, for in the resurrection they neither marry…talking about the angels…nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken to you by God saying, ’I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?’” He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And His proof is that God said, “I am…I am the eternal living one.” And furthermore, He is not only the eternal living one but all will live eternally as well. They didn’t believe in a resurrection and He proved His point or certainly to our satisfaction proved His point by talking about the eternality of God in the verb to be in the present tense.
MacArthur teaches like the very words are important, because they come from God. As part of the emphasis, he stresses the vitality of the words to faith and obedience to God, down to the very letters. He’s just taking these passages at face value, not thinking of how he might devalue or diminish them to smuggle in a critical text view that speaks of generic preservation of the singular Word of God and not the Words, plural.
History of Preservation of Words
The doctrine of inspiration comes entirely from scripture. The doctrine of preservation should too. We walk by faith, not by sight. In his volume 2 of Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology, Richard Muller writes concerning John Owen and Francis Turretin:
He (Owen) had not, it is true, predicated his doctrine of Scripture as Word on his ability to prove the perfection of the text. Rather, like Turretin and the other orthodox, he had done precisely the opposite: he assumed the authority, infallibility, and integrity of the text on doctrinal grounds.
This is the historic approach to the Bible, relying on scriptural presuppositions, and in contrast to modern textual criticism. Later Muller writes:
The case for Scripture as an infallible rule of faith and practice . . . . rests on an examination of the apographa and does not seek the infinite regress of the lost autographa as a prop for textual infallibility.
He continued:
A rather sharp contrast must be drawn, therefore, between the Protestant orthodox arguments concerning the autographa and the views of Archibald Alexander Hodge and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. . . . Those who claim an errant text, against the orthodox consensus to the contrary, must prove their case. To claim errors in the scribal copies, the apographa, is hardly a proof. The claim must be proven true of the autographa. The point made by Hodge and Warfield is a logical leap, a rhetorical flourish, a conundrum designed to confound the critics—who can only prove their case for genuine errancy by recourse to a text they do not (and surely cannot) have.
The ease at making an honest interpretation of preservation passages, as relating them to the autographa, represents a new and faithless position. Honesty should be shown all of the bibliological texts. Instead of taking the logical leap, rhetorical flourish, to confound critics, like every evangelical modern textual critic, believers should believe what God says.
In the third of seven videos in The Textual Confidence Collective series, Mark Ward criticizes E. F. Hills and Theodore Letis for their attack on inerrancy. He either assumes his audience is ignorant or he himself is ignorant. Warfield and Hodge did what Muller says they did. They invented inerrancy as a term to characterize an errant text. This conformed to their naturalistic presuppositions on the doctrine of preservation against the doctrine passed to and from Owen and Turretin. It is a careless smear on the part of Ward to discredit men believing the historical and scriptural doctrine of preservation.
Matthew 24:35
In Thou Shalt Keep Them, I wrote the chapter on Matthew 24:35. Get the book and read it. I cover the verse in the context of Matthew and the Olivet Discourse in which it appears. It reads:
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
The Textual Confidence Collective said that Jesus here guaranteed the fulfillment of the promises He made in His discourse. They also explained that Jesus isn’t talking about perfect textual transmission, when He said, “My words shall not pass away.” You read earlier that John MacArthur preached concerning this text: “When God speaks, He speaks with words and the Bible is the representation in writing of the words that came from God, the words that God spoke.” How MacArthur explained Matthew 24:35 is how the believers in the churches have taken the verse too.
“Perfect textual transmission” is loaded language that serves as a kind of strawman argument. The doctrine of preservation does not argue for perfect textual transmission. It argues for the divine preservation of God’s words, like Jesus promised.
The plain reading of Matthew 24:35 compares the survival of heaven and earth to that of the words of God. The former, which exude permanency from a human standpoint, will pass away, but His Words will not. Words are not tangible and they’re relatively small, so they seem less enduring than heaven and earth with their sheer immensity. However, God’s Words last. This is what Jesus said. The durability of them mean something.
At the end of 1 Corinthians 13 Paul elevates love above faith and hope because of its permanency. This isn’t unusual in scripture. This is also similar to Matthew 4:4. Men survive not with bread, but with the Words of God.
Biblical eschatology foretells the destruction of heaven and earth. Someone investing in heaven and earth will end with nothing. Those trusting in God’s Words, which include what Jesus said in His Olivet discourse, invest in something eternal. The eternality of God’s Words tethers them to the nature of God. They are eternal because God is eternal, making the Words then as well different in nature than just any words. One can count on their fulfillment.
Scripture teaches the perfect preservation of God’s Words. Matthew 24:35 is another one of the verses that do so. The existent of textual variants do not annul Christ’s teaching on the preservation of God’s Words. We should trust what Christ promised. It is more trustworthy than a group of men devoted to naturalistic textual criticism.
Changing Meaning to Conform to Naturalistic Observation or Experience
God’s Word is truth. Whatever God says is true. If He says His Words will not pass away, they will not pass away. Someone responds, “But evidence shows His Words passed away.”
Hebrews 11:1 in God’s Word says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” There is that word, “evidence.” Mark Ward may say, “Evidence is a false friend.” The way we understand “evidence” today still fits what the King James Version says about faith. What God says gives us the assurance to say His Words do not pass away. In other words, they’re available to every generation of believer. This is a principle from scripture for the preservation of God’s Words.
One of the worst actions for anyone is to change the Word of God based on circumstances or experience. This accords greater with the beginning of cults than work to respect as believers. Through centuries doctrines change based upon men conforming to conventional wisdom or popular norms. Scripture doesn’t change, but doctrines to be derived from scripture can change when men adapt them to their own experience or circumstances.
Would men change the interpretation of scripture and the derived doctrines to fit a personal preference? Men start new religions by doing this. The proponents of modern versions have a lot at stake. When men twist scripture to fit a presupposition, it corresponds to a motive. They defy plain meaning. They have a reason.
The Who-Is-Nicer or Who-Is-Meaner Argument for the Text of Scripture
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five
I am calling this post a part of my discussion on critical text versus textus receptus. So much air time, so much ink is spilt for style and tone in debate, that it becomes an argument to be addressed.
You want to determine the preservation of scripture. You weigh textus receptus versus critical text. What is your criteria? Just by sheer mention from notable critical text supporters, such as James White and Mark Ward, the following is a major argument. You want to come to the right decision about the text, have the correct thinking? Ask this question. Which advocates are either nicer or meaner? From the sheer volume of talk about who-is-nicer or who-is-meaner, it must be the critical text is right. In almost every presentation, at some point James White or Mark Ward will talk about how mean the other side is, implying that James White and Mark Ward are nice, so the critical text position must be right.
I wonder of ecclesiastical text, standard sacred text, confessional text, or traditional text men, who thinks that James White and Mark Ward are nice? Perhaps you’ve seen a child come running to his mother, saying, “He wasn’t nice to me.” Or, “She wasn’t nice to me.” If you are a dad, and your little boy does that, you really, really don’t want to hear it. Maybe you just ignore him or you say, “Just go back and play.” Maybe when the little girl says it, you weigh it, and maybe you say, not really believing it, “Children, be nice.” I wouldn’t be convinced that the one protesting is the nice one.
We live in an era, where “he wasn’t nice” is an argument. It isn’t, but you would think it is by the sheer number of times critical text proponents mention it. I say, “Stop already. Both sides say mean things.” James White and Mark Ward are at least as mean or at least as not nice. Fun, isn’t it?
Condescension, eye rolling, sarcasm, and a certain kind of smarmy tone someone might consider to be mean or not nice. Even the constant mention of “you’re-not-nice” isn’t nice. When two men are having a discussion, they might get a little rough. Neither side should call the “whaaaambulance” and claim injury, as if they are a strip mall defense lawyer. “You’ve been injured in a biblical text discussion, call Mark Ward or James White, and they’ll represent you.”
When you were a child and you played games with friends, did you think it was nice when someone just rose, walked off, and stopped playing, because he didn’t like how it was going? Or did you think that was in itself, a mean or not nice act? Adults do this pulling the game board, taking the toys and going home.
A hard discussion, where the other side isn’t as nice as we want or doesn’t follow our preferred rules of decorum, will often occur. Very often both sides, when in disagreement, don’t like how the other side disagrees. That isn’t persecution though. Entering a boisterous give and take with someone, where we feel the other side hurt our feelings, is not persecution. We don’t deserve sympathy for a rugged debate.
Maybe 35-40 years ago, I remember reading letters written to one of my professors, Thomas Strouse, from Peter Ruckman. No one said things as harsh as Peter Ruckman. Dr. Strouse never said anything about the Ruckman style in the argument. Ruckman would straight out insult and call derogatory names. Ruckman was so nasty, that he was funny. No one had hurt feelings. They just laughed. I think this was just a different generation of men. They were less touchy feely. I wonder if you agree.
White and Ward both imply some spiritual problem or lack of sanctification in their opponents. They are the judge, jury, and executioner. They are nasty and harsh too. They weaponize the criticism though.
I think I could have better style or tone. I could speak to my opponents in a more sensitive way. When I argue, I could take more consideration of the opposition’s feelings. When two people disagree, it’s better if they try to get along too. I agree with that assessment.
What I wish is that the two sides could also take the meanness or niceness criteria out of the debate, especially the one side that nearly always brings it up. I don’t think Jeff Riddle wants to be mean. He’s nicer than me. And yet Mark Ward says he’s not nice either. He’s nicer than others, but he’s also too mean. Mark Ward might pull the game board on him. We’ll see.
What really happened is that Riddle exposed Ward and Ward didn’t like it, so Ward pulled from a contributor for Riddle’s most recent book, “Satan’s Bible,” or something like that, speaking of the critical text (see comment section). This is the meanness or niceness argument being utilized. Riddle had already taken a preemptive strike with “toxic review,” speaking of Ward’s use of toxic to describe the book.
Can we just debate and stop bringing up who is nice and who is mean? Both sides will say things the other does not like. In my recent writing, I mentioned that Ward made a mocking argument, using tone and facial expressions and giggling type glee. He did. It’s easy to see in the video. He won’t admit it, because he can’t cede that high ground he believes he has based on his own judgment of himself. Then I came out and called him on that and I said he put his foot in his mouth. I said it was a dumb argument for a PhD. I am debating on an equal rhetorical plane as Mark Ward. James White and Mark Ward won’t admit it, but it’s just true.
Ward often mentions how gracious he is. He does that at least as much as he says how mean the other side is. People on our side have not talked about this (that I know of), but Ward uses straw men. He misrepresents positions. He employs ad hominem. When his position is answered, he talks his way out of admitting it. He very often won’t concede when he gets it wrong or the other side is right. When he does concede, it’s difficult to tell. It doesn’t sound like he conceded on important points.
At one point, Ward said that the NKJV came from an identical text as the text behind the KJV. I showed him five places. He tried to explain them away. I gave him five more. He did the same. I gave him five more. He did the same. He finally conceded, but not to the point that he made originally. When I gave the first five, that should have ended the discussion, and for sure after the second five. Why didn’t it? I think he thought I would shortly run out of examples and he could explain it away. However, he just couldn’t concede. He changed the rules right in the middle of the discussion. This is Mark Ward, ladies and gentleman, the very, very nice man by his own admission. If I told him he wasn’t nice, I know we would have started a not-niceathon, trying to top the other in who was less or more nice. You could picture two jr. high girls.
Living in Utah right now, a normal, every occasion argument from LDS is the sameness between historical, biblical Christians and LDS. They try to take that posture right away. They will treat me like we’re the same. Half of them get offended by refuting the sameness. I find critical text the same. Critical text men want the other side to say that they too believe in the preservation of scripture. They too hold an orthodox position. Both sides should agree to disagree. Can we instead say that we don’t agree and that both positions are not the same? We really do believe they are attacking a true doctrine of scripture that is important. That doesn’t mean we don’t like them. We just disagree with them and believe that for God we need to oppose what they’re saying.
When I bring up the style and tone of Ward, I don’t do it for the same reason as White and Ward do. I do it, because I wish they would stop bringing it up. We both use tone and style in disagreement that the other side doesn’t like. I wish there was a moratorium on mentioning it. Just leave it alone and continue the debate. I don’t expect it though. It works well to their audience. Maybe it’s a replacement for real persecution for men who don’t face actual persecution.
I have an opinion about the criticism of meanness or lack of niceness. It is in the realm of ‘gird up your loins, like a man,’ something God said to Job twice. This is a battle and both sides just should put on their big boy pads and expect contact.
Further Details in Psalm 12:6-7 Elucidating the Preservation of God’s Words
In recent days, speaking of the last twenty years, men have used much ink and spoken many words to debunk a doctrine of the perfect preservation of Words of God in Psalm 12:6-7. Commentators through history have interpreted Psalm 12:6-7 as a promise of the preservation of the poor and needy, mentioned in Psalm 12:5. Modern critical text advocates strive to back or ensure that interpretation against a teaching of preservation of words. With this conversation occurring or continuing, more evidence arises for the preservation of words viewpoint.
I haven’t heard anything new to contribute to the preservation of the poor and needy, except for possibly one new point. Critical text proponents like Mark Ward say the same old, same old. Some of his audience didn’t know his arguments, but they aren’t new. With that being said, this is an argument from Ward I have never heard. I didn’t know about it until recently reading him in the comment section at youtube.
Not Perfect Preservation?
Ward says that the present application of perfect preservation from Psalm 12:6-7 arose out of the King James Only movement of the twentieth century. He knows that men taught preservation of words from Psalm 12:6-7, such as Matthew Poole, just that none of them, including Poole, he is saying, took that as perfect preservation. I had not heard anyone ever make that particular point. It seems like a raising of the bar on expectations in the language of the commentators. Is Ward implying that when men wrote that Psalm 12:6-7 promises the preservation of the Words of God, that they were saying that God was promising less than perfect preservation? And is that even preservation?
I’ve used this illustration before, but let’s say that you had a jar with 100 marbles in it. Twenty years later, you still have the jar, and someone wants to purchase it. You guarantee that you preserved the marbles in the jar. The customer counts them and there are 98, not 100. Did you preserve the marbles in the jar? Is that the plain meaning of preservation of marbles?
Ward is implying that 93 to 98 marbles is still the preservation of the marbles. Preservation of the marbles doesn’t mean 100 out of 100, because 93 to 98 is still preservation. Is that what you think? I don’t think of losing marbles as preserving them. That is not preserving them. You’ve preserved some of them, so preservation occurred, but you can’t say you preserved them, speaking of the marbles in the original jar.
When Jesus said that no man shall pluck “them” out of his hand (John 10:28), with similar understanding of preservation, you could take that as no man shall pluck 93 to 98 percent of them out of his hand. He didn’t say “all of them” after all. If God promised to keep or preserve the poor and needy, to be consistent, when Ward says Psalm 12:7 promises to keep the poor and needy, that means not all of the poor and needy, just some of them. It’s not perfect preservation of the poor and needy. Myself and others might call that betraying plain meaning of language.
Hebrew Singular Masculine Pronominal Suffix in Psalm 12:7
Besides that above argument, a new one that rose out of a challenge to Ward about his representation of the history of Psalm 12:6-7 commentary, I have read none. I have heard the argument Ward makes from the King James translators notation about the second “them” in Psalm 12:7. It translates the singular masculine suffix. Ward says that necessitates poor and needy, because “words” aren’t a “him.” “Words” aren’t a “she” either, even though the gender of “words” is feminine.
Every Hebrew word is masculine or feminine, because there is no neuter in the Hebrew. Someone might call this a dumb argument, that a masculine suffix must refer to people. What do we do with all the things or objects in the Old Testament? What kind of pronominal suffix are we going to use for all those non-neuter words?
This pronoun point revolves around this comment in the margins of the original King James translation by the translators: “Heb. Him, i.e., every one of them.” They are correct. They are noting that a masculine singular suffix in the Hebrew is “him” in the English. Then they explain with the comment why they translated this “them”: “every one of them.” The singular meant, they are saying, “every one of them,” speaking of whatever antecedent “him,” “everyone of them,” or “them” refers to.
Psalm 12:7 reads: “Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” The verse is not saying twice, “Thou shalt keep them” and “Thou shalt keep them,” or, “Thou shalt preserve them” and “Thou shalt preserve them.” No, it is making two statements with a nuance of difference: “Thou shalt keep them” and “thou shalt preserve every one of them.” They are not saying the English should be, “him,” but that the English should be, “every one of them.” On Part 4 of The Textual Confidence Collective series (starting at about 5:48), Mark Ward begins speaking with a kind of glee in his voice and says these exact words:
And it’s really interesting here, one of the tip offs to sort of the interpretive question here comes in the note that is actually in the margin of the King James, even in this TBS edition. For that second “them,” “thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them” (and I’m convinced this is where the word preservation starts to get used by the King James only or textual absolutist movements), it says in the margins, the Hebrew is actually, “him,” that is, “every one of them.” And if the Hebrew is actually “him,” that is, every one of them,” every one of them must not be “the words,” because words are not him and her. Words are things. Words are it. Therefore, it must be in the view of the King James translators, that second pronoun, must be pointing back to the antecedent we find in verse 5: “For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him.” So the words of the Lord here are not the Bible. They are these immediate words, “I’m going to protect the poor, uh, who are oppressed.”
This is coming from a PhD from Bob Jones University, and other PhDs or PhD candidates sit there and say nothing, when he makes these foot-in-the-mouth statements with a kind of giggling glee. Why? They don’t even look like they disagree. Zero pronominal suffixes in the entire Old Testament are an “it,” because there is no neuter pronominal suffix. There are no neuter Hebrew nouns to which to refer. The King James translators would have been laughing on Ward’s interpretation of them.
Timothy Berg writes about this at his blog (and Ward has concurred many times):
Understand what has taken place here with these two lines. The translators had to either choose, “them” and so maintain the number of the original, but lose the gender, or choose “him” and maintain the gender of the original but lose the number. The meaning in both cases is a plural group of multiple “hims,” employing first the plural then the singular in keeping with the psalmist’s pattern. But there is no form “hims” in English, so every translator must lose something of the original text in translating it into English. The point to note here though is that they clearly understood the referent of the singular suffix as being back to the alternating singular and plural in verses one and five, being a reference to the people. This is surely self-evident to anyone reading the passage in its context, and abundantly evident to anyone who reads the original translators notes (and even more so when they realize the origin of this particular note in the Bishop’s base text). If we had only continued to print these notes, and listened to the KJV translators themselves, so much bad interpretation could have been avoided. Maintaining today that the phrase is a promise to preserve God’s words in the KJV is to utterly disagree with what the translators themselves intended to convey, which, in a text now being adduced as support for their infallibility, seems odd at best.
These men say this proves that “them” by the King James translators could never refer to “words” in verse 6. That very much misunderstands gender in the Hebrew. Berg is saying that “him” must mean people, because a “him” must be people in the Hebrew. Remember, this is a masculine suffix with “preserve,” that the translators translated “preserve them.”
How would you go about proving the point that Berg and Ward are making in their assessment of a comment by the KJV translators? I would look at similar examples with gender through the Old Testament to see if that’s true. They are saying that a masculine suffix must always refer to a person, because a masculine is a person. This is their representation of original languages. Again, they don’t take that from anything the KJV translators wrote. This is their own personal call.
Berg or Ward do not reference one Hebrew grammar or syntax to make that point. They do not show you several examples to evince the truth of this argument. They speak as those having authority on the Hebrew language. As Johnny Cochran famously called the prosecution of the OJ Simpson trial, it is a “rush to judgment.” These are men eager to have something mean something that doesn’t mean something. They don’t even know it means something. I think they could assume that they have an audience of their own tribe ready to accept their own bias. This is today called “confirmation bias,” where they rush to confirm their own bias.
Let’s open our Bibles to the first chapter of the Bible, the book of Genesis, and Genesis 1:16-17:
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.
God made lights. God “set them.” “Them” refers to the lights, wouldn’t you agree? A masculine refers to “lights.” This does not correspond exactly to Psalm 12:6-7, but it does in the argument that Ward and Berg are making. A masculine must refer to a person.
Turning to Psalms, Psalm 18:14 says:
Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited them.
“Arrows” is masculine too, but it is plural. He scattered the masculine arrows.
A better example is Job 39:14-15:
14 Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust, 15 And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them.
“Eggs” is plural. “Them” in “crush them” is a third person feminine suffix. In other words, “crush her,” but it is “crush every one of them.” “Eggs” and “them” are both feminine.
Just as a gender sample, the same kind of construction in Psalm 12:6-7 and in Psalm 119 is found elsewhere, such as Leviticus 20:8:
And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the LORD which sanctify you.
“Statutes” is feminine and “them” is masculine. Again, a masculine pronoun refers to a thing, which is also feminine. The same is in Leviticus 22:31:
Therefore shall ye keep my commandments, and do them: I am the LORD.
Commandments is feminine and them is masculine.
The same is in Numbers 15:39. Also, Nehemiah 1:9:
But if ye turn unto me, and keep my commandments, and do them.
Commandments is feminine and them is masculine. In Ezekiel 37:24, “statutes” is feminine and “them” is masculine.
I’m not going to keep going with this argument, but you can see that Berg and Ward are wrong on the Hebrew of this. I’ve already written many times that gender is nullified by Hebrew grammar as an argument for the “poor and needy.” Because of that, we should go to the nearest antecedent rule, which is “words.” Ward himself said the examples were clear in Psalm 119 of purposeful gender discord, so he relents there. He says it isn’t in Psalm 12:6-7, but that’s only because he chooses to ignore the nearest antecedent, which is clear.
This Generation
Psalm 12:7 says, “Lord. . . . shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” The two different viewpoints also take the last part of the verse in two ways. The preserve-the-poor-and-needy position says that “from this generation” is a physical separation from the attacks of the wicked. The preserve-the-words position says that “from this generation” is a linear chronological separation from the present moment and on into eternity.
The Hebrew preposition translated “from” in the English has a root meaning of separation. Preserve-the-words takes the normal, plain meaning of the Hebrew dur, generation, which is a period, speaking of this present time. This language of time is echoed in the Old (Isaiah 59:21) and the New Testaments (Mt 5:18, 24:35) in other preservation passages. This is the regular usage of this Hebrew construction, translated, “from this generation for ever.”
Preserve-the-poor-and-needy takes an exceptional usage. I see generation used of the wicked, but it is always accompanied by “evil” as in “evil generation” (Dt 1:35), “generation that had done evil” (Num 32:13), or “crooked generation” (Dt 32:5). When meaning “evil generation,” it is accompanied by these types of descriptors.
Every time you read the words, “from generation” (eleven times), it is a linear chronological separation from this present moment into the future. If it was something other than that in Psalm 12:7, then it is the only time in the entire Old Testament, or an entirely exceptional usage. Normally we call this eisegesis of scripture, because it doesn’t consider all the usages of this construction contradicting it. Timothy Berg does this in his Psalm 12 article.
Synonymous Parallelism
The poetry in Psalm 12:7 is parallelism and in particular “synonymous parallelism.” The second part of the parallelism repeats a variation of what the first part expresses. If this is synonymous parallelism, which is how it reads in Psalm 12:7, then both parts must refer to the same antecedent. It expresses the same truth in two different ways. “Thou shalt keep them . . . . thou shalt preserve them.”
I talked about this parallelism in the last post, that it teaches plenary and then verbal preservation of the Words of God. I want to give a heads up to the mention of “synonymous parallelism” to Jeff Riddle in his Word Magazine podcast on youtube. He talked about this and may have also given credit to Peter Van Kleeck, Sr. at the Standard Sacred Text blog.
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