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'An Independent Baptist Church'
THE SUPERIORITY OF THE KING JAMES VERSION
Introduction
Several years ago, I decided to really study the matter of Bible Versions to see if one was really superior to the others. I had no "ax to grind" and went into this study with an open mind and without any preconceived bias. I wanted to know. Many people had asked me about the different versions, and my years in Pharmacy School at Purdue taught me to study matters out until I was convinced of a conclusion. I did just that. With a Pharmacy career, I had the money necessary to buy every book on the subject I could find...even ones out of print in used book stores. I purchased and read over 100 books on this subject...on both sides of the subject...over a period of 3 to 4 years. I still collect every book on the subject today that I can find, even ones just published and I read them to see if there is anything I have missed. I came to the following conclusion in my mind and the matter was settled for me beyond a shadow of a doubt. It may take you 3 or 4 years to come to your conclusion too, and I wouldn't be surprised if it takes more for you to come a conclusion in your heart and mind than just reading this study. I just ask that you study the matter for yourself....both sides of the issue...and ask God to show you the truth.
In this study I will attempt to show why I believe the King James Bible is Superior to all other Bible Versions. After my years of study I have concluded that the King James Bible is superior to all other newer versions for FOUR basic reasons:
I believe the King James Bible:
1. Uses a Superior Text. 2. Uses Superior Translators 3. Uses A Superior Translating Technique and Method. 4. has Superior Theology.
Let us know look a little closer at those Four Points showing the Superiority of the King James Bible.
Introduction
With the English Language becoming the dominating language of the world, God knew the time was right to put the Word of God over into the English language, translated from the pure, uncorrupted text of Antioch ... the headquarters of early Christianity. Work on the KJV began in 1604 when a group of Puritans (those from the Church of England) who wanted to 'reform' and 'purify' the Church of England of its errors and get back to the Bible's teachings! Dr. John Reynolds of Oxford suggested to King James I that a new translation of the Bible in the English language was needed, based upon the pure Antiochian Traditional text. Using Tyndale's translation and Erasmus' Greek text as a basis, a Supreme Translation could be made to keep the Word of God intact in the English language! This appealed to King James I, who was himself a student of theology and the Scriptures. He immediately began to make the necessary arrangements for carrying it out. A personal enemy of King James made an accusation 25 years after King James Death that he was a homosexual in order to slander him, but there was never any evidence to support that claim. Within 6 months the general plan of procedure had been drawn up and a complete list made of the scholars who were to do the work. Of course, the devil did not want this pure Bible to be made. A Jesuit attempt on King James' life was discovered when 36 barrels of gunpowder were found in the cellar of Westminster palace where King James was to speak in a few hours. Guy Fawkes and 3 other Roman Soldiers of fortune had taken an oath to assassinate the King. Their pledge was sealed with a solemn communion service, served by Jesuit priest, Father John Gerard, according to trial testimony later. These men were all found guilty and sentenced to death. (Final Authority, William Grady, (p189‑191) The lesson and application for today's Bible‑believing pastor is all too clear. Any preacher who takes his stand for the King James Bible, versus all the other Alexandrian Egyptian text Bibles (NIV, NASB, NKJV) will also find 36 barrels of gunpowder under his feet, sooner or later! With this background, let us show why we believe the King James Bible is SUPERIOR to the newer Bible versions today!
(1) THE KJV SUPERIOR TEXT.
Most people don’t realize that the King James Bible and its predecessors are primarily from a manuscript family that can be traced back to Antioch in Bible days, thus the text is called the Antiochian, or traditional or Majority text. This manuscript family behind the KJV is called the Traditional or Majority text because over 99% of the manuscripts that have ever been found support and back this Antiochian text, which we will discuss further a little later. All of the other newer Bible versions, such as the NIV, NASB, etc. are based upon another manuscript family known as the Alexandrian Manuscript family which was put together by Origen of Alexandria, Egypt in about the 2nd century. Most scholars agree he was a heretic because of his denial of essential doctrines. These two basic manuscript families are so different that scholars can easily classify the manuscripts into either of these Mss. Families because they differ in over 6000 places and involve over 10,000 words! The King James Version translators rejected the Alexandrian text of Origen used by the Roman Catholic Church up to that time. They knew it had been corrupted and altered in almost 6000 places in the New Testament alone! Origen denied the Deity of Christ and Salvation thru His death, therefore it is no surprise that key verses on essential Doctrinal issues were altered or deleted completely in the Egyptian‑Catholic Alexandrian text, known today as the Nestle-Aland Text, or Westcott-Hort text. I believe this was Satan's attempt to alter or delete key verses on essential doctrines ... He is too smart to think he could remove or alter all verses on a subject, such as Christ's deity, etc. The Jehovah’s Witnesses' NEW WORLD TRANSLATION tried that and Christians would not fall for it ... But what if Satan could manipulate the altering or removing of some of the clearest, key verses on a doctrine, would that make it more difficult for new Christians to grasp and understand a subject?? I believe so, and feel this was the devil’s motive for the newer translations. This would make it more difficult for NEW Christians to grasp and understand the essential Truths in the Scripture. Now if these two manuscript families, the Antiochian text behind the KJV and the Egyptian text behind all of the newer versions today DIFFER in over 6000 places, would you agree that at least one of these families has been ALTERED? They can’t both be right! Now I happen to believe that God wouldn’t allow BOTH lines to be corrupted and leave us without the pure, correct Word of God today! I believe God was able and is able through His preserving power to allow us to have the pure Word of God today without any errors or alterations put in, don’t you? If that be so, we need to look at the evidence and see which one of these families of Manuscripts seems to be the altered one and which one is the preserved Word of God! [Psalms 12:6] The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. [Psalms 12:7] Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. Dr. D.A. Waite in his DEFENDING THE KING JAMES BIBLE, p41,42 shows that the Westcott-Hort text (Alexandrian Egyptian) used by all of the newer bibles changes the New Testament in5,604 places in the NT and these changes include 9,970 words! That is an average of 15.4 words per page in the New Testament! Even the two key Egyptian manuscripts used by Westcott and Hort in formulating their Greek text for the Catholic bibles and all of the newer versions today are so unreliable and altered that they differ from each other in over 3000 places! These two manuscripts used to formulate the new text by Westcott and Hort were called SINAITICUS and VATICANUS. Now my friend it is should be obvious that these manuscripts are unreliable and have been tampered with IF THEY DIFFER FROM EACH OTHER IN OVER 3000 PLACES! COME ON! That is why the King James translators IGNORED the whole manuscript family they came from! They knew they were faulty and had been tampered with! One of the key Egyptian manuscripts, SINAITICUS, which is relied upon so heavily to give us the changes in these newer versions today such as the NIV, etc., was found in a waste basket at St Catherine’s convent near Mt. Sinai around the 1500’s! The other Egyptian manuscript that Westcott and Hort relied upon to change the text in these newer Bibles was VATICANUS and it was found on a dusty shelf in the Vatican library in the early 1800’s! Are we to believe that for nearly 1800 years the world did not have the true text of the Bible and for all these centuries people didn’t have the TRUE Word of God? I don’t believe so! I believe God was able to preserve His Word has He promised in Psalms 12:6,7 so that people in any age would have the unaltered Word of God! Now my friend, would you agree that ONE of these manuscript families has been altered? Either the ones behind the KJV or the ones behind the Catholic Bible and the newer versions have been tampered with….They can’t both be right if they differ from one another in over 5600 places!! I believe one is in error and the other is correct because God wouldn’t leave us without His true Word according to Psalms 12:6,7. I believe if you look closely at the evidence you would have to conclude that the text behind the KJV is the true text! It can be traced back to within a hundred years of Christ’s day, and the Egyptian text of Origen does not go back near that far. Dr. Waite in the same book mentioned above traces 37 historical links taking the text behind the KJV all the way back to within a few years of Jesus and the apostles! (p45-48). We have already seen that the man ORIGEN who formulated the Egyptian text behind our newer versions today was a heretic who denied the deity of Christ and salvation through Jesus’ shed blood. Not only that, but let’s look at the NUMBER of manuscripts that serve as witnesses to back the text behind the KJV. Even the editor of the Nestle-Aland (today’s version of the Westcott/Hort text) declares that so far, scholars have discovered 5,255 pieces of manuscript evidence. Of these, 5,210 of them support the Traditional text behind that the KJV! That’s why it is called the MAJORITY text! That is 99%! If you had 100 witnesses and 99 agreed and gave the same testimony and one disagreed, which testimony would you believe!!Did you get that? Kurt Aland himself declares that we have 5,255 pieces of manuscript evidence, which would include old copies of portions of the Bible (papyrus, Uncials, Cursives) and Lectionaries. These were prayer books, etc. that the early church read from that contained portions of Scripture. All of these historical documents are evidence which can be studied by Bible Scholars who can determine which text was used. 5,210 or 99% of manuscript evidence we have today is from the Textual family behind our KJV!! And some of these ‘scholars’ wouldWant us to take the 1% , about 45 pieces of evidence (mainly Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) and disregard the other 99% or 5210 manuscript evidence? Not to mention, these 1% of manuscripts disagree and contradict each other that you can tell they are unreliable and have been tampered with! Incredible! Yet, all of the newer Bible versions on the market today, such as the NIV, NASB, NKJV, etc. are all based upon this Egyptian-based, Nestle-Aland (W/H) text! Remember the text behind the KJV was the one that the believers used for 1600 years,Not to mention the great reformers such as William Tyndale, John Wycliffe, etc. Not only is the KJV based upon a superior text, it is based upon a superior translating technique….
2. The KJV had a Superior Translating Technique
The KJV translators strived for a word for word translation, as much as humanly possible, when translating from the Greek and Hebrew over into English. They used what is called a direct, formal translating technique which is what translators should do. They even tried to not to change the form of the words. For example, verbs were kept verbs, and nouns were kept nouns, etc. Now this is what I want a translator to do, don’t you. Once again, I believe with all my heart that God was overseeing this process to make sure His Word was preserved for us today according to Psalms 12:6,7. The newer Bible versions of today, like the NIV, etc. do not do this. They use what is known as dynamic equivalence. In translating jargon, this means ‘paraphrasing’! The translators of the NIV admit the preface and in their writings that they did not attempt to translate word for word! They admit that they just wanted to get the ‘thought’ of what the Bible writer was trying to say across to the reader! Can you believe this?What you’re getting when you read the NIV is a paraphrase where that editor or translator used in that particular section of the NIV ‘thought’ the intent of the meaning of the verse was! Excuse me, but I just want to know what the correct translated words over into English are, NOT WHAT SOME NIV TRANSLATOR THOUGHT the Bible writer was trying to get across! One bible scholar has a computer printout research of the modern versions, and it showed that the New King James Version (NKJV) had over 2000 examples of Dynamic Equivalency, that is, adding to, subtracting from, or changing the words of the text. The New American Standard (NASB) had over 4000 examples. The New International Version (NIV) had over 6,653 such examples of where the NIV translator took the ‘liberty’ to change the text into what he ‘thought’ the Bible writer was trying to say!!! Not only did the KJV use the SUPERIOR direct, formal translating technique…they used a far superior TEAM METHOD of translating. Whereas maybe one so-called ‘scholar’ would work on a Book or section of the Bible in the preparation of the NIV, the KJV translators used a team approach. These 47 men were some of the greatest translating scholars of their day! They were divided into 6 companies or teams which checked and double-checked each others work, and then a final team would check it again! All total, any given portion of Scripture was checked 14 different times! Talk about checking from ‘stem to stern’….14 different times By different scholars!! This was a team approach to checking and re-checking the accuracy of the translating work that the modern-day Bible version translators did not even attempt to approach or claim to!! Well, thirdly….
(3) The KJV had far Superior Translators
I believe God in His Providence and foreknowledge picked and prepared the very men at the right time in history to do this noble work. He knew the time was right and English was common language that would be used to take the gospel to the world, even when it would be translated from into remote languages of the earth! From the original 54 on the list, death and withdrawal brought the final crew down to 47, exactly what God must have wanted. I believe as I read about these men, they surely were some of the greatest language scholars of their day and indeed some of the greatest of all time! Even though most were from the Church of England, they were ‘Puritans’ who saw that the Church of England had some problems. I believe God picked these men with their language skills to do the expert job that was needed. William Grady asks on page 156 of his book FINAL AUTHORITY, “Where are the modern scholars who can compete with the men of this 1611 committee?” Dr. Samuel Samuel Gipp writes, “These men on the translation committee of the KJB were, without dispute, the most learned men of their day and vastly qualified for the job which they undertook. They were overall both academically qualified by their cumulative knowledge and spiritually qualified by their exemplary lives..” Name the 20th century scholar who could shine the shoes of John Bois. When he was Only 5 years old, his father taught him to READ Hebrew. By the time he was six, he Could not only write the same, but in fair and elegant character. At age 15, he was Already a student at St. John’s college, Cambridge, where he was renowned for Corresponding with his superiors in GREEK! What about Lancelot Andrews, chairman Of the New Testament committee at Westminster, who was conversant in fifteen Languages? It was said of Miles Smith that he was a ‘ walking library’! Andrew Downs Was described as ‘chief of the learned men of England’. Of the rest of this crew, one Wrote a Persion dictionary! One took a month’s vacation and learned and mastered an Entirely foreign language! Well, we could go on, but I believe you get the point. With All due respect, what translating ‘scholar’ today could even tie the shoelaces of these Learned men?
(4) The KJV has Superior Theology
Supporters of the NIV and newer versions today would argue that there are not doctrinal changes in the newer Bibles. That is just not right. With almost 6000 changes involving nearly 10,000 words, you know something is going to be different, and it is!! Dr. Jack Moorman did a Detailed study and compiled a total of 356 doctrinal passages affected and altered! For example the NIV teaches in 2 Timothy 2:12 that a believer can ‘lose’ salvation and God will ‘disown’ him! The NIV teaches in Mark 10:24 that is ‘hard’ to be saved! Acts 8:37 in the NIV is completely omitted (but verse numbering goes from 36 to 38 with no 37!) and this is the one Verse that shows that INFANT BAPTISM is wrong! The Phillips translation in Acts 2:38 teaches that we must be baptized in order to have our sins forgiven! The NASB teaches in John 3:36 that it is not ‘believing’ that will save you, but ‘obeying’! The NKJV teaches in 2 Cor. 2;14 that we ‘are being saved’ instead of ‘having been saved’! The NIV teaches the same thing in 1 Corinthians 1:18! The NASB teaches in John 5:29 that we are saved by doing ‘good deeds’ Rather than doing the one good thing of trusting Christ as Saviour! The NKJV teaches that it is ‘difficult’ to be saved in Matt. 7:14! The NIV teaches that Jesus SINNED when you read Mark 3:5 and Matthew 5:22! The NIV does away with Lucifer! There is no Lucifer in the NIV! Worse than that, the NIV declares that ‘the morning star’ is the that fell and was cut down and did weaken the nations, not Lucifer! When we read Revelation 22:16 we see that theMorning star is Jesus! Incredible.
Conclusion
We could go on and on, and another more exhaustive study We have does that, but these examples should be sufficient to any open-minded person to show that we have a REAL PROBLEM with these newer Bible versions! Stay away from them, they are no good! They are satan's attempt to take some of the clearest verses on essential Bible doctrines and alter and delete them completely so it is more difficult for a new believer to become grounded in the faith! some might say, Well, why do so many good Bible preachers still use and recommend the newer Bible versions? I humbly and honestly say I believe it is because they have just never really studied the matter intensely themselves. I for years had never really studied the matter myself but just relied upon people I trusted and respected and felt surely they knew best. I believe many good preachers just ‘accept’ what the so-called ‘scholars’ are saying and have not Really studied the matter sincerely themselves! Can God still use these men to do even great things? Yes. That doesn’t mean that they or any other ‘great man of God ‘ is right on EVERY Thing. When we are mistaken, we should be man enough and ‘humble’ enough to admit it….I’m afraid in many cases PRIDE enters the picture, and some ‘scholars’ are hesitant to admit That they might have been WRONG on something and have mislead so many others on! The honest child of God should admit that he or she doesn’t know EVERTHING humbly admit when maybe we have been mistaken. Pride and academic arrogancy is a terrible thing, especially when become ‘puffed up’ due to ‘MUCH KNOWLEDGE’… Some might say, but the APOCRYPHA was included in the KJV! This is true. The KJV translator included the Aprocrypha as a historical document ‘inbetween’ the Old and New Testaments but made it abundantly clear that the Apocrypha books were not to be consideredCanonical or a part of the inspired text! Some would say that there have been thousands of changes made in the 5 editions of the KJVFrom 1611 to 1769! Yes, but these are changes in the spelling and punctuation. You see, in that day there was no set way for a word to be spelled. As we approached the 1700’s words were beginning to have a definite way to be spelled. Also, many changes were corrections that the printers made in the early editions. There were no changes made to the essential text. But some would argue, isn’t the KJV too hard to read for today’s young people? No. Recent computer studies made comparisons on the readability of the different versions and the KJV has an overall readability of 6.1 to 8.6 and the NIV has a 6.1 to 11.0! So, if you can read at a 6th to 10th grade level, you should have no trouble reading the KJV! Aren’t there errors and mistakes in the KJV? No. I haven’t found any yet. Have you? Can you show me one? In another study we will look at these so-called errors and mistakes.
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