The Bible is the word of God, the written word of God. It is
absolutely essential to our sanctification, being set apart for God’s purpose.
Its importance cannot be overestimated. But, what is a Bible? Is it a New American Standard Version? A New King James Version? The King James Version? After all, each of
them say different things at key points and each of them are translated from
different manuscripts with in some cases only slight variations and in others
extreme differences.
I believe that the Authorized Version of the Bible, the King James Version, is the preserved
word of God and the last of what can truly be called an authentic Bible. If you
read it over and over, and I am on my 63rd reading of it, God will
use His words to change your heart and mind, not only answering your prayers but
giving you a greater understanding of His purpose in your life. This book is my
final authority in all matters of faith, practice, and doctrine and that most,
if not all, modern Bibles are perversions of God’s word made possible by Satan
who, from the beginning, has caused mankind to question what God said. Those of
us who still hold to the King James Bible
as God’s word in English, or any other language for that matter, are often
derided by modern evangelicals as being reactionary and ignorant. Some of your
brothers and sisters in Christ might even call you a rebel, and not in a very
complimentary way, if they are not mocking your refusal to go along. But, are
you are rebel or are you really a remnant, holding on to the faith of your
spiritual forebears with regard to God’s words? This series is going to contain
some historical information that might seem dry to you but I hope you will pay
attention so you know some of the background of why you believed what you
believed about the Bible. Take your time and try to understand what you can. It
will be helpful for you to know from whence you came in regards to the question
of “What is the Bible?”
Right now
we’re going to lay a foundation and get some background on the people and
events that led us to where we are. It may seem a bit dry for you but please
bear with me. I think this information and this appraisal is important.
A movement began among Independent
Baptist churches in 1964 that regarded the King
James Bible as the very word of God in print, with all other modern
translations being counterfeits and frauds. The founder of the movement, and
for decades its most outspoken proponent was Dr. Peter S. Ruckman of the Bible
Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. Dr. Ruckman fired the first salvo in the
movement with a book published by his church’s bookstore entitled, Bible Babel. This book was the beginning
of a movement that split many Independent Baptist churches apart and struck at
the heart of fundamentalism in America. First published in 1964, the book was
reprinted in 1981, revised in 1987, and reprinted again in 1994. There are at
present approximately one thousand, five hundred congregations in the U.S. and
abroad that hold the King James Bible to
be their infallible guide in all matters of faith, practice, and doctrine.
The central themes of the King James-only
Movement are that the King James Bible (KJB), also known as the King James Version (KJV) or the Authorized
Version (AV), was inspired by God (or in that Bible’s expression, “given by
inspiration”), no less than the original autographs, or is God’s word
providentially preserved in English, at the very least, with any Bible
translated after 1611 an unreliable substitute or counterfeit.
If you believe this there are many Christians who will insist you are being
rebellious and are nothing but a divider, working against the gospel of Christ
and, in fact, are somewhat of an embarrassment to mainstream evangelicals. But,
are you a rebel or are you simply, and more importantly, a remnant, someone
standing on the faithfulness of past generations who were responsible for the
greatest movement of evangelism since the first century on the truth of the
Bible?
Dr. Ruckman
began in his, “Introduction,” to Bible
Babel an attack on noteworthy fundamentalists who upheld modern Bibles
based on the Westcott and Hort Greek text that resulted from the Anglican
revision of the AV completed in 1881.
His diatribe against prestigious fundamentalist schools such as Bob Jones
University, Tennessee Temple, and Hyles-Anderson was written, not in a
scholarly fashion, but in a manner designed to appeal to and be understood by
the average church-going Independent Baptist. The central focus of Ruckman’s
books was his anger at traditional fundamentalism’s perceived contempt for the
Bible whose authority he accepted without question.
Let’s talk a little about the beginnings of American fundamentalism. In the late 1800s, a series of
meetings of conservative Protestant Christians in America began, some of which,
being held at Niagara, New York, resulted in them being referred to as the
Niagara Conference. The clergy and laymen that attended these meetings are
referred to as, “the founding fathers of fundamentalism.”
The label, “fundamentalists,” was not coined until 1920 to describe
conservative Protestants of varying denominations who were actively militant in
defending the basics of what they perceived was orthodox Christian belief.
The
term came from a series of essays published in the first decade of the
twentieth century as The Fundamentals, provided
free to the Christian public.
Noteworthy evangelical R.A. Torrey figured prominently among the authors.
Fundamentalists
rose to national prominence in their involvement in a judicial proceeding in
the mid-1920s that is popularly known as, “The Scopes Monkey Trial,” over the
teaching of evolution in the public schools. Although it was a legal win for
those opposed to evolution being taught, the resultant negative publicity drove
fundamentalists further from mainstream America. It resulted in the development
of fundamentalist universities such as Bob Jones University, whose faithfulness
to the critical text of Westcott and Hort and the inerrancy of the unseen
original autographs figured prominently in the origins of the King James-only movement.
After the 1920s, fundamentalism ceased to be a powerful political movement and
retreated from engagement with the majority of the public who did not share its
views. By the 1960s virtually all fundamentalist churches were Baptist.
The movement rose to prominence again in
the 1970s with Jerry Falwell’s, “Moral Majority,” and the courting of the
movement by the 1980 Ronald Reagan presidential effort.
Fundamentalism,
as a movement within conservative Protestant churches, was ultimately made
possible by the doctrines set forth early in the Reformation by Martin Luther. Luther’s
exchange of the authority to access and interpret Biblical texts from the organization
of the Roman Catholic Church to the individual Christian ultimately allowed for
the existence and justification of modern Protestant fundamentalism.
Luther expressed a new line of thought in opposition generally accepted
Christian belief, that took access to Biblical texts and interpretation of them
from the priest or an elite consisting of the educated and gave this to the
individual Christian. For Luther, every man was a theologian.
What is the traditional fundamentalist view of the Bible?
The foundational importance of the
Bible in Protestantism was expressed very clearly in the seventeenth century by
Anglican divine, William Chillingworth, when he declared emphatically, “The
Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants!”
In the nineteenth century, Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge, in his three
volume work Systematic Theology, stated in 1873, quoting Martin Luther’s 1537
Smallcald Articles, that, “All Protestants agree in teaching that ‘the word of
God, as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only
infallible rule of faith and practice.’”
Again, this view was affirmed by
Baptist theologians in the twentieth century as fundamentalism was moving away
from a cross section of conservative Christian denominations and was focused
more and more in the Baptist faith tradition. This traditional view of the
Bible’s importance in fundamentalism was expressed in an even more extreme
manner by Henry Clarence Thiessen in his Introductory
Lectures in Systematic Theology: “It [what he called the true Church] bases
its view on the belief that the Bible is the embodiment of a divine revelation,
and that the records which contain that revelation are genuine, credible,
canonical, and supernaturally inspired.”
The fundamentalist view of the divine
inspiration of the Bible had its origins in the Princeton Seminary, in the
nineteenth century. In 1879, a doctrine was expressed that insisted that the
original autographs of the presumed Bible writers, and those writings only,
were inspired by God, inerrant and infallible.
All subsequent translations attained to
varying degrees of reliability and trustworthiness. This allowed a fallback
position from the assault on the truth of the Bible narrative by German
Biblical criticism and the acceptance of Darwin’s version of the theory of evolution
to a Bible that didn’t actually exist in reality, as the original autographs
were never in one Bible, and were themselves not extant so they could not be
questioned. The mark of fundamentalism in America was a conservative, literal
approach to scriptural interpretation and a belief in the divine inspiration of
the original autographs with translations being trustworthy but not perfect. It
reduced divine inspiration to mere transmission from God to writing on a single
occasion.
Presbyterian Pastor Archibald Alexander Hodge, son of Princeton Seminary
theologian Charles Hodge, wrote in 1863 that what the Bible calls, “given by
inspiration,” is revelation, while
inspiration referred only to the process of writing an infallible and inerrant
document.
That this did not include any translation is apparent. American Baptist
minister and author Dr. Wayland Hoyt, speaking at a conference held on Biblical
inspiration in Philadelphia in 1887, said, “But neither for version nor for
manuscripts is Inspiration to be claimed. Inspiration is only to be claimed for
the primal sacred autographs …We affirm Inspiration and authority of the original Scriptures, the sacred autographs, but not of the copies
or versions.”
Added into the mix was the effort to
revise the AV completed by the
Anglican Church’s Bishops Westcott, Hort, and company in 1881, unrelated either
to the Niagara Conference or the Princeton Seminary’s thoughts on the inerrancy
and infallibility of the original autographs. New manuscript discoveries of a non-Biblical
nature that were believed to shed light on the original Bible languages and
dissatisfaction with the perceived archaic English of the Authorized Version led to the Anglican Church’s 1881 Revision of
the King James Bible. The Revision
was the first effort in two hundred and fifty years with any Anglican Church
authority behind it to revise the King
James Version.
Plans for a
revision of the AV were in the works
since at least 1820, when Anglican Bishop Herbert Marsh, in a lecture on the
interpretation of the Bible at Cambridge, published in 1828, called for it as
necessary.
This struggle to have the idea of a revision seen through happened in fact,
even though many, such as philologist and pioneering American environmental
conservationist, George Perkins Marsh, said that a multitude of Bibles would
result from such a revision, dividing Protestantism and causing more harm than
good .
The Revision committee, laboring for over a decade, published its work in 1881.
The Revision efforts consisted of an English committee headed by Anglican
bishops Westcott and Hort, and an American committee headed by Bible scholar
and historian, Philip Schaff.
The
resultant Revised Version of the
Bible and its American counterpart, the American
Standard Version, were not so much revisions of the Authorized Version but new versions of the Bible based on an
entirely new background text for the New Testament and a departure from the
traditional Old Testament text. The effort did not escape criticism. John
Burgon, a noted expert on Greek language and manuscripts, panned the revision
efforts in writing in 1883. He wrote, “…’the New Greek Text,’ – which, in
defiance of their instructions, the Revisionists of the ‘Authorized English
Version’ had been so ill-advised as to spend ten years in elaborating, - was a
wholly untrustworthy performance: was full of the gravest errors from beginning
to end….” Philip Schaff, the head of the American
revision committee, acknowledged that one reason for the difficulty the new
text had in being favorably received was that “for the great mass of English
readers King James’ Version is virtually the inspired Word of God.”
Nevertheless,
fundamentalists in America took to the new versions of the Bible quite readily.
Evangelist R.A. Torrey wrote that, in his estimation, “the Revised Version is
manifestly much more exact,” than the Authorized
Version. It
was not until another contributor to The
Fundamentals, lawyer Philip Mauro, began to express serious reservations
about the Revised Version’s
background text in the early 1920s that fundamentalism began to break down into
two camps on the Bible translation issue. One camp followed the Westcott-Hort
Greek text (representing the Alexandrian line of manuscripts) and the Bibles
that flowed from it such as the Revised
Version, the American Standard
Version, and later the Revised
Standard Version, the New American
Standard Version, the New
International Version, etc., with the second camp using and uplifting the Textus Receptus, in English the Received Text. This was the traditional
textual line of manuscripts, called the Byzantine, that were the background
texts for the Authorized Version, with
that Bible version simply being considered, not inspired, but the most
trustworthy translation of an inspired Greek text. Although the Old Testament text was also
different it was not usually the subject of much argument until later. Both
parties felt that their version of the Greek text was representative of the
originals, which only were given by inspiration of God. Translations were
reliable, trustworthy, or, in the case of the Authorized Version, the best, but most definitely not inspired by
God and merely the devoted work of skilled and faithful translators. The battle
within fundamentalism was not over the authority of the Bible but over the
question, “What is the Bible?”
This is a fundamental question for you. Remember what God has
said about his words.
Psalm 138:
2 I will worship toward thy holy temple,
and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast
magnified thy word above all thy name.
John 17:17
¶ Sanctify them through thy truth: thy
word is truth.
Next, Peter Ruckman throws a monkey wrench into the wheel of
fundamentalism in America with regards to the Bible.
Peter
Ruckman’s autobiography:
The Full Cup provided a great deal of valuable information about his background
and insights into his combative nature. Ruckman was the son of a U.S. Army
officer whose father and grandfather were both graduates from West Point and
who rose to the rank of Colonel by the time World War II began. Peter
Ruckman himself became an officer in the U.S. Army and taught hand to hand
combat during World War II although he never saw any actual fighting. During
his service time he experimented with Buddhism and after his military service
he began the process of becoming a Roman Catholic. This ended with his
conversion to fundamentalist and Baptist religious beliefs in 1949.
He was drawn
to the staunchly fundamentalist Bob Jones University (BJU) in 1949. Ruckman was
“saved” by a preacher using a King James
Bible, but found that at Bob Jones University, that Bible’s accuracy and
credibility were downplayed, although it was used in public services. He also
realized that BJU preferred the Westcott-Hort Greek Text, which is also known
as the Critical Text. As he became more acquainted with the school’s teaching,
he found himself more at odds with their philosophy. Finally, although he chose
to stay and get his PhD, he accepted that staunchly fundamentalist BJU was too
liberal, in his mind, in what they regarded as the words of God.
Ruckman
eventually became a pastor for Baptist churches in Pensacola, Florida and
developed a ministry of chalk drawings and evangelistic preaching, eventually leading
the Bible Baptist Church on JoJo Road. He published Bible Babel in 1964, manifesting his utter contempt for the
traditional fundamentalist view of the Bible. In 1965 he founded the Pensacola
Bible Institute to train preachers in his doctrinal views. Ruckman’s church
bookstore produced thousands of cassette tapes, books, and eventually CD’s and
MP3’s that became very popular as the controversy he started continued to grow
and many churches adopted his point of view.
Bible Babel
The opening
salvo of the King James-only Movement
was an attack on the belief that only the original autographs were inspired.
This original Bible containing the original manuscripts of the authors, of
course, never actually existed, in fact. It was more of an ideal, as no one has
ever claimed that there was a Bible anywhere at any time in history that
contained the original writings of Moses and Paul. Attacking several prominent
fundamentalist Baptists, Ruckman exclaimed, “The term ‘Word of God’ used by Bob
Jones, Jr., Bob Jones III, Robert Sumner, Custer, Neal, McCrae, Newman,
Panosian, Wisdom, Alfman, Prince, Price, and John R. Rice is never a reference
to any book that anyone on earth has ever read.”
The primary
manuscripts referred to in most modern Bible versions as the oldest or the best
are principally the Codex Vaticanus and
the Codex Sinaiticus. These manuscripts
are known as Alexandrian text type and were assigned the most authority by the
Westcott-Hort Greek text translators. This text has been the basis for virtually
all other Greek texts used for Bible translating for more than a century.
Ruckman referred to those
fundamentalists who followed the Alexandrian textual line of manuscripts as
expressed in the Westcott-Hort Greek text and the Bibles produced from it as
the, “Alexandrian Cult.”
One of the
characteristics of Dr. Ruckman’s writings was his strong anti-Catholic bias.
Ruckman viewed a Roman Catholic conspiracy behind the newer Bible translations.
He accused modern translators and fundamentalists of attacking the Reformation
Bibles by using Roman Catholic translations. He wrote that “The readings of the
ASV and the NASV are the readings of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate where they match the Jesuit Rheims Bible of 1582.”
It is interesting to note that the authorities he mentions after that statement
as having revealed this information decades before his writing were not devoted
to the perfection of the King James Bible
as he was. In fact, one important author, Dr. Edward F. Hills, expert in
textual criticism, graduate summa cum laude from Yale and graduate of
Westminster and Columbia Theological Seminaries, as well as Harvard University,
published his tome, The King James
Version Defended, in 1956, which although often quoted by King James-only advocates, only went so
far as saying that “it is not absolutely perfect, but it is trustworthy,” while
upholding the Textus Receptus over
the text produced by the Anglican Revision.
Ruckman’s accusations implied that the
traditional fundamentalist was an agent of Rome as he noted, “the FACT that the
ASV and the NASV (as well as the RSV and
the NRSV) are in line with the
official Bible of Rome; they are not revisions of the King James Version,” and referred to anyone who promoted those
Bibles as a, “PAPIST.”
Ruckman went on to accuse the Anglican revisionists of being,
“Puseyites,” a reference to Anglican divine, Edward Pusey, which meant to
Ruckman that they were part of the contingent of nineteenth century Anglicans
who desired reunion with the Roman Catholic Church.
The conflict within the nineteenth
century Anglican Church regarding that church’s relationship to the Roman
Catholic Church resulted in several defections of Anglican clergy to the Roman
Catholic Church.
Ruckman’s “Introduction” to Bible Babel concluded with Ruckman’s
take on the controversial verses of Psalms 12:6, 7 in the King James Bible, stating that they established a doctrine of God’s
promise to providentially preserve His words.
This would become one of the pillars upon which the King James-only Movement would rest. The insistence that God not
only gave words by inspiration as noted in 2 Timothy 3:16, but that these words
were preserved by God throughout the centuries in faithful copies and
translations was fundamental to the movement’s arguments.
His arguments for the authority of the King James Bible also included his
statement that the translators rejected Roman Catholic readings in many verses,
that the translators made no effort to uphold Roman Catholic doctrines such as
Mary’s perpetual virginity, and that at the time of the translation no minister
of any pulpit that believed in the Trinity (the three part personage of God)
denied the deity of Jesus Christ.
Dr.
Ruckman did not express the most radical version of the King James-only believers’ belief: that foreign language versions
should be translated directly from the King
James Bible.
Translating into foreign languages directly from the King James Bible had been a practice in some historical contexts in
America but was hardly a universal position among late twentieth century King James-only adherents. Ruckman acknowledged that it was acceptable
for missionaries to use foreign language versions that were based in the same
Greek text that the Authorized Version was,
even if their publication preceded that version, and even if there were
differences in the wording - an allowance he refused to grant to versions newer
than the King James.
Ruckman
made several other points in his polemic against modern Bible versions which
included the KJV translators’ use of
italics when they inserted words that were not present in a Greek manuscript
for the purpose of grammatical sense, or inserting a word found in Hebrew but
not present in a Greek text that quoted a Hebrew verse. Ruckman complained that
many modern versions did not include italicized words which, to him, made the
translators of the AV more honest and
trustworthy.
Another point Ruckman made was the lack of a copyright for the KJV, which is something that modern
Bibles carry in that, presumably, one would have to get the publisher’s
permission to copy large parts of their work. The “crown copyright,” which the King James Bible carries, does not
affect its use or reproduction.
To Ruckman and his followers, these
arguments against modern Bible versions bolstered the AV’s credibility.
One
of the more interesting arguments that King
James-only proponents made was Ruckman’s declaration that the King James Bible exalted Jesus Christ
more than modern versions do. In fact,
he accused Bible translators of the versions based in the Westcott-Hort Greek text
of downgrading Christ’s status as God in the flesh. Ruckman accused the
translators of the new versions, particularly those published since the Revised Version, as not only following
the Roman Catholic editions but even following Mormon belief as well as the
errors of early church fathers, Eusebius and Origen. He linked modern Bible
versions to the doctrines of the Arians who did not believe in the deity of
Christ.
Ruckman’s exaltation of the King James Bible included the statement,
“We are saying that the King James Bible is
true to the exaltation of Jesus Christ….[and] puts Jesus up where He belongs in
God’s sight,” insisting that modern Bible versions do not.
Ruckman
alluded to a book by J.J. Ray entitled God
Only Wrote One Bible, which, like the Edward Hills book mentioned
previously was not written by a King
James-only proponent.
Ray promoted the Textus Receptus above the work of the
Anglican Revision of 1881 and insisted that the Bible was preserved in that
Greek text from which the AV was
translated. Ray had plagiarized an earlier book, Our Authorized Bible Vindicated,
written by Seventh-Day Adventist professor, Benjamin Wilkinson, in which, he, Professor Wilkinson,
declared that the, “original Scriptures were written by direct inspiration of
God,” and that any Bible translated faithfully from the Textus Receptus was the, “Word of God.”
It was a common practice of Ruckman and
others in the movement in the beginning to quote as authorities to underscore
their own viewpoint those who uplifted the Textus
Receptus as God’s inspired words, even if those authorities did not hold up
the King James Bible as anything but
a reliable or the most reliable English expression of that Greek manuscript
line.
Was There A King James-only
Movement before Bible Babel?
The head of
the ASV translating committee and
noted Christian historian, Philip Schaff, acknowledged the assumption made by
many that the King James Bible or Authorized Version was virtually the
inspired word of God. However, this assumption
by some Christians of the authority of the King
James Bible was based on it being the translation most readily available to
them, and not on any understanding of the differences in opinion on the
translation of Greek words or manuscript evidence. Still, King James-only proponents use any statement about the authority of
the “English Bible” in historical context in the same way they quote scholars
and laymen who upheld the King James
Bible as the most reliable translation of the traditional text, as
supporting their position. For example, KJV-only
believer Joey Faust, in his book entitled The
Word: God Will Keep It! The 400 Year History of the King James Bible Only
Movement, refers to an apocryphal conversation that seventeenth century
Protestant noteworthy, John Bunyan, allegedly had with a scholar who insisted
that a knowledge of the original languages was essential to understanding the
Bible. Bunyan expressed his belief that he had access to the originals through
the Bible he used. “’Then,’ said Mr. Bunyan, ‘so do I believe our English Bible
is a true copy of the original.’”
A second
example used by Faust was that of the church to which nineteenth century
scientist, Michael Faraday, belonged. This church was founded by eighteenth
century theologian, Robert Sandeman, the son-in-law of controversial Scottish
nonconformist preacher John Glas. Faust uses quotations by Glas from his own
works, implying that the Scot was an ardent King
James-only Pastor and that, therefore, the church founded by Robert
Sandeman was an example of an early King
James-only church. What Glas expressed in his own work in an argument
about the value of the original languages was the belief in the predominant
English Bible of his time (the King James
Bible) as an authority in direct contraposition to the Roman Catholic
Church giving it equal standing in importance to Protestant people as the
Church at Rome was to Catholic. “Or, are you indeed for the people’s believing
in your church, instead of their English Bible?” he wrote.
The English Bible’s presumed superiority
to the originals lay in its accessibility to the common man and not to any
argument of superior translating methods or abilities or even arguments of
manuscript credibility.
While the
expression of the superiority of the King
James Bible to the original autographs, manuscripts, or even languages was
based on the fact that the KJV, unlike
the latter, was available to the common man this in no way implies the same
type of perfection the King James-only
proponents claim for it. The basis for the belief in the authority of the King James Bible before the KJV-only Movement was expressed very
clearly by George Holden in his 1822 work, An
Attempt to Illustrate the Book of Ecclesiastes, where he advised against
any revision to the Authorized Version due
to the position it held.
While rival scholars would support their several
systems with the stubbornness of preconceived opinion, the belief of
well-meaning, but illiterate, minds would be liable to be shaken by a change in
what they have been accustomed to revere as the standard of their faith. The
style and phraseology of the authorized version have become venerable; it has
acquired a sacredness of character by being handed down, for two centuries,
from father to son, as the Word of God; its very errors are, in a manner,
consecrated by the reverential respect of the people; and it is not likely that
any superior accuracy would, in the present feverish state of public opinion,
compensate for the dangers of innovation.
Ruckman
implied in his autobiography The Full Cup
that J. Frank Norris was a precursor to himself in the King James-only movement, but as there are no extant sermons of J.
Frank Norris extolling the virtues of the King
James Bible. It is only because of
Ruckman’s memory in distinguishing between the types of fundamentalists he met
in his work that he wrote, “the Texans were the independent, Premillennial, J.
Frank Norris, King James Bible crowd.
I quickly made up my mind which side of the fence to get on.”
One traditional fundamentalist author
noted in his arguments against Ruckman’s view that based on his own research,
J. Frank Norris “ascribed inerrancy only to the original language
Scriptures…,”and that “he did not believe that the King James Version was either
a perfect translation or the only acceptable English translation.”
The King James Bible and its authority in the minds of Protestant
believers can be set against the scholarly belief in the authority of original
manuscripts and languages based on its common usage. This is not the same thing
as saying that the KJV is a superior
or divinely inspired translation not only based on its common usage, but on its
presumed perfection and accuracy. Modern Bible versions are translated with the
authority and credibility given to the Alexandrian textual line of manuscripts.
Ruckman argued that the Syrian or Byzantine textual line, from which the KJV was translated, was superior. He
claimed that not only was it the dominant textual line of the Middle Ages, but
that it represented the Greek Vulgate of the first and second centuries, of
which the only examples extant are in the writings of the early church fathers.
Ruckman also went into relatively great
detail on the differences in the translation of individual words and phrases
between the King James Bible and
modern translations, asserting the accuracy of the former over the latter.
Ruckman’s arguments then were a far cry from and more complex than simple
devotion to a Bible commonly used and revered by Protestants. By this the
unique character of the King James-only
Movement in history is clear: there was no movement of this sort before
Ruckman.
Ruckman differed from fundamentalists
who extolled the virtue of the Byzantine text as being inspired. Those
fundamentalists held the King James Bible
as it’s most accurate and authoritative English representative. Fundamentalist
preachers who use only the King James may
still believe that it is merely the best translation of an inspired Greek text
but not bearing any particular stamp of divine inspiration itself. Ruckman
challenged that notion.
Dr. Ruckman
stated his belief that the King James
Bible was God’s inerrant, preserved, and inspired word in English in
several ways in his 1964 publication entitled Bible Babel. He attacked the fundamentalist doctrine of the
inspiration of the original manuscripts only, he called those fundamentalists
who followed the Westcott-Hort critical text a “cult”, he accused those
fundamentalists and the Anglican revisers of the King James of being agents of the Roman Catholic Church whose
purpose was to subvert the Protestant’s faith in the Bible; he uplifted the controversial
doctrine that God had promised to preserve His words in the Bible with the
implication that those words were contained in the Authorized Version, and, among other things, declared that the King James Version exalted Jesus Christ
more than modern versions of the Bible did.
There is no
historical precedent to the movement that Dr. Ruckman started. The authors that
he and those who agreed with him quoted often were not King James-only. These authors, such as Dr. Edward Hills or J.J.
Ray or Benjamin Wilkinson, wrote that the Textus
Receptus or traditional Greek manuscript textual line, also called the
Byzantine text, best represented God’s inspired originals, with the King James being simply the best
translation. Other historical figures, churches, and the general Protestant
public believed in the divine authority of the Authorized Version because it was available to them in a way that
the original manuscripts and languages were not, and that its authority was
established by tradition and common usage.
Finally, the
King James-only Movement, while being
birthed in Protestant, particularly Baptist, fundamentalism, was a departure
from the traditional fundamentalist view of Biblical inspiration. It was a
modern rejection of the doctrine established by the Princeton Theological
Seminary and embraced by most fundamentalists regarding the unique authority of
the original autographs of the Bible. It also dismissed the Anglican Revision
of the AV and the modern science of
textual criticism as products of the Roman Catholic Church and its supporters
in attacking the authority and veracity of the traditional Bible. The King James-only Movement, as such, did
not exist in writing before 1964 and the publication of Peter S. Ruckman’s Bible Babel.
Next, I’ll tell you why I am “King James-only” and why you should be,
too.
From 1967 until 2002 one of the
prominent editors of the United Bible Societies translating committee was
Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Martini. Think about that for just a minute. Let it soak
in. An important member of the organization that creates 80% of the world’s
Bibles was a Jesuit priest, once even thought of as a candidate for pope. The
United Bible Societies includes the American Bible Society, best known for The Good News translation and the Contemporary English Version. Without
accusation, just asking, do you believe that there is no Roman Catholic
influence in modern Protestant Bibles? The online catechism of the Catholic
Church uses quotations from the Revised
Standard Version and the New Revised
Standard Version of the Bible. The Revised
Standard Version was a revision of the American
Standard Version from a translating committee led by Philip Schaff,
mentioned previously. His version was the American version of Westcott and
Hort’s Revised Version, beloved by
the fundamentalists of the era of the publication of The Fundamentals and applauded in those essays as the most accurate
Bible.
Without
being as bold as Ruckman and leaving out a lot of other evidence what do you
think is most likely? Many of you will say, “what difference does it make?” As
I quoted previously the Bible is the foundation to Protestant belief, and the
Bible only. The Roman Catholic Church places the opinions of its men of
letters, the “Doctors of the Church,” Popes, and tradition on an equal par with
the Bible or even higher. That puts an important division between myself and
them regarding the question we are pursuing here regarding the Bible. I cannot
regard Augustine or Pope John Paul II on an equal par with Jeremiah or Paul.
But, let’s move on.
Modern
evangelical scholar Eugene Nida, of the American Bible Society, classified
translating types. The King James Bible
is considered as translated using “Formal Equivalence” or word-for-word translating
trying to maintain not only what the words actually mean but even the grammar
and syntax of the original languages. Modern Bibles are translated using
“Dynamic Equivalence,” a sense-for-sense translation using the translators’
opinions, world-view, biases, and prejudices to render what they think or want you
to think is what the text actually means rather than what it actually says.
Think about that for a few minutes. Just wrap your mind around it.
The King James translators were the finest
minds of their time and secular scholars like Olga Opfell and Adam Nicolson in
books like The King James Bible
Translators and God’s Secretaries have
affirmed this was so and that the King
James Bible was produced at a unique point in history and was a project
that could not have been made, in their estimations, at any other time. Secular
scholars who contributed to the Harvard
Literary Guide to the Bible expressed how faithful it was to the grammar and
syntax of the manuscripts from which it was translated. Many others have
confirmed how important that Bible was to the development of the English
language.
The way it
is designed and constructed is incredible and I would say beyond human
planning. For instance, in most cases if you look at words connected by the
word and you will typically find
their meaning in synonyms. By looking at this verse can you tell me what a cumbrance is?
Deuteronomy 1:12 How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and your burden, and your
strife?
It is a burden, a hindrance, and an
impediment, a burdensome strife. On rare occasions and does not contact words with synonymous meanings in context but
links opposites, antonyms, as in the following.
Philppians 4:12 I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound:
every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry,
both to abound and to suffer
need.
At other times, words that might be
difficult for us today are defined by looking at the words surrounding them in
other passages nearby. In this example I want to point out that the word eschew is not that uncommon today as I
even read it in a sports article online not long ago. Its just that we don’t
normally use it in everyday speech.
1Peter 3:10 For he that will love life, and see good
days, let him refrain his tongue
from evil, and his lips that they
speak no guile: 11 Let him eschew evil, and
do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.
So, you see eschew means in this context to refrain
one’s tongue from evil
There are italicized words that
denote the editors filling in a word that is not found in one language but is
clearly meant to be there by comparison to a Bible quote from another language
although that’s not the only usage of italicized words. Here, I italicize Bible
verses I’m using anyway so you will need to look at a King James Bible to see this.
Deuteronomy 8:3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to
hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy
fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread
only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of the LORD doth man live.
In this verse word is italicized, meaning that it is not literally in the Hebrew
text but is implied. How can you know they understood at the time of Jesus that
word should be in that verse? Well,
because it is provided in the Greek text from which the New Testament came.
Matthew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall
not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Italicized words are important. To
include them is honest and to exclude them is deceitful.
Sometimes the Bible defines words by
word substitution. This provides us the meaning the Holy Spirit wanted from the
context. In the following Jesus is quoting from the prophet Isaiah. When you
compare the two verses you can see by word substitution that, in the contexts, gospel means good tidings or good news, the
poor are the meek, along with other concepts that require a study of their own
to understand.
Luke 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed
me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight
to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Isaiah 61: 1 ¶ The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath
anointed me to preach good tidings
unto the meek; he hath sent me to
bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening
of the prison to them that are
bound;2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the
day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
But, besides the mechanics, the way
it is constructed for our learning, our edification, reading and believing the
Bible can keep us from sin.
Psalm 119:11 Thy
word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
The Bible says in Philippians 2:10,
11;
10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11 And that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
But, yet, God’s words have been
placed above God’s name.
Psalm 138:2 I will worship toward thy holy temple, and
praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified
thy word above all thy name.
Jesus said that God’s word was truth itself by which
we are sanctified or set apart for
God’s purpose.
John 17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
So, tell me, if you believe this is
so, when a modern critic picks up this Bible that was translated the most
faithfully from the manuscripts and early versions of the Bible most prevalent
in the first fifteen centuries of the faith and says, “a better rendering of
this word would be,” how can you trust him when these critics also say about
their own translating efforts and the lexicons, or Greek dictionaries, which
they use to get their definitions in the book, Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography;
“The fact is
that opinions will very often differ over the precise wording of lexical
definitions even - or perhaps, especially - after careful consideration of a
proposed definition.”
“…there is
the fact that even the latest lexicons derive their material from their
predecessors, and a great deal of it has been passed on uncritically over the
course of centuries.”
“…we cannot
know for certain that what we find in front of us when we look up a word is
sound.”
“…all the
existing lexical entries in all our dictionaries are now obsolete and await
reassessment in the light of the full evidence, or at least checking to see if
there is further evidence to be added.”
“Lexicons
are regarded by their users as authoritative, and they put their trust in them.
Lexicons are reference books presenting a compressed, seemingly final statement
of fact, with an almost legal weight. The mere fact that something is printed
in a book gives it authority, as far as most people are concerned. And
understandably: if one does not know the meaning of a word, one is predisposed to
trust the only means of rescue from ignorance. Yet this trust is misplaced.”
Bernard
A. Taylor, John A. L. Lee, Peter R. Burton &Richard E. Whitaker, Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography:
Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Danker
And I’m supposed to pick up a modern
Bible version that provides me with nuggets of “truth” like 1982’s the New King James Version, which is neither
new nor is it King James.
Matthew 11:3 and said to Him, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”
The Coming One,
capitalized, is a title given to a new-age messiah to come by the Satanist,
Alice Bailey in the 1940s. What does the King
James Version say, translated faithfully from its foundational documents?
Matthew 11:3 And said unto him, Art thou he that should come,
or do we look for another?
There is a huge difference between
asking if Jesus was the predicted Jewish messiah to come and asking if He was a
new-age, Satanic avatar, no different than Buddha or Mohammed, sent to
enlighten mankind and urge him a little further on the way to enlightenment.
Maybe the New King James Version
translators weren’t aware of this connection. Well, if I’m aware of it and I’m
not an expert in anything, I’m pretty sure they were.
How can I trust modern versions
translated based on dynamic equivalence, telling me what I should think rather
than just laying it out for me truthfully, when the Holman Christian Standard
Bible deletes the majority of a very important verse in 1John 5:7 which reads
in the KJV like this?
1John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in
heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
And by the way, author Michael
Maynard in his A History of the Debate
Over 1John 5:7-8 pointed out very carefully how this verse was either quoted
or alluded to in every century of Christianity. Where is it in your Bible?
How can I take your modern version
like 1978’s New International Version seriously
when at Mark 16:9-20 you have this note, “[The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have
verses 9–20.]” Really? I’ve read that of the 620 capital letter manuscripts
call uncials that have this part of
Mark in them 618 have the last twelve verses of Mark. 618 out of 620. Scholars
like John Burgon even wrote a book entitled The
Last Twelve Verses of Mark proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the
traditional ending is the right one. Only the darlings of the modernists, the
Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, whose phoniness would take an entire sermon
to discuss, don’t have them. So, I’m supposed to believe you when you rip out
of the Bible;
Mark 16:9 ¶ Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of
whom he had cast seven devils. 10 And she went and told them that had
been with him, as they mourned and wept. 11
And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of
her, believed not. 12 After that he
appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the
country. 13 And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed
they them.
14 ¶
Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided
them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them
which had seen him after he was risen. 15
And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel
to every creature. 16 He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
17 And these signs shall follow them
that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new
tongues; 18 They shall take up serpents;
and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay
hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
19 ¶
So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into
heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. 20
And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with
signs following. Amen.
So, when Philip is
talking to the Ethiopian eunuch and the court official asks him if there is a
reason why he shouldn’t be baptized the following takes place.
Acts 8:36 And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said,
See, here is water; what doth
hinder me to be baptized? 37 And Philip
said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and
said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
So, why does your New
American Standard Bible have a footnote saying, “Acts 8:37 Early mss do
not contain this verse” when it is found in the earliest complete Bible, the Old Latin, from the second century, and
quoted by church “fathers” like Irenaeus in the same century, and others later
like, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine. Should two manuscripts of disputed
credibility, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, and the modern scholars who love them,
be allowed in your head, saying, “Yea, hath God said?” (See Genesis 3). What’s
going on here really?
What about
the Old Testament? The King James Old Testament, representing the Second Great
Rabbinic Bible compiled many Old Testament manuscripts, versus the modern Old
Testament text complied by Rudolf Kittel, father of Nazi apologist Gerhard
Kittel, found in many fundamentalist pastors’ libraries.
The Old
Testament text was settled before the King
James translators began their work based on many, many manuscripts while
modern translations give credence to Kittel’s work, based primarily on one
manuscript, the Leningrad Codex.
Are you
seeing a pattern here? The common usage of the Bible for two thousand years,
thousands of manuscripts, writings of the early church fathers, and ancient
versions on one hand, The King James
Bible; and on the other hand, three questionable manuscripts; Codices Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Leningrad. Based on the latter you want
me to give up my Bible. Right.
Now, let me
tell you something. I’m on my 63rd reading of the KJV. It compels you to read it over and
over again, maybe not as obsessively as me, but you should have read it for at
least as many times as the years you’ve been a Christian if you believe it is
God’s book. I ask you how many times you’ve read or listened to your NKJV, NIV,
HCSB, or NASB? Maybe you have gone through them cover to cover but most people
I talk to haven’t even read the Bible through from cover to cover one time. I
guess it tough when some verses are just missing.
This Bible
changed my life. It reproved me of sin, comforted me, exhorted me, and edified
me. It made me a different person than who I was before I believed that it was
what God wanted us to have. I’ve only given you one or two examples of dozens
so as not to get bogged down in why I believe modern translating attitudes and
modern methods, lexicons, etc. are wrong in their attack on the Bible I use and
that, more importantly, uses me.
I am not a
scholar. I oversimplified things because they are very simple. We have a Bible
that has come down to us from our spiritual ancestors as the authoritative,
definitive word of God. We have modernists who want to make us question its
truthfulness and even abandon it. What I’m telling you is they ‘got no game.’
Their arguments are the empty and vain ramblings of men and women, mostly men,
who want to place the thought in your head, mimicking Satan’s own words.
Yea,
hath God said?
The modern,
particularly, evangelical scholar sets up two competing authorities; your Bible
and his. Then, he encourages you to settle the issue with his opinion, which,
as I said, isn’t worth much. I’m just a regular person but if you are going to
convince me that the Bible that put me here right here writing every day about
God’s word, exploring it, studying it, loving it, is wrong then you’re going to
have to do better than you’ve done.
The King James translators wrote a
letter to the reader which is no longer published in most KJVs, which is
unfortunate. In it they praise the power of the Bible. Here is a short excerpt
of what was written;
But now what piety without truth? what truth
(what saving truth) without the word of God? What word of God (whereof we may
be sure) without the Scripture? The Scriptures we are commanded to search. John
5:39. Isa 8:20. They are commended that searched and studied them. Acts 17:11
and 8:28,29. They are reproved that were unskilful in them, or slow to believe
them. Matt 22:29. Luke 24:25. They can make us wise unto salvation. 2 Tim 3:15.
If we be ignorant, they will instruct us; if out of the way, they will bring us
home; if out of order, they will reform us; if in heaviness, comfort us; if
dull, quicken us; if cold, inflame us.
They hammered
out and revised and worked for long years to produce the greatest Bible the
world has ever known using the Greek texts used by the majority of Christians
for over a thousand years compiled by scholars from hundreds of manuscripts.
This Traditional Text or Majority Text became known after the KJV was published as the Textus Receptus, Latin for the ‘text we
have received’. This Received Text
agrees with the earliest Bible versions like the Syriac Peshitta, the old Latin
Vulgate, and the Italic Bible from the second century. They compared their work
with the work of other translators, the Traditional
Text compiled by Erasmus and others, Bibles in other European languages and
ancient languages, and they revised and studied and revised and studied their
own work. Some commentators, studying the method that the KJV translators used have said that each verse in that Bible was
reviewed 14 times.
Modern
Bibles are different because they are translated from different manuscripts,
called the Minority Text. Supposedly, they say, it is the true text
rediscovered by the Westcott-Hort committee. So, what they are telling us that
the Bible was lost from 500AD to 1880. Do you really believe that? Or is
something else going on?
I want to
close with something I said earlier, This Bible changed my life. It reproved me
of sin, comforted me, exhorted me, and edified me. It made me a different
person than who I was before I believed that it was what God wanted us to have.
I will continue to trust it and to believe it is God’s word for us,
providentially preserved. I hope you will consider what I’ve said spoken and
written from the point of view, not of a scholar or even particularly bright
person, but from someone who stands on a rock and will not be removed from it.
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