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.[1] 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.” [2]
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.[3] 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.” [4]
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.” [5] 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.[6] 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.”[7]
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.[8] 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.[9]
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.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12]
[1] Peter S. Ruckman, The Full Cup: A Chronicle of Grace (Pensacola,
FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1992), 1.
[3] Eldon Jay Epp, Foreward to The Greek New Testament by B.F. Westcott
& F.J.A Hort (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers,
2007), xii.
[4]
Ruckman, Bible Babel, iii.
[5]
Ibid. The ASV referred to the American Standard Version of the Bible
and the NASV referred to the New American Standard Version, the first
not as popular as the second came to be in fundamentalist circles.
[6] Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended (1956
Reprint, Ankeny IA: Christian Research
Press, 1984), 184. See Ruckman references to Hills in Bible Babel on pages 4, 75.
[7]
Ruckman, Bible Babel, v. The RSV refers to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and the NRSV is a reference to the New
Revised Standard Version.
[8]
Ibid.
[9]
Peter B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in
Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760-1857 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1997).
[10]
Ruckman, Bible Babel, vi. Medieval
Jewish scholar, Aben Ezra, is often quoted as an authority who insisted that
verse 7 refers to the words while eighteenth century Bible commentator,
theologian, and pastor, John Gill, alluded to Ezra’s stand on the verse
referring to the preservation of the words but denied it himself. Noteworthy
Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, of the eighteenth century, also held the
position that the verse was not referring to preservation of words.
[11] William P. Grady, Final Authority: A Christian’s Guide to the
King James Bible
(Knoxville, TN:
Grady Publications, 1993), 321. Gail Riplinger, In Awe of Thy Word: Understanding the King James Bible, Its Mystery
& History Letter By Letter (Ararat,
Va.: A.V. Publications, 2003), 7.
[12]
Ruckman, Bible Babel, 3. However, the
King James Bible agreed with the Douay-Rheims Bible of the Roman Catholic
Church (New Testament published in 1582 and Old Testament in 1609-10) in its
inclusion of 1 John 5:7, one of the verses confirming the Trinity (also see 2
Corinthians 13:13; Matthew 28:19). This verse is not found in the modern critical
text of Westcott-Hort.
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