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.[1]
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.” [2] 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.” [3]
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.[4] 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 its 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.
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