WILL THE REAL BIBLE PLEASE STAND UP?
A DISCUSSION OF THE
"KING JAMES ONLY" DEBATE

REV. JAMES M. HARRISON
RED MILLS BAPTIST CHURCH
MAHOPAC FALLS, NY
© James M. Harrison, 1995
(for a printable .pdf version of this document, click here.)

INTRODUCTION

The fire of controversy has been raging in conservative churches for the last several decades. It is a fire that has consumed churches, scarred relationships beyond repair and caused the name of Christ to be soiled by the unchristlike behavior of those who take His name. It is a controversy concerning the most important issue that thinking men and women have had to deal with since the beginning of time. That is, what constitutes the revelation of God?

Those who have not denied the truth that is within them (Rom. 1:18-23), realize that a Being exists who is so far beyond them and so qualitatively different from them that they cannot comprehend anything about Him. They realize that the only way they can know anything about Him is if He takes the initiative in revealing Himself to them. Christians believe that He has indeed done this in two ways.
First, God has made Himself known through His creation itself.

"The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands." Psalm 19:1

"...that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them." Romans. 1:19

Second, He has made Himself known through His oral and written word.

"All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy. 3:16

"But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of the human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." 2 Peter. 1:20-21

"For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. "Hebrews. 4:12

But what constitutes the Word of God? Most evangelicals would respond, "Why, the Bible of course!" Some, however, would ask a second question. "But which Bible? Is the New International Version the Word of God? Is it the New American Standard? Is it the King James or the New King James? Don't you know that they each disagree in various places? How can they all be the Word of God?"

It is this question, and the underlying assumption of the questioner that there can be only one version of the Word of God (the 1611 King James) that is at the root of this controversy.

This booklet is intended to address the issues that have been raised and to answer some of the questions that may be causing confusion in the minds of believers. It is not intended to argue specifically for the superiority of one version over another and certainly not intended to dissuade anyone from reading and studying the King James Bible. Instead, the purpose of this booklet is to refute the claim that ONLY the KJV is the real Bible and that all other translations are faulty at best, and part of a New Age conspiracy at worst.
If you are presently using the KJV, God bless you as you read His Word. The beauty of the language, the familiarities of the cadence, and years of memorizing Scripture in the KJV are all legitimate reasons for staying with it. But there are no legitimate reasons for allowing the issue of Bible versions to divide churches and separate brothers and sisters in Christ. Let us all "be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:3).


CHAPTER 1: I READ THE KING JAMES BECAUSE...

Christians express a number of reasons for preferring the KJV to the more modern translations of Scripture. If one were to systematize these arguments, they would fall into three categories.
The first group is made up of those who prefer the KJV because of its literary style and familiarity. Many, having grown up with the KJV, find it comfortable to use and easy to memorize. The beauty of the language, with its Shakespearean rhythms and cadences cannot be denied. It should also be emphasized before proceeding further, that the KJV remains a fine translation. One will find nothing in the KJV, or any other of the primary modern translations, which deny or undermine any of the basic points of Christian doctrine.
However, there are problems that should be recognized by those choosing to use the KJV. Although the KJV is a fine translation, and a remarkable work of scholarship for its time, we now have the advantage of 400 years of archaeological evidence and scholarly methodology that were unavailable to the translators of the KJV. As a result, while acknowledging the quality of the KJV, we must likewise acknowledge its shortcomings, as we must with any translation, including the New International Version and the New American Standard Version. These issues will be dealt with in more detail later in this booklet.

The second group is composed of advocates who proclaim the superiority of the KJV based on the belief that it is founded on a superior Greek text base. That is, the Greek manuscripts used to translate the KJV New Testament (NT) reflect the original manuscripts more accurately than those manuscripts used in the translation of the modern versions. Since the same Hebrew manuscripts are used to translate both the KJV Old Testament (OT) and the modern versions of the OT, the textual debate revolves only around the NT. The arguments for and against the various manuscript families will follow.

The third group comprises those who make the claims that not only are the manuscripts behind the KJV translation more faithful to the original writings of the biblical authors, but furthermore, that God superintended the translation of the KJV, thereby making the KJV divinely inspired. This group rejects all other English translations of the Bible and believes that the KJV of 1611 is perfect in all respects. Furthermore, there is usually an implicit or explicit conspiratorial tone underlying these arguments. Generally, the conspiracy theory is something to this effect: all translations written after 1611 have been a part of Satan's plan to pave the way for the anti-Christ and his one world religion.

For this group, the translation is the standard. Peter S. Ruckman, one of the leading defenders of this contingent, has gone so far as to make the claim that it is the English translation that should be used to correct the Greek manuscripts. That is, when there is a discrepancy between the KJV and the Greek, we are to throw out the Greek! Listen to a quote from his book, A Christian's Handbook of Manuscript Evidence:

"Where the majority of Greek manuscripts stand against the A.V. 1611, put them in file 13" (meaning the trash) (p. 130).

"When the Greek says one thing and the A.V. says another, throw out the Greek" (p. 137).

Those who would place themselves in the first group described above should remain with the KJV if they choose. There is no reason to change Bibles if one's preference is for this fine version. Those in the second group are involved in a scholarly discussion concerning the primacy of Greek manuscripts. By and large, these issues do not impact the man and woman in the pew. The scholars involved in these discussions recognize the various arguments on both sides and respect opposing viewpoints. It is the theories and claims of this last group that will be addressed in this booklet. They are divisive in nature and it is a divisiveness based on irrationality and a lack of logical or scholarly argument.

This booklet will endeavor to set forth some of the primary arguments of this school of thought and demonstrate the faulty reasoning upon which they are built. This effort is made not with the intent to dissuade anyone from using the KJV, but in order to foster a spirit of charity rather than judgement.

CHAPTER TWO: THE TEXTUAL ISSUES

A great deal of the controversy surrounding the question of Bible versions begins with the text base that the translators employ in their work of translation. There exists at this time well over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of all or part of the NT, over 2,200 lectionaries which consist of passages from the NT, and over 36,000 citations of the NT in the writings of the church fathers. No one can deny the fact that more textual evidence exists on which to test the accuracy of the NT than exists for any other ancient work of literature.

As the original texts of Scripture were copied and then those copies were copied, and then copies of those copies were copied, it is understandable that changes would take place to some degree in the manuscripts. Quite often, a scribe would make notes in the margin of his manuscript. If this manuscript were then to be copied by another, the second scribe might well include some of the notes of the first scribe in the actual text. Or, the copyist may copy the same line twice, or skip a line. Or the copyist may invert the word order or skip over a word all together. To see how easy this would be to do, simply copy the first few chapters of any book you wish and then have someone compare it to the original. Add to this the fact that you are copying from a modern printed page while the early church was copying handwritten manuscripts and you will soon see and understand how easy it was for a copyist to make mistakes that would be incorporated into the text. Because these kinds of changes have taken place, scholars have recognized that groups of manuscripts originating in the same geographic location and chronological era reflect the same textual variants. As a result, they have adopted a means of categorizing the manuscripts. This provides assistance in determining which wording and spelling should be preferred in cases of disagreement. These categories have been labeled the Byzantine, the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Caesarean families of manuscripts. The texts have been grouped into these families based on similar phraseology, spelling, grammatical peculiarities and other common features.

IT MUST BE NOTED that these four text-types are not in great opposition to one another. In over 90 percent of the NT, readings are identical, word-for-word, regardless of the family. Of the remaining 10 percent, most of the differences are fairly irrelevant, such as the insertion of the definite article "the" before a noun. Less than 2 percent of these differences would significantly alter the meaning of a passage, and NOT ONE of them would contradict or alter any of the basic points of Christian doctrine. So then, when all is said and done, this controversy concerns LESS THAN ONE-HALF OF ONE PERCENT OF THE BIBLE. The other 99.5 percent everyone agrees on.

The question, then, is how do we determine which manuscripts most accurately reflect the original autographs? There are a number of criteria used to determine this. Perhaps the most important is the date of the manuscript. If a manuscript from the 2nd century differs with a manuscript from the 10th century, the earlier manuscript would be given more credence. This is so because the earlier manuscript is chronologically closer to the original and therefore has had less of a chance of becoming corrupted. Other criteria have to do with geographical orientation. If a particular reading is found in several widely separated areas, the agreement of the text is evidence of its accuracy. There are many additional criteria used to determine the accuracy of a particular textual reading that I cannot go into in this short booklet. Suffice it to say that the determination of which text to use is not a matter of whim but of scholarly investigation.

The crux of the textual issue lies with the fact that the translators of the KJV had access to very few and very late manuscripts all of which were from only one textual tradition, the Byzantine. They relied primarily on an edition of the Greek NT published by Stephanus which was itself only a slight revision of the Greek NT published by the Roman Catholic humanist scholar Erasmus. None of the manuscripts Erasmus used for his Greek NT contained the entire NT and none of them were dated prior to the 12th century. As a matter of fact, he did not possess any manuscripts that included the last six verses of Revelation. So in order to complete his Greek NT, Erasmus took the Latin Vulgate, the official Roman Catholic translation, translated that Latin into what he thought would have been the Greek, and used that in his Greek NT. As a result, although he did well with what he had, several words and phrases are found in his Greek NT that are found in no Greek manuscript whatsoever. This problem also appears elsewhere in Erasmus' work. It was this Greek NT from which the KJV was originally translated. The "Textus Receptus", which is commonly thought to be the Greek text on which the KJV was based, was not even published until 13 years after the 1611 KJV, although later editions of the KJV were corrected by the TR.

In saying all this, it is important to note that the Greek texts behind the KJV are all from one family of texts, and those of a very late date. The TR itself is not even an accurate reflection of the Byzantine tradition. The Byzantine text-type is found in several thousand witnesses, while the TR did not refer to one one-hundredth of that evidence.

All this was said in order to say this. Those who would argue that the KJV is based on superior textual evidence are simply wrong. The earliest manuscripts we possess are from the Alexandrian tradition while the Byzantine reflects the latest manuscripts. Throughout all of the writings of the church fathers prior to the middle of the fourth century, not one of them reflects the Byzantine textual tradition.

Some, who stand behind the KJV as the "only" real bible, use arguments for the defense of the Byzantine tradition that fail the test of logic. Some have said that since the majority of believers in the history of the church have used the KJV, then it must be the "right" bible. In response to this, we must ask a number of questions of our own. Who are "believers" and "the church" in this context? Are they evangelicals, meaning regenerate believers and the church made up of believers? If this is the case, Erasmus himself, the man behind the KJV's Greek text, might very well be excluded. Or do we mean "Christendom" in general, covering everyone from the Plymouth Brethren to the Eastern Orthodox? If this were the case, infant baptism and hierarchical church government would be incumbent upon us. The majority of Christendom holds to these beliefs. The truth can never be determined by majority vote. In either case, how many people have ever thought through these issues and "believed" anything about the Greek texts underlying their Bible. Another argument used by some is that God providentially preserved the Byzantine tradition. This is undoubtedly true. It is also true that He has providentially preserved the Western, Caesarean, and the Alexandrian traditions. As a matter of fact, before too long, most of the people of the world will be reading translations of the Bible based on non-Byzantine texts. Surely this is just as much in the providence of God as was the dissemination of the KJV.

To sum up, we must recognize the fact that the good English translations, whether from the Byzantine or the Alexandrian families of texts, are more than 99% accurate to the original autographs and the differences that do exist do not in any way affect the core doctrines of Christianity. However, since we do not possess the original writings, as long as there is less than 100% certainty on all points, Christian scholars have a responsibility to continue their textual work.

As a result of the last 400 years of archaeology and scholarship, we now know that the earliest and most accurate Greek manuscripts are those of the Alexandrian family of texts. It is these texts that are the primary base of the modern translations. The translators of the KJV did not disagree with this analysis, they simply did not possess, and did not have available to them, any but a very few texts of the Byzantine tradition.
The manuscript evidence available today is far superior to that which was available to the KJV translator's in 1611. It is important to remember that while it is true that God only wrote one Bible, it was not the KJV; it was the original autographs coming from the pen of God's apostles and prophets.

(Continued in Part 2)