[Note for newcomers:
I am most definitely NOT a KJV-Onlyist.]
Recently,
Dr. Michael Brown, on
The Line of Fire radio show, made an episode which, at
first, targeted King-James-Onlyism, but which quickly shifted so as to target the
King James Version itself. His primary objection
against the KJV was that its language is unfamiliar to people nowadays. He stated, “What may have been an accurate
translation then will not convey the same thing today.” Of course that is true, where archaic terms
and obsolete grammar is concerned – but that is an effect of the natural
development of the English language in the past 400 years; it does not reflect
upon the quality of the translation itself.
To
illustrate: if someone were to read
about dissolving political bands in the
Declaration of Independence and
conclude that U2 was breaking up, the Declaration of Independence would not be
to blame. When readers approach a 400-year
old text, it is their responsibility to take its age into consideration when
interpreting it. The chronological
distance between 1611 and 2017 makes the King James Version more difficult to
understand, but it does not necessarily make it erroneous.
The
accuracy of the KJV can only be measured fairly when it is measured in light of
the meaning of words in 1611, and in light of the text upon which it was based. Dr. Brown seemed to grant this when he provided
two examples of terms in the KJV that meant one thing in 1611, but which mean
something else in 2017: the term “meat”
– which could refer to food in general, including grains and fruits – and the
term “study,” which was intended, just as Dr. Brown said, to mean, “Do your
best,” or to exercise diligence when pursuing a particular goal.
So, when
someone interprets the term “meat offerings” as if the cooked flesh of an
animal must be involved, and when someone interprets “study” as if the word
necessarily involves peering into a book, the error does not emanate from the KJV. The error emanates from the reader’s failure
to perceive what those particular words meant in 1611.
A simple glossary of the KJV’s archaic terms
can greatly lower the risk of this sort of misimpression.
When Dr.
Brown turned to the King James Version’s use of the word “Easter” in Acts 12:4,
he called it an error. However, a
careful investigation shows that the term “Easter,” in the early 1600’s, was
synonymous with “Passover.” Dr. Brown
said, “The Greek does not say ‘Easter.’ The Greek says ‘The Passover.’”
The term
“Passover” was an invention of William Tyndale.
If you were to take in hand
Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, you
would see that he freely interchanged the term “Easter” and his own new word
“Passover.” One example should suffice: in Matthew 26:18-19, in Tyndale’s
translation, Jesus tells His disciples to go into the city and deliver the
message “I will kepe Myne
ester at
thy housse with my disciples,” – “and the disciples did as Iesus had apoynted
them, and made redy the
ester-lambe.”
[Bold print added to make the reference super effective.]
So it
should be plain as day that the KJV’s “Easter” in Acts 12:4 is not an
error; it means the same thing that the versions which refer to the end of the
Passover-feast mean: that Herod intended
to wait until after the last day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread before having
Peter executed. Dr. Brown said, “To say
‘Easter’ is 100% inaccurate and misleading.
It’s a mistake.” However, what he
has perceived as an error is really just another case of
obsolete language.
Likewise, Dr.
Brown charged the KJV with error because the term didaskalos” is translated in the KJV as “Master,” rather than as
“Teacher,” apparently unaware that in 1611, the term “master” was entirely
capable of referring to a teacher. (An
echo of this usage is still retained in the term “schoolmaster.”)
What were
the other prime examples of errors in the KJV?
Dr. Brown said that instead of referring to “devils,” the KJV should
refer to “demons.” But does anyone imagine
that the KJV’s use of the word “devils” is really confusing? As confusing as using four English Bibles translated from four base-texts using four different translation-techniques?
A few of
Dr. Brown’s other examples are more convincing:
● Readers
could be spared some confusion if the King James Version’s translators had not used
the term “unicorn.” However,
the KJV’s preface
(
The Translators to the Reader) specifically
cautions readers against putting too much weight on their renderings of rare
terms for animals, plants, and minerals.
Plus, the precise meaning of the Hebrew term
re’em that is often translated as “wild ox” is still a matter of
debate – it might be a wild ox, or
the extinct buffalo-like animal known as the aurochs, or the rhinoceros. From
before the time of Christ, this term has been translated as if it refers to a
one-horned animal (a real one, not a mythical bearded goat-horse thing), and
the KJV’s translators deferred to the traditional understanding of the term,
cautioning their readers not to treat this rendering dogmatically.
● Dr.
Brown’s objection against the KJV’s artificially plural term “cherubims” seems entirely
valid.
● The text
of
First Kings 18:37 in the KJV could be made more literal by reading “Answer me”
rather than “Hear me.”
● Another
inaccuracy in the KJV,
Dr. Brown said,
is found in Psalm 84: “Psalm 84: one of the verses that I grew up loving was,
‘Blessed be the Lord our God, who daily loadeth us with benefits’ in the King
James.” Dr. Brown was recollecting
Psalm 68:19, not anything in Psalm 84.
His point (minus
the mistaken reference) seems valid; more recent versions render the Hebrew
phrase as “who bears our burdens,” or “who bears us up.”
Dr. Brown put
a microscope to the text, symbolically speaking, and found an error in how the
KJV treats the Greek word
exousian in
Luke 10:19. He also objected against
translating the word
ekklesia as
“church.” Another “major example” of
errors he has found in the KJV is its use of two different words (“weakness”
and “infirmities”) to represent the same Greek word in
Second Corinthians 12:9.
In these cases, he may have a
technical point, but it’s like watching an archer hit the bullseye, and having
a referee say that the arrow didn’t hit the very
center of the bullseye, so it’s not close enough and the archer might
as well have missed the whole target.
If one were to put such a yardstick alongside the
NASB,
NIV,
ESV, etc., then one could identify
hundreds of such “errors,” every time
there is no distinction between the singular and plural pronouns, and every
time the word και (
and) is not represented, and every time a proper name is put in
place of a pronoun, and so forth.
Dr. Brown also proposed that if
a team of the King James version’s scholars had been able to sit down to improve
the translation 20 years after its initial publication, they would have changed
passages such as Acts 12:4 and Luke 10:19.
History stands in the way of Dr. Brown’s theory: in 1638, some scholars who had served on the
KJV’s translation-committees (
John Bois and
Samuel Ward)
did tidy up the text of the KJV – and they did not change those passages.
And then . . .
THE ELEPHANT ENTERS
THE ROOM
In the
fourth segment of the presentation, the manuscript-base of the KJV’s New
Testament text came up again when
Charles from Tennessee
called the show and pointed out that “The bigger issue is actually the textual
issue,” and that modern translations treat
Mark 16:9-20 in ways that call it into
question. Charles also alluded to the
enormous amount of manuscript-evidence in favor of Mark 16:9-20, and to the
features in
Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus which indicate that their copyists were
aware of Mark 16:9-20 “and willingly omitted it.” Finally, Charles asked Dr. Brown, “Would you
recommend any version that brackets or negates the ending of a Gospel, that
basically removes the resurrection-account of Christ?”
In reply, Dr.
Brown first said that if one feels a certain way about the manuscripts, one
should use the NKJV or MEV – but then he said (referring to Mark 16:9-20), “We
know that that was not the original ending of Mark. The vocabulary is totally different.”
Dr. Brown
responded that Burgon’s book “has been refuted many times over.” Yet he failed to name any specific refutation of
Burgon’s book; instead, he recommended reading D. A. Carson’s book (
The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism)
and James White’s book (
The King James Only Controversy), too – “They’ll help you there.” Those who have read Carson’s book may wonder
what Brown was talking about, since Carson specifically says in
A Plea for Realism, on page 65, “I am
not here arguing for or against the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20.” White’s book is also remarkably unhelpful for
people looking for accurate information about the external evidence pertinent
to the ending of Mark – and concludes its discussion of Mark 16:9-20 with the affirmation that “Every translation should provide the passage” as well as mention “that there is good reason to doubt the authenticity of the passage as well.” Well, that clears things up, eh. (I contend in my book
Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20 that with patristic support for Mark 16:9-20 from the 100’s, and with over 99.9% of the Greek manuscript-evidence supporting the inclusion of the passage, across all text-types and across many locales, such a
definite maybe is not the best we can do.)
Dr. Brown
then reaffirmed, “We don’t have the original ending to Mark’s Gospel.” But he added that
Mark 16:9-20 was “received
by the church, and I personally am happy to use it.”
Wait,
WHAT?! Dr. Brown just said that Mark
16:9-20 is not part of the original text, but he is happy to use it. Happy to use it as what? As if it is
Scripture, or as if it is the work of some non-inspired person in the second
century?
Dr. Brown recommended reading
good commentaries on Mark to get the details about the
ending; unfortunately he did not name any specific commentaries. Then, after mentioning First John 5:7 again, he
reminded himself that he had said that he wouldn’t be debating about the
manuscripts – and again told his listeners that if they are at home with the
Textus Receptus, “then by all means use
the New King James, or the
Modern English Version.” (This seems a little inconsistent, since the
NKJV has some of the same features – in Psalm 68:19 and Second Corinthians 12:9,
for example – that Dr. Brown called errors.)
Thirty-four
minutes into the show’s video, Dr. Brown tried to reframe the narrative
after
Charles’ lively
contribution to the discussion – but manuscripts were clearly still on his
mind: at one point he started a sentence
with
“Putting the manuscript debate aside” but continued,
“don’t we want a
translation . . . that has better manuscript evidence?”.
I don’t
think that there is much of a chance that Dr. Brown will persuade any
King-James-Onlyists that they are on the wrong track, as long as he pretends
that the textual matters do not matter. Most people who are willing to learn the archaic language of the KJV are not the sort of people who are going to be satisfied knowing that they have acquired the basic doctrinal message of the Bible; they want the full counsel of God, with no adulteration. Few
and far between are those individuals who would abandon the status of the KJV,
the textual stability of the KJV, and the familiarity of the KJV, in order to
be rid of the trivial inaccuracies listed by Dr. Brown. One might as well invite people to kill their
Cocker Spaniel in order to get rid of a few fleas.
There are
still some KJV-Onlyists who insist that the KJV’s translators themselves were
as inspired as the apostles and prophets, but that is not where the momentum of
the KJV-Only movement is going.
Increasingly, KJV-Onlyists (
such as Samuel Gipp and
David Sorenson) are making
textual issues the centerpiece of their case.
To insist that all the essential doctrine is still there in the
Alexandrian base-text of the NIV,
ESV, NLT,
etc., and that that makes it okay to
select either the
Textus Receptus or
the Nestle-Aland compilation with as much consideration as one uses to select
ice cream flavors, while it is spectacularly obvious that the differences
between the two yield dozens of interpretive differences, is to insult the
intelligence of one’s listeners.
