Against Dogmatic KJV-Onlyism: Three Debates

The Hoffner/Ferrando-Snapp Debate:
Should the Interpolation Known as the
Comma Johanneum Be Regarded
As Scripture?

     Earlier this year I had the pleasure of participating in three cordial debates online.  In the first one, in which Mike Hollner and Mike Ferrando also participated (and for which Donny Budinsky served as moderator), I defended the idea that the Comma Johanneum in First John 5:7 is not a genuine part of the First John and should not be regarded as part of Scripture.  The data in my earlier research on this textual variant came in handy (i.e., my presentation of the Greek manuscripts that contain, or do not contain, the Comma, my analysis of Cyprian's apparent (but not actual) use of the Comma and legitimate patristic references to it, an explanation of how the Comma originated in the Western branch of the Old Latin, and additional Comma-centric resources.    

    In the second debate, - billed as "The Great King-James-Only Debate" - I defend the premise that there are imperfections in the King James Version, against brother Will Kinney who argued that the KJV is 100% perfect.  Donny Budinsky was our host on his channel Standing For Truth.  We investigated two shortcomings in the KJV in the Old Testament and then examined some flaws in the KJV New Testament.

The Kinney-Snapp Debate:
How To Repair Errors in the KJV

  In the third debate, moderated by Dwayne Green, I defend the premise that the KJV contains some non-original features (focusing on six specific passages in the New Testament) against brother Nick Sayers.  Those six passages were (1) Matthew 25:13, (2) Matthew 8:15, (3) Luke 2:22, (4) Eph 3:9, (5) Col 1:6, and (6) Acts 15:34.

    I am confident that viewers of all three debates will be educated and edified.  Each  debate can be accessed by clicking on the pictures.  

The Sayers-Snapp Debate:
Should We Usurp the Original Text?

Luke 2:22 - His, Her, or Their?

          In Luke 2:22, there is a mildly famous – or infamous – textual variant which involves the Textus Receptus, the base-text of the KJV:  did Luke write that “the days of her [that is, Mary’s] purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished”?  That is how the passage is read in the KJV.  The NKJV, MEV, the Rheims New Testament, the New Life Version, the NIrV, and the Living Bible read similarly.  The phrase is different, however – referring to the days of their purification – in the ASV, CSB,  EHV, EOB-NT, ESV, NASB, NET, NLT, NRSV, and WEB.  (The NIV inaccurately avoids saying either “her” or “their,” and simply says vaguely that “the time came for the purification rites.”  The Message hyper-paraphrase makes the same compromise, saying that “the days stipulated by Moses for purification were complete.”  Other versions that have rendered the passage imprecisely include the CEV, ERV, and GNT.)  

        The difference in English reflects a difference in Greek:  the KJV’s base-text (and the base-text of the Geneva Bible in the 1500s) says αὐτῆς, which means “her,” while the base-text of the EHV, EOB-NT, WEB, etc., reads αὐτῶν, which means “their.”  The text compiled by Erasmus in 1516, and the text printed by Stephanus in 1550, and the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilations have αὐτῶν. 

          This little difference is a big deal to some champions of the KJV, who regard the KJV’s base-text as something which was “refined seven times” (cf. Psalm 12:6) in the course of the first century of the printed Greek New Testament.  D. A. Waite wrote as if the reading αὐτῶν implies that Jesus was a sinner:  “The word her is changed to their, thus making the Lord Jesus Christ One Who needed "purification," and therefore was a sinner!” (p. 200, Defending the King James Bible, 3rd ed., Ó 2006 The Bible for Today Press)  Will Kinney, a KJV-Onlyist, has written, “The reading of HER is admittedly a minority reading, but it is the correct one.”    

 

          In 1921, William H. F. Hatch, after investigated this variant, reported in the 1921 (Vol. 14) issue of Harvard Theological Review (pp. 377-381) that “The feminine pronoun αὐτῆς is found in no Greek manuscript of the New Testament.”  Quite a few manuscripts have been discovered since 1921, but I have not found any Greek manuscripts that support αὐτῆς (though it is possible that αὐτῆς might be found in very late manuscripts made by copyists who used printed Greek New Testaments as their exemplars).        
            Hatch explained that À A B L W G D P and nearly all minuscules support αὐτῶν, and αὐτῶν is also supported by the Peshitta and by the Harklean Syriac, the Ethiopic, Armenian, and Gothic versions.  He observed that Codex Bezae (D, 05) has neither αὐτῆς nor αὐτῶν, but αὐτοῦ (“his”), and at least eight minuscules (listed in a footnote as 21, 47, 56, 61, 113, 209, 220, and 254) have this reading as well.  Also, αὐτοῦ is supported by the Sahidic version.  Latin texts are rather ambiguous on this point, whether Old Latin or Vulgate; the Latin eius can be understood as masculine or feminine (but not plural).  Hatch also noted that “A few authorities have no pronoun at all after καθαρισμοῦ,” but he did not specify which ones.

          Hatch advocated a relatively not-simple hypothesis:  that most of the first two chapters of Luke were “based on a Semitic source” and in this source, the wording in the passage meant “her” purification but “Luke, or whoever translated the source into Greek, having read in the preceding verse about the circumcision and naming of Jesus, took it as masculine, ‘his purification,’ and translated it by καθαρισμοῦ αὐτοῦ.”  Hatch proposed, further, that before the time of Origen, someone realized that αὐτοῦ could not be correct (inasmuch as the law of Moses says nothing about the purification of male offspring) and changed it to αὐτῶν.

          “Αὐτῆς,” Hatch wrote, “appeared as a learned correction, but its range was extremely limited until the appearance of the Complutensian edition in 1522.”    

          Those not willing to embrace Hatch’s hypothesis may be content to adopt what is in the text of most manuscripts, whether Alexandrian or Byzantine:  καθαρισμοῦ αὐτῶν – “their purification.”  Facing D. A. Waite’s contention that texts with “their purification” are “theologically deficient,” interpreters have at least three options:  to understand (1) that Luke’s “their purification” is a reference to the custom observed by followers of Judaism in general, or, (2) that Joseph as well as Mary participated in the purification-rites, having been in contact with Mary at Jesus’ birth, or (3) that Joseph accompanied Mary in the purification-rites even though it was not required by the Mosaic law.  In no scenario does the text imply that Jesus “therefore was a sinner,” inasmuch as the purification-rites commanded in Leviticus 12 followed ceremonial uncleanness, not sinfulness.              

          Another detail in Hatch’s 1921 essay is worth pointing out:  he insisted, in his fourth footnote, that minuscule 76 is not a witness for αὐτῆς, and referred to C. R. Gregory’s examination of 76 in 1887 as support for this.  To this day, minuscule 76 is erroneously claimed to read αὐτῆς by James R. White (The KJV-Only Controversy, p. 112 in the 2009 edition; p. 68 in the 1995 edition, both published by Bethany House Publishers) – adding to the book’s many inaccuracies – and by online apologist Matt Slick, and by James D. Price, and by the notes in the NET (Dan Wallace, Senior NT editor).  This falsehood was corrected 101 years ago.  Maybe within another hundred years, some editors will repair the works of James White and the notes in the NET, et al, so that their false claim does not continue to be spread in perpetuity.                       

 

The Textus Receptuses

Erasmus of Rotterdam,
a compiler of the
Greek New Testament

The Latin term “Textus Receptus” (“the text that is received”) is often used to refer to the Greek base-text of the King James Version – the English version which, despite the best efforts of the marketers of modern versions, remains by far the most-read English version of the Bible.  The Textus Receptus was published by the Elzevirs in 1624 and in 1633; it was in the preface to the 1633 edition that the term Textus Receptus was introduced.  Much later, in the late 1800s, F. H. A. Scrivener attempted to meticulously retro-translate the KJV’s New Testament’s English text into readings (and, very rarely, conjectures) known to be in circulation at the time of, and available to, the KJV’s translators.

            The term “Textus Receptus” is also used to refer in a general sense to the printed Greek New Testaments which were compiled and published in the 1500’s by the scholars Desiderius Erasmus, Robert Estienne (better-known as Stephanus, who standardized the verse-numbers), and Theodore Beza.

For general purposes, there’s nothing wrong with calling all those printed compilations by the same name, since their basic contents are so similar.  The modern critical text is likewise often referred to simply as “the critical text,” even though there are differences among the various editions.  (Likewise, the edition of the New International Version as it is published today still retains the name of the 1984 edition, even though there are many differences between them.)

            It may be helpful, however, to raise the magnification-level, so to speak, with which the compilations of the 1500s and early 1600s are viewed.  This may reduce the chance that people will get the impression – all too easily obtained from some oversimplifications of the history of the text – that the exact same compilation made by Erasmus that left Froben’s printing-shop in 1516 was the sole Greek resource consulted by the King James Version’s translators in 1604-1611. 

            So, here is a list of some differences between the KJV’s base-text and some of the base-texts of earlier English translations in the 1500’s, drawn from the four Gospels:   

Matthew

2:11 – KJV:  “saw” (ειδον), not “found” (ευρον)

10:10 – KJV:  “staves” (ραβδους) not “staff” (ραβδον)

21:7 – KJV says “they set him” (επεκάθισαν) instead of “he sat” (επεκάθισεν)

23:13-14 – KJV reverses the order of these verses.

Mark

5:38 – KJV includes “and” (και) before “them that wept” (κλαίοντας)

9:40 – KJV says “us” and “our” (ημων) instead of “you” and “your” (υμων)

12:20 – KJV includes “Now” (ουν) in the opening sentence.

15:3 – KJV includes “But he answered nothing.” (αυτος δε ουδε απεκρίνατο)

Luke

1:35 – KJV includes “of thee” (εκ σου).  This difference is still echoed in the NKJV, which does not include the phrase.

2:22 – KJV says “her” (αυτης) instead of “their” (αυτων).

6:37 – KJV does not include “and” (και) at the beginning of the verse.

7:45 – KJV says “I came in” (εισηλθον) instead of “she came in” (εισηλθεν)

10:22 – KJV does not include Και στραφεις προς τους μαθητας ειπεν (“And turning to the disciples he said”)

17:36 – KJV includes this verse.

20:31 – KJV includes “also” (και)

John

8:6 – KJV has “as though he heard them not” (μη προσποιούμενος) at the end of the verse.  (This phrase was not italicized in the 1611 KJV; Scrivener suggested that the italization occurred in the 1769 update of the KJV.) 

8:42 – KJV does not include “therefore” (ουν). 

18:24 – KJV has “Now” (ουν).   

            An especially notable difference between the KJV’s Greek base-text and some of the compilations of the 1500’s occurs in the final phrase of Romans 12:11.  Nowadays, it is taken for granted that the original text read “serving the Lord” (τω Κυριω δουλεύοντες), but in several editions of the Greek text prepared in the 1500’s, the phrase reads “serving the time” (τω καιρω δουλεύοντες).  (Both readings are ancient, having been both mentioned by patristic authors such as Jerome (in Epistle 27, written in 384.) 

            This sample-list should be a sufficient demonstration to those who subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith that its declaration to the effect that the Greek text of their day was “pure” did not mean that the authors of that creed regarded every text-critical detail to be settled, as if one could answer all text-critical issues merely by pointing to a particular compilation.  In general terms the KJV’s New Testament is based on the Textus Receptus but regarding some details there is not one definitive Textus Receptus, unless one uses the term to refer to compilations (the Elzevir’s compilation of 1633 being the most famous) designed to reconstruct the base-text of the King James Version. 

If these differences between the King James Version and some of the Greek compilations of the 1500’s are kept in mind, this will hopefully reduce the spread of oversimplifications of the history of the text.  For it is sometimes said by the KJV’s promoters that its text agrees with the majority of manuscripts, which is generally true, but not in every case.  Likewise it is sometimes said by the KJV’s detractors that its text is based on merely a handful of manuscripts used by Erasmus, which unfairly minimizes not only Erasmus’ extensive research undertaken before he sat down in Basel to prepare his first edition of the Greek New Testament, but also overlooks the 88 years of additional textual analysis and refinement that commenced between 1516 and 1604, some of which involved ancient manuscripts (Codex Bezae and Codex Claromontanus) and extensive quotations by early patristic sources. 

[Readers are invited to explore the embedded links to find additional resources.]