Another Riplinger video...

Mr. Monroe,

Since I'm fighting the urge to lash out at a couple people, I'd like to try a different tactic.

While I disagree with a number of your positions and comments, I wish to express my appreciation to you for handling this issue like a gentleman and focusing on the issues, not calling a sister in Christ names and trying to steer people back to the original post.

May God bless you for your fair approach.

 

You won't find a problem with my comment on you either, silly man!

 

Well, just one slight problem, I am a woman :laugh: But not a silly one (in any sense of the word)

D.

 

He (or she) who laughs last - was slow 'getting' the joke :tonofbricks:

 

In the next few minutes of the video Mrs. Riplinger asserts that the NKJV "demotes the Diety of Christ". She explains that the NKJV does this through the substitution of the words used by the KJV with a status-reducing term. Her first specific example is from Luke 13:8. She does not read the verse in context, nor even cite the whole verse. She mearly states the KJV word "Lord" is replaced by the NKJV word "Sir".

That does sound like a downgrade of status for Jesus, doesn't it? She goes on to say that "you don't get saved by calling someone Sir" but "you do get saved by calling someone Lord!" Actually, you can't get saved by calling just "someone" Lord (it cannot be just any one) you must call upon the only Son of God, Jesus the risen Christ.

Here is the KJV passage (Luke 13:6-9)--

He spake also this parable; A certain [man] had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.
Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?
And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung [it]:
And if it bear fruit, [well]: and if not, [then] after that thou shalt cut it down.​

When I looked at this verse in context, it was as if I had been hit by a ton of bricks. The person being referred to as "Lord" is not Jesus Christ! The person being referred to is fictional! Jesus is the one speaking the parable. The word "Lord" is a portion of dialog within his story. Gail Riplinger has completely misrepresented to whom the word "Lord" is being applied in this verse. Had I not seen the video myself, I may have had difficulty believing that a featured speaker could make such a grievous error.

If she is concerned that other individuals should not be bestowed with deity through the title of "Lord", then we should actually commend the NKJV for rendering the word here as "Sir".
_____

Riplinger's second example is pulled from Matthew 18:26 (again, she doesn't read the whole passage, nor even quote the verse in entirety). She emphatically makes two points from the KJV: 1) the person "worshipped him"; and 2) the person call him "Lord". Conversely, in the NKJV: 1) the person "fell down before him"; and 2) the lesser title of "Master" is used.

Here's the KJV verse in context (Matthew 18:23-28); although not the complete story, I trust you know how it ends--

Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants.
And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents.
But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.
The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.
But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took [him] by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest...​

Are you kidding me? She did it again! Again, the person being referred to as "Lord" is not Jesus Christ! Jesus is the speaker and this person in his story is also (probably) fictional! Gail Riplinger has twice in about two minutes completely misrepresented to whom the word "Lord" is being applied in these passages. Disgraceful. Is it really possible for a professional author to make this extremely misleading mistake twice in one engagement? (It can be seen in the video that she clearly has prepared notes in front of her.)

I speculate that the only reason that this "Lord" is capitalized here is because it is the first word of the sentence spoken by the servant (the word is "lord" in the prior verse). "Master" is better here, in my opinion. Again, we shouldn't want an individual, other than Christ, to be worshipped; so it appears that the NKJV translators have done well. The KJV revisors had extracted both the "fell down" and the "worshipping" from a single Greek word (which is OK, but not necessarily required). The use of "worshipping" here is seems overly strong; the lexical entries and other English translations give the sense of imploring, bowing, or giving homage to the king.

 

Sorry, in any case. ( in case of any gender!)
The point is that we have a certain invisible limit in expressing or commenting. I had no intention to debase you, but wanted to see how you can feel about being called "silly"
Also, we must understand that 2 Tim3:6 is talking about some women who are laden with sins( already) then become captive by the proud, blasphemous, money loving, pleasure hunters with the diverse lusts.
Can you prove that the verse applies to her?
Or you don't know how to interpret 2 Tim 3:6.
How many of the posters on this thread are living the godly life?
This is why we should focus on the doctrinal issues only, and to some extent the criticism is very necessary. But if the counter part is absent, the equal debate is impossible, and in such case we better refrain from it, I believe.
It is absolutely ad hominen, and in some case, continuation of such posts can jeopardize this board itself.
You must know that you were the one who just condemned her without mentioning the reason.

 

O boy! I knew I should have listened to her more carefully and taken notes!

I found three glaring errors in the first few minutes regarding Titus 2.5 She claims the Greek word for "sober" in that verse is "sobron" (no word resembling that appears in that verse, it's "sophronas") and that the word is not merely changed from "sober" in the NKJV but is actually omitted totally. Not true. It is rendered "discreet". She uses an example of a friend abusing alcohol and says you can't say being drunk is wrong because the word "sober" is not there. Well, sober, in that verse, doesn't actually mean that. So she doesn't even get her 1611 English right, let alone bothering to check her facts. Three glaring errors in the space of a couple of minutes.

D.

 

But don't you see the point, Eliyahu, this is EXACTLY the sort of thing Riplinger does, for example with the word "sober". The claim is made that the KJV is easier to understand than modern versions. Well, no it isn't. And one of the reasons it isn't, is that some words that are quite familiar to us simply had a different meaning in 1611. "Suffer" being a prime example that everyone knows (or haven't you ever had anyone ask you why God wants little children to suffer?)

D

 

Monroe,

She sometimes unnecessarily criticize NKJV, which I don't like, because I believe both KJV and NKJV are within the range of tolerance in many cases.

But in your cases, the words in Greek must be checked.
In both cases, the word is Kurie( Kurios), a typical word for Lord.
The Lord in the parable of Mt 18 is the person who has the authority to judge someone and send him to the tormentator till he pay out the due amount, which symbolize the Great Judge, either God or Jesus Christ, the shadow of Jesus Christ. Therefore if one stays with the Word-to-Word principle, lord is the most appropriate for the word Kurie. Kurie was used by Elisabeth to call Mary as Mother of my Lord ( Mether tou Kuriou mou), and also used by Peter when he explained Sarah's calling Abraham " lord" ( 1 Peter 3:6). Now, if you are given the Greek text to translate with the principle of Word-to Word, would you translate 1 Pet 3:6 as Sir or master because Abraham is not a deity? I understand the Capital letter Lord in Mt 18:26 is because Lord appears first in the sentence. Only problem you could argue was the choice of lord, and KJV is correct there. Also, Luke 13:8, KJV is correct as it translated Kurie into Lord.
I would wonder if someone call God, sir.
NKJV is not the accurate update of KJV in many verses as we read Acts 3:13, 26,( Son of God vs Servant of God) 12:4 ( Easter vs Passover).

So, in those 2 cases, NKJV was wrong and KJV is correct, and Gail Riplinger pointed out very well. So, your assertion is dismissed.

Do you see? If both parties are present and are given the equal amount of time and opportunity to defend, and let the audience discern and judge, the proper assessment is very possible, and many of the audience can make the correct judgment to find the truth. On the contrary, if the opponents are so many and swarm like flies or bees, no one would like to participate in the debate.

 

As for Language Update matter, there is some paradox in the argument by KJVO. They show the people some aspect which looks plausible. But in reality many have a difficulty with archaic language of KJV, despite the fact that KJV uses only 6,000 words while Shakespear used 27,000 words in his famous books. As you indicated, the problem is not the difficulty of the meanings of the words, but the change of the meanings in the meantime, the whole language environment is changed as well.
This reflects the laziness of our generation, the current believers. However, even New KJV is not the update of the KJV, though there might be some more candidates like Third Millenium Bible and Modern KJV, which are not sure yet.
This is why I believe the advantages of NKJV should be equally admitted, as it is easier for many people to read than KJV is. Regretfully NKJV has too many deviations from KJV, to be called New KJV, which mislead the people to misunderstand because of the title New King James Version.
New King James Version was translated mostly by the people of our church group, so-called Plymouth Brethren. But in our churches, only a few use it for preaching as we know the problems with it.( PB's are quite fundamental as or more than IFB). As a whole, we must admit that we don't have the best and most accurate Bible in the updated English language form or in the colloquial English now, as in many other languages.

 

The Plymouth Brethren translated the NKJV????? Where did you get that from, Eliyahu? I spent a year in the PBs and never came across anyone (including at conferences) who had any Greek at all, let alone enough Greek to transalte the Bible. Not only that but the PBs actively discourage Bible College attendance and so it is difficult to see where any of their members would actually LEARN Greek!

D.

 

Arthur Farstad who was the chair of the translation committee for NKJV, and another key person Zane Hodges were the attendants of PB assembly in Dallas, until Arthur was called by Lord in 90's. We know this well. There were some more Brethren there. Both persons compiled Majority Texts of Greek NT as well. William McDonald is a good commander of Greek.
You would know Darby translated NT from Greek and OT from Hebrew. I have read Greek NT and Hebrew OT many times even though I never attended any seminary or college of Theology, since God has led my life that way so that I may work for the Levy family owned corporates. God works in His own way without need of Theological schools which is not found in NT. We still believe the churches are enough to learn the truth.

I checked the video again, I notice Gail was not mentioning Sober in the first sentence, she just mentioning some word meaning Sober is there, then later on she mentioned Sophranas, so she was not wrong there. Again it reveals a false accusation by you.
I have notice so many false accusations are made in the absence of the very person.

 

Thank you, Eliyahu. I was just about to get around to doing that.

The point of our Lord's parable is to show that we should be patient and forgive others, as God has forgiven us our debt of sin. But the story cannot be overly spiritualized: born-again Christians do not seem to be exactly like the "servants" in this parable.

Why do I think that? Because we cannot say to the Great Judge "have patience with me, and I will pay thee all" (we could never pay our sin debt ourselves); our God would never command for his child "to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made"; our "fellowservants" do not go and tell our Great Judge how we have sinned (Mt. 18:31); our God would not call us "wicked servant" (v.32); our Lord would not deliver us "to the tormentors" (v. 34).

I prefer formal equivalency in translation, and I am mostly in agreement with you here.

It is not my purpose to quibble with the KJV's translation of certain words, nor is it my purpose to show the NKJV is always right. I am doing a critique of the material that G. A. Riplinger presents in a video as it relates to translations and versions.

You will think whatever you will.

 

Monroe,
Lord in Mt 18 may symbolize the shadow of the Judge for the unbelievers. The True believers may know how to forgive the other fellows.
It doesn't make much difference on this issue.
KJV is correct with its principle, while NKJV changed it to Master(Mt 18:26) or Sir( Lk 13:8).

See? If we are fairly represented, given the equal opportunity, the whole debate and argument go different.

 

I covered this thoroghly in my post #13 early in this thread.

 

Again, I am not really about proving the correctness or incorrectness of any versions in this thread. When the KJV proves correct, it isn't because Gail Riplinger said so.

 

In Luke 13:8 the word for "Lord" is kuios (Strong's #2962) which is defined by Thayer's as basically the individual to whom a person or thing belongs, about which he has power of deciding; master, lord, the possessor and disposer of a thing.

The KJV translates this word as follows: Lord (667 times) and lord (54); master (11); sir (6) and Sir (6); miscellaneous (4). So, it seems that it was perfectly acceptable for the KJV revisors to render the word the same as the NKJV has done.

 

I don't think that you're fact is correct here. According to one web source there are about 8,674 different Hebrew words in the Bible, 5,624 different Greek words, and 12,143 different English words in the King James Version.

I am not saying that these numbers are exactly right, but it rings truer to me than what you suggested; considering there are approximately 783,137 total words in the whole Bible.

BTW- the words of God in the Hebrew and Greek together total 14,298 which is 2,155 words more than in the KJV. What happened to the rest of the God's words?

 

The number depends on how to count the derivatives and the conjugations. Each words are versatile and some Greek and Hebrew may have been translated into the same English because the meaning is the same. D'Var is translated into more than 70 kinds of Englishin KJV or in any other modern versions as well. We cannot judge the difficulty by the number of words. In general KJV words are easy to understand, clear in the meanings, very much well selected at that time, but the meanings of the words have changed in many cases over the 400 years.

 

No, Luke 13:8 should be translated as Lord. We should treat both Lord and lord in the same category. I cannot recall the cases of master, sir, etc.
But I am sure no other word can be better than Lord in Luke 13:8