Presuppositions and Bible translations

Presuppositions would need to be true to be worthy of acceptance. The truth is consistent.

Presuppositions about Bible translations should be valid for all believers, not just for those who speak one language.

A consistent and scriptural view of Bible translation would be true both before and after 1611.

The ultimate and final authority beyond which there is no other existed before 1611.

A translation is not independent and underived.

A translation is dependent on its underlying texts and derives its authority from being an accurate translation of those texts. A translation or revision would derive its qualities or attributes from its source or sources.

 

In his 1583 book that defended the Protestant view of Bible translation, Puritan William Fulke (1538-1589) stated: "We say indeed, that by the Greek text of the New Testament all translations of the New Testament must be tried; but we mean not by every corruption that is in any Greek copy of the New Testament" (A Defence, p. 44). In the preface of another book, Fulke noted: "The dissension of interpreters [translators] must be decided by the original Greek" (Confutation, p. 26). He observed: "We acknowledge the text of the Old Testament in Hebrew and Chaldee, (for in the Chaldee tongue were some parts of it written,) as it is now printed with vowels, to be the only fountain, out of which we must draw the pure truth of the scriptures for the Old Testament, adjoining here with the testimony of the Mazzoreth, where any diversity of points, letters, or words, is noted to have been in sundry ancient copies, to discern that which is proper to the whole context, from that which by errors of the writers or printers hath been brought into any copy, old or new" (A Defence, p. 78).


In another place, Fulke pointed out: "We acknowledge the Hebrew "as the fountain and spring, from whence we must receive the infallible truth of God's Word of the Old Testament" (Ibid., p. 147). He also wrote: "It becometh us best in translation to follow the original text, and, as near as we can, the true meaning of the Holy Ghost" (Ibid., p. 214). Gail Riplinger acknowledged that many of the KJV translators had in their hands a copy of Fulke’s two books (In Awe, p. 536).


In agreement with this view, reformer Francis Turretin (1623-1687) pointed out: "Our teaching is that only the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New have been and are authentic in the sense that all controversies concerning faith and religion, and all versions, are to be tested and examined by them" (Doctrine of Scripture, p. 126). John Diodati (1576-1649), translator of the 1607 Italian Bible, is translated as writing: “The authentic text of Scripture, and that which is truly God-breathed, consists only of the Hebrew originals in the Old Testament and Greek originals in the New Testament” (Ferrari, Diodati’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture, p. 47). Puritan William Whitaker (1547-1595) wrote: "We make no edition authentic, save the Hebrew in the old, and the Greek in the new, Testament" (Disputation on Holy Scripture, p. 140). In this same 1588 book, Whitaker maintained that "the authentic originals of the scripture of the old Testament are extant in Hebrew, of the new in Greek" (p. 138). Whitaker observed: "For translations of scripture are always to be brought back to the originals of scripture, received if they agree with those originals, and corrected if they do not. That scripture only, which the prophets, apostles, and evangelists wrote by inspiration of God, is in every way credible on its own account and authentic" (p. 138). Whitaker asserted: “That is called authentic, which is sufficient to itself, which commends, sustains, proves itself, and hath credit and authority from itself” (p. 332).


Fulke is said to have held frequent meetings for the study of the Bible with Whitaker, KJV translator Laurence Chaderton, and other Puritans at Cambridge. David Norton stated that Fulke “became a pillar of the Church of England” (History of the English Bible, p. 50). Whitaker and Chaderton were married to sisters. The Dictionary of National Biography pointed out that "no English divine of the sixteenth century surpassed Whitaker in the estimation of his contemporaries" (Vol. XXI, p. 22). Fulke's and Whitaker's view concerning Bible translation was in agreement with the view of the early English translators including the KJV translators.