To be in English, or not to be in English? That is the KJV question.

To be in English, or not to be in English? That is the KJV question!

In my opinion it is really important to realize that the closer Scripture translations can come to the original writings, in the original languages, the higher our confidence level can. The King James Version is more flawed than most others because the translators did not have access to the earlier codexes like we have today.

Not only that, the KJV is translated into another language besides English. Being in classical Elizabethan, it is no longer commonly spoken, written or understood outside of a few circles of academics and Shakespearean enthusiasts. As a result preachers of the Word have to spontaneously translate what the KJV translation says into English to be understood by those hearing it.

It seems to me that those who fight to retain the KJV, forget that God can and does preserve His Word by having it translated into the language of the people of every nation and generation - not just to those who lived in England 400 years ago.

Many of the "KJV only" people are rightly motivated, having zeal without knowledge, believing they are defending the historic Christian faith from "modern corruption." What they fail to realize is that they overvalue an "edition" of a book, at the expense of the clarity of the message written in it.

Let Christians put the Word of God back into the hearts of English speaking people in a language they can read and understand! Why withhold it for fear they may corrupt it? God is perfectly capable of preserving His own written Word, and is doing so.

Let the Word of God Be translated into English. That is the answer!

SpiritWalker

 

It seems to me, after analyzing much of the material published over the years in defense of the KJO cause that there is a certain fallen trait at work. For want of a better description, I will call it the “spirit of religion.” In my opinion mankind is predisposed to the "spirit of religion" in much the same way as it is to sin.

A close study of historic civilizations will show that the more established any religion became, the more a priestly caste gained control over the emergent charms, potions, relics and holy utterances. Over time what may have begun as a happy dance around an open fire became temples of stone and marble on high places dedicated to the codified mysteries of a defined deity.

To me, this explains in simple terms, the mutation of the Roman Catholic church into the structure it has become. Layers of priestly elite and ecclesiastical nobility jealously horde accumulations of mistakes, heresies and myths that have come to validate their very existence and define their purpose. As a consequence, their self preservation instincts demand that only the duly delegated Princes of the church define and dispense an altered version of the simple truth of the gospel found in the Scriptures.

True to form and type, the Roman Catholic Church blocked the translation of its authorized version of the Vulgate into other languages for a millennium. Church authorities claimed that this official Latin version was directly inspired by God, inerrant in its translation from the original autographs. Being such, it could not be translated into the various vulgar and corrupted languages of the nations the church then reigned over.

Having forbidden the Scriptures to be translated, the only remaining access to them was delivered by an increasingly ignorant clergy. As priests themselves lost the ability to either understand or accurately teach God’s precepts in the vernacular, priests ended up babbling to the flock in an irrelevant Latin liturgy, leading them in religious chants that no one understood. So the light to the world dimmed and nearly went out, replaced by empty traditions of men. The priests withheld the Word of the Lord, so they stumbled and fell, kings, priests and people alike.

As far as I can see, the same “spirit of religion” is at work in many of the KJO leaders. In my opinion, their arguments are no more valid or noble than what the church of Rome’s once were. In fact, if we peek behind the cloak of pseudo-scholarship we will find little more than an intransigent clinging to religious ritual and traditions. To these people it seems to be more important for a congregation to chant a passage of the King James in unison than to understand what it really means.

This idolatry of the King James version is not harmless, nor alone. The same religious tendencies that corrupted the Roman Catholic church are alive and well in the churches we all attend. There are lots of signs here and there that point to the same predisposition to reincarnate the “spirit of religion”. Some manifestations we can perhaps live with, some we can’t. Locking down the Word of God into what is quickly becoming an incomprehensible babble that no one can fully understand except duly delegated dispensers of the Word is not one of them. They that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.