When did statements on Bible versions first begin to appear in 'Statements of Faith'?

Long before. KJVOism had its beginnings in 1865 with the publication of the new American version by the Sunday School board, and gained strength in 1881 with the publication of the English Revised Version. It reached fever pitch in 1901 with the publication of the American Standard Version.

W. B. Riley stated in his book "The Menace of Modernism" (New York: Christian Alliance, 1917), the Modernist believes the Bible's "inspiration exists only in its ability to inspire...its interpretation is a matter of mental conscience." Dr. Riley goes on to say there were a group of men whom he describes as the "old conception," who believed the King James Bible was inerrant. He states on page 11, "On this point we are inclined to think that, even unto comparatively recent years, such a theory has been entertained." He then ascribes this belief to ignorance, and says, "I think it would be accepted without fear of successful controversy that such fogies in Biblical knowledge are few, and their funerals are nigh at hand."

In Riley's day a group of men still existed who believed, "(1) the Bible was finished in heaven and handed down, (2) the King James Version was absolutely inerrant, and (3) its literal acceptance was alone correct." (Page nine of Riley's book as quoted by Dr. George W. Dollar in his book "History of Fundamentalism in America", Page 114).

The constant references to Wilkinson as the father of KJVOism is an example of the logical fallacy of poisoning the well in an attempt to link KJVOism with the 7th Day Adventist cult. However, this is our own Baptist home-grown heresy and we can't pawn it off on anyone else.

We Baptists broke it and we Baptists will have to fix it.

 

None of us has any way of knowing. There is no archive of church statements of faith that preserve each and every artical of faith for each and every church in the country. But the teaching can certainly be traced back to the latter half of the 1800s.

 

The 1865 date is convenient because the revised American Bible Union did take some controversial steps, such as putting the Pericope Adulterae in brackets. Still, it was far from a critical text.

You can back it up 15 years to 1850 when the American and Foreign Bible Society (formed when Baptists, in particular, bolted the American Bible Society because of the Baptists' insistence on translating baptizo)) began undertaking a new translation that would carry that trend into English.

According to the New York Recorder account of the May 1850 session of the society (as quoted in Alexander Campbell's Millennial Harbinger, Series 3, Vol. 7) Rev. Turnbull (whom I believe to be Robert Turnbull, pastor of First, Hartford, Conn.) said:

Rev. Dr. Ide (whom I've identified as George Ide, pastor of First, Philadelphia) offered that:

and

Spencer Cone, principal editor of the new version, made the mistake of using an unfortunate illustration:

Which prompted Ide to observe that:

And so it went; the society voted against authorizing the translation, which prompted Cone and others to form the new American Bible Union, which did publish revised editions of the New Testament. The American Bible Union eventually dissolved and handed over its version to the American Baptist Publication Society, which published another revision of the New Testament in 1891 and an entire Bible in 1912. Neither made much of an impression, having been overtaken by the ERV and the ASV.

 

I also would refer you to An Apology for the Common English Bible published in 1857 by Arthur C. Coxe, who railed against even the changes in the American Bible Society's new edition, including punctuation and chapter headings. (Coxe was, at the time, rector of Grace Anglican Church in Baltimore and later became bishop in New York).

 

I think you would have to look at the issue regionally. I know the Minnesota Baptist Association split back in around 1915 over the KJV issue. That is what Riley was discussing, in passing, in his book "Menace of Modernism."

The Baptist Sunday School Board precipitated another split in around 1860 over the same issue but that was mostly in the south when they published the new American version based on the Greek texts of Griesbach and Lachmann, forerunners to Westcott and Hort. (In fact, the WH text of 1881 was an edited text based on those published by of Griesbach and Lachmann.)

I think, for the most part, the disruptions due to KJVO influence were limited to those breaking away from the old Northern and Southern Baptist Conventions. There seems to be very little evidence of major disruptions within the conventions themselves (although that has changed in the relatively recent past, especially in the SBC, where KJVOism has reared its ugly head - and even in the ABC where a friend of mine pastors a KJVO ABC church - go figure!).

 

I have a first edition New Testament of the American version (as opposed to the English version) which translates "baptizo" as "immerse" (much to the chagrin of Baptists, I am sure). The Greek textual basis was the Greek texts of Griesbach and Lachmann, as it predated Westcott and Hort by 31 years.

 

The edition you are referring to was by Spencer Cone (a Baptist) and was a provisional edition for the consideration of the American and Foreign Bible Society. While the AFBS was largely controlled by the Baptists, and it had translated, not transliterated, baptizo in its foreign publications, it had continued to insist "that in the distribution of the Scriptures in the English language, the commonly received version shall be used until otherwise directed by the society."

In 1850 Cone and other officers offered the new immersionist edition to the AFBS, which finally decided "That it is not the province and duty of the American and Foreign Bible Society to attempt, on their own part, or procure from others, a revision of the commonly received English version of the Scriptures."

This led Cone (who had been re-elected president of the AFBS) to resign, and he and other Baptists (and Restorationists, who had similar views on the mode of baptism) formed the American Bible Union, which published its own New Testaments in the 1860s.

Perhaps it would have been better to say that the Greek text of the later ABU NT was proto-critical; it adopted some corrections of the RT but certainly not to the extent that would become common in later years.