Featured Trying To Understand KJVOnlyism

For Dr. Achs: (and other interested parties)

Here's a list of famous theologians of the past who didn't believe in the exclusivity of the KJV even before most modern English versions were made.

http://www.christianbeliefs.org/kjv/testimonies/testimonies-wbriley.html

I chose to start with some quotes from Dr. W. B. Riley, who's sometimes been made into a KJVO poster boy. I hope all interested will read ALL the excerpts from the various authors on that site.

But again...Wilkinson, Ray, and Fuller were the 'founding fathers' of the CURRENT KJVO myth. You may deny it till you wear out your keyboard, but FACTS are stubborn things, not lightly dismissed or ignored.

 

Dr. Achs...you're trying the old "guilt by association' tactic. Well, it WON'T WORK! Well-known KJVO "Brandplucked" is also a CALVINIST. And I promise you I am NOT a calvinist. However, it's OK to you that many of the AV makers were calvinists! (Do as I SAY, not as I DO!)

More "guilt by association"...the JWs, etc. use W-H-based Bibles, so ALL W-H bibles must be wrong! Never mind that many pseudo-quasi-Christian cults use the KJV! Examples...Branch Davidians, many charismatic and faith/prosperity outfits, the snake-handlers, who are based about 35 miles from my home. Does that discredit the KJV? You can't have it both ways, you know.

And others have tried to make Westcott and Hort the demons of opposition to the KJVO myth. That won't work, either, as modern translations are made from an eclectic mix of just about all available Scriptural mss. And the NKJV is made mostly from the TR, Ben Chayyim Masoretic text, and others from which the AV 1611 was made.

And you pulled another "Casey At The Bat" in trying to disassociate the current KJVO myth from Wilkinson, Ray, and Fuller. All anyone need do is READ THEIR BOOKS, and compare virtually ANY subsequent KJVO work with those books! Your attempt to lead us down yet another KJVO bunny trail has crashed.

 

Absolutely false. They had little more than Erasmus did almost one hundred years beforehand. Are you that unaware of textual history?

How could they reject what they did not see?


I

I will admit that. Some wrere very Arminian and some werte strict Calvinists.

If you give due citation how can that be plagarism? Can admired and quoted augustine. and he disagreed with him in a number of places which you Calvin/Augustine bashers have yet to admit.

How wrong you are again. But I will let Logos give you the facts.

That's a new one! Earlier in your same post you claim that the KJV translators had the same manuscripts before them that Westcott and Hort had! Make up your mind man.

Don't violate BB rules.

Yeah,and how do you account for different incarnations of the KJB? Things that are different are not the same you said.

We don't slander the KJV;we do expose the myth of KJVOnlyism.

Speaking for myself here:Most of the modern translations in English since the mid 19th century (yes,before the ERV) are indeed more reliable than the KJV in any form.

Then why don't you go and start a Vulgate Only campaign? Of course there are different Vulgates,about as many types as there are various KJVs.

The KJVO authors distort history on a whim.

That is characteristic of the KJVO movement and its celebrated "authors."

Boy,it's getting boring to say you are wrong. But,my dear DJA,you are wrong. Have you ever heard of John Selden,Robert Gell, or Brian Walton? There are many others that I could list,but time is fleeting.

I must have uncommon sense then,because you are so mistaken on nearly every front.

 

BTW, Mr. Perry...

You keep speaking as if you're an old man. Well, you're merely 58; I am 65.

And NONE of us are guarenteed to be here tomorrow! I may outlive you; you may outlive me, or we might both hear the trupm at the same time.

 

As for Dr. Achs' assertion that the current KJVO myth has been around since well before our lifetimes...

Dr. Wilkinson's book dredged up the old idea that Psalm 12:6-7 are two verses about God's word preservation. Frankly, I have never known a Christian who doesn't believe GOD has preserved His word for us, but even the AV men believed differently about psalm 12:7. They added this marginal note in the AV 1611 for the 2nd them in V7:

"Heb. him, I. euery one of them."

In other words, they believed V7 was about PEOPLE.

But that aside...let's say, for the sake of discussion, that Ps. 12:6-7 is STRICTLY about word preservation. Just WHERE does that Psalm mention the KJV?????????????

The KJVOs took the "Psalm 12:6-7 thingie" from Wilkinson's book, and wrongly applied it to the KJV alone! To this very day, many a recent KJVO work incorrectly cites those verses as proof-texts for the KJVO myth!

This is yet further proof of KJVO chicanery in their attenmpts to manufacture justification for their doctrine! And this false assertion was NOT much in the public eye before Ray and Fuller published their works drawn from Wilkinson's book!

 

What were the names of the six manuscripts the KJV revisers used? What is your source?

I've read numerous books on the KJV looking for exactly this info and have never found solid evidence that they actually used any manuscripts (only printed texts).

 

OK Mr.Roby..

OK...I'll concede those points...and I hope we both "live long and prosper" as Mr.Spock used to say. I also hope we both live til that trumpet sounds. That would be seriously cool.
For the record...I do feel old sometimes even though I know 58 isn't really considered ancient....unless your audience is under 20:laugh:. To them we may be dinosaurs.

Now you....You are on borrowed time....65 is O L D ! One foot in an open grave and the other on a banana peel!

Bro.Greg:saint:

 

You seem to be blind to the air of superiority or arrogance that is evident in a man-made KJV-only theory.

KJV-only advocates assume that their opinions are superior.

 

Burgon did not advocate any KJV-only view or even a Textus Receptus only view.

Dean John William Burgon actually supported revision of the Textus Receptus and KJV (The Revision Revised, pp. 21, 107, 114, 224, 236, 269). For example, Dean Burgon wrote: "Again and again we shall have occasion to point out that the Textus Receptus needs correction" (p. 21). Burgon wrote: “That some corrections of the Text were necessary, we are well aware” (p. 224, footnote 1).

Burgon asserted that “the accumulated evidence of the last two centuries has enabled us to correct it [the Textus Receptus] with confidence in hundreds of places” (Treatise on the Pastoral Office, p. 69).

In his introduction to Burgon’s book, Edward Miller wrote: “In the Text left behind by Dean Burgon, about 150 corrections have been suggested by him in St. Matthew‘s Gospel alone“ (Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels, p. 5). Burgon and Miller advocated “the Traditional Text,“ not the Textus Receptus (p. 5). Burgon as edited by Miller asserted: “I am not defending the ‘Textus Receptus’” (p. 15). Burgon added: “That it is without authority to bind, nay, that it calls for skillful revision in every part, is freely admitted. I do not believe it to be absolutely identical with the true Traditional Text” (p. 15). Edward Miller suggested that the Traditional Text advocated by Dean Burgon would differ “in many passages” from the Textus Receptus (p. 96).

 

Wilkinson and KJV-onlyism

You did not demonstrate that Benjamin George Wilkinson (1872-1968) repeated what Frederick Nolan wrote in his book An Inquiry into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate or Received Text of the New Testament in 1815. Are you suggesting that Wilkinson plagarized from Nolan?

Even if Wilkinson borrowed some ideas from Nolan, that would not prove that Wilkinson was not the leading factor in the development of KJV-onlyism. J. J. Ray borrowed from Wilkinson, and David Otis Fuller included much of Wilkinson's book in his book Which Bible? Fuller did not inform his readers that Wilkinson was a Seventh-Day Adventist and even removed a footnote where Wilkinson quoted from Ellen G. White.

Other KJV-only advocates have quoted Wilkinson favorably without revealing his identity as a Seventh-Day Adventist. D. A. Waite's ministry The Bible for Today reprinted Wilkinson's book without any mention of his being an Adventist. In his 1971 book entitled The Case for the King James Version of the Bible, Waite favorably quoted Wilkinson several times.
In his book Forever Settled, which is used as a textbook in some KJV-only schools, recommended highly by David Cloud, and published by D. A. Waite, Jack Moorman used Wilkinson as his authority at least twenty times, sometimes quoting whole pages. In his book An Understandable History of the Bible, Samuel Gipp quoted from Wilkinson favorably around twenty times without once mentioning that Wilkinson was a cultist.

The actual point is not whether or not many KJV-only authors quote directly from Wilkinson's book. The issue would be whether the source of some of their faulty arguments and claims can be traced back to Wilkinson.

One of the leading arguments used in many 1970's and later KJV-only books is a two-streams of Bibles argument or two lines of Bibles argument and that argument can be traced back to Wilkinson.

Seventh-Day Adventist Benjamin Wilkinson was one of the first if not the first to use the two-streams-of-Bibles argument in his 1930 book (Our Authorized Bible Vindicated, p. 43).

 

KJVOs do not advocate that Burgon ever thought the 18th century version of the TR was perfect, but that he opposed all of the manuscripts used by Westcott and Hort and primarily the Alexandrian text. What Burgon had criticized was the CURRENT form of the TR that had no longer been in major use since 1611 and had been revised by other translators in addition to some of those manuscripts being no longer available. Burgon even admitted that the current TR was not equivalent to the traditionally received text that was used by the translators during the 1500s.

Most of us who defend the TR have the right to disagree with Burgon, but it must be understood what era of the TR that Burgon was referring to, and the mistake failing to recognize that is why KJVO critics run with the statements that Burgon made about the TR as evidence that he did not believe it was perfect. It is a complete straw man argument that takes out of context what TR Burgon was referring to.

On the other hand, would a KJVO critic use Dean Burgon to argue for the validity of the modern translations or the Alexandrian text?? Would any who argue against the last 12 verses of Mark 16 rely on Dean Burgon to support Westcott & Horts view for its exclusion?

Burgon still did not believe that the KJV needed to be altered or updated. In Revision Revised, he said: "As something to intend to supersede our present English Bible, we are thoroughly convinced that the project of a rival Translation is not to be entertained for a moment. For ourselves, we deprecate it entirely ( pages.113-114)

 

Not Blind...

Rick....I'm not blind to it at all. I abhor that kind of attitude when I see it in our camp as well. Both camps are equally guilty of the same behaviour. Frankly, I'm very weary of this whole argument. P4T bemoans me as being ignorant (and I think he thinks I am boasting about it). Just because I am not a skilled debater or apologist does not mean I'm ignorant or stupid. I actually WISH I could be more like you or Dr. Ruckman or Dr.Waite or some of the more educated men in either camp and be able to catalog and retain large amounts of relevant information and knowledge in my mind so I could more effectively participate in these and other discussions. Ya'll think (and will continue to do so) that I have been deceived since I believe as I do. I'll have to live with that. I'll be thankful when I finally get home to be with the Lord and all this will be behind us. I don't personally believe that EITHER stance (KJVO/anti-KJVO) will make any of us better servants for the Lord or win anybody to faith in Christ. I know people in both camps that I believe walk with God. I know people in both camps that I wish I could be more like as I believe they are Godly people with servants hearts.
Since it is obvious that I am unable to adequately defend my beliefs on the translation issue due to my lack of RETENTION of knowledge about this matter I am seriously considering withdrawing from ANY participation in this section of the Baptist Board. My participation here is of dubious value and is admittedly based more on "passion" for the subject than "cataloged knowledge" that I can debate on point for point. My level of personal irritation has grown to the point where I don't even like my own attitude about the matter. There are some things I have seen and read here that made me ALMOST want to cuss. Not good at all. It edifies no one and I don't wish to dishonor the Lord or be ugly to anyone. There are other people on here who are far more skilled in these matters than I.
All that said...my beliefs and convictions about my KJV are unshaken and unchanged. I have seen NOTHING said by anyone here that would convince me to shelve my KJV or set it aside for ANY other version for any reason. It will continue to be the ONLY Bible I will ever use or recommend to anyone young or old. Knowing that...it is my desire to focus my time and energy on getting closer to the Lord by spending more time reading and studying His word rather than arguing about it. I also wish to be a better and more active witness for Him. I have come to the opinion in recent days that many of the arguments and debates that take place here and on other blogs and forums do nothing to honor and glorify the Lord or advance His kingdom in any way. Many times I think that some of the people who post here are doing so just to build some kind of reputation or show off their supposedly superior knowledge and intellect. I don't mix well with that crowd. They seriously annoy me. Ya'll can fight this out all you want...I think I'm done.


Bro.Greg:type::saint:

 

Again, there is no solid proof that just because a few KJVO's sited Wilkinson that they relied on his work solely to support a KJVO position. The fallacy in this argument is that:

1. You are playing the same guilt by association game when none of the KJVO critics admit in the modern translations that Westcott and Hort were Catholics, nor do the modern versions include the religious beliefs and practices of those who were on their translating committees (for example, do any of the NIV's admit that there was a lesbian on their committee?).

2. What you have not said or proven is that anything that Wilkinson wrote was WRONG. You have not attacked any of his findings or textual analysis, you have simply attacked his findings based on his religious affiliation.

Just because Wilkinson was an admitted 7DA, does not mean that he was not qualified to do research on the Biblical texts. KJVOs are not endorsing the man's religious beliefs any more than we are endorsing United Pentacostals or Mormons who also use the KJV.

The Catholic church was "one of the first" if not THE first to use creeds to define their religious beliefs. So does that make all of the Reformers Catholic since they used the same manner of declaring a set of beliefs that the RCC did? .No more than it makes KJVO Seventh Day Adventists if someone used a "2 line argument" for the differences between the line of the KJV and those of the Westcott & Hort texts. Now I am opposed to the use of such creeds, but to make the leap that this makes Reformers Catholic by default is erroneous in the same manner that if Wilkinson came up with a chart that was used by someone later, that makes the person using the chart a 7DA.

Most of the evidence that Josh McDowell compiled in his books "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" and "More Than a Carpenter" were compiled WHILE HE WAS AN ATHEIST. But no apologeticist would question his findings simply because he was not a Christian when he gathered his evidence.

So if we all agree that Jesus is God and believe in the virgin birth, and oppose Planned Parenthood, does that make us all Catholics? If we believe that dress should be modest, does that make us all Muslim?

How many Christians today use the laws of physics and science that were developed by atheistic evolutionists to support arguments for creation? No KJVO that used any of Wilkinson's research (which itself was borrowed from other defenders of the KJV and TR) did so to vindicate his religious beliefs.

Thus the entire argument against KJVO based on this flimsy accusation is non sequitur to the issue of textual validity.

 

Wilkinson's incorrect claims about Waldensian Bibles

I can prove that claims and arguments used by Wilkinson are wrong.

Many KJV-only claims about the Waldensian Bibles seem to have come from the inaccurate or misleading claims of Seventh-Day Adventist Benjamin G. Wilkinson whether directly from his book or as reprinted in Fuller’s book Which Bible.

Wilkinson claimed: “This Tepl manuscript represented a translation of the Waldensian Bible into the German which was spoken in the days of the Reformation” (Fuller, Which Bible, p. 128). In 2005, David Cloud acknowledged that some of Wilkinson’s “history, in fact, is strongly influenced by his devotion to Seventh-day Adventist ’prophetess’ Ellen G. White” and that “Wilkinson got the idea that the Waldensian Bible is ’preserved uncorrupted’ from Ellen White’s Great Controversy” (Bible Version Question/Answer, p. 13).

Thomas Armitage wrote that “he [Peter Waldo] employed Stephen of Ansa and Bernard Ydross to translate the Gospels from the Latin Vulgate of Jerome into the Romance dialect for the common people, as well as the most inspiring passages from the Christian Fathers” (History of the Baptists, I, p. 295). Andrea Ferrari wrote that “Waldo of Lyons paid some clergy to translate parts of the Bible from the Vulgate” (Diodati’s Doctrine, pp. 71-72). Paul Tice confirmed that Waldo “enlisted two clerics to translate various parts of the Bible, including the four Gospels, into the native Provencal language” (History of the Waldenses, p. vi). H. J. Warner maintained that the base for this translation was “for the most part the Vulgate of Jerome” (Albigensian, II, p. 222). Warner noted that Stephen de Ansa, a [Roman Catholic] priest, translated some books of the Bible into the Romance tongue while another priest Bernard Udros wrote his translating down for Peter Waldo (p. 221). Glenn Conjurske affirmed that “the medieval Waldensian version in the old Romance language [was] translated from the Vulgate” (Olde Paths, July, 1997, p. 160). KJV-only author Ken Johnson wrote that “we openly grant this” [“the fact Waldo used the Vulgate as the basis of his translation”] (Real Truth, p. 21).

Deanesly wrote that “the earliest existent Waldensian texts, Provencal, Catalan and Italian, were founded on a Latin Bible, the use of which prevailed widely in the Visigothic kingdom of Narbonne, up to the thirteenth century” and that this Latin Bible “is characterized by a set of peculiar readings, amounting to over thirty, in the Acts of the Apostles” and these same readings appear in “the early Provencal, Catalan and Italian Bible” and “in the Tepl manuscript” (Lollard Bible, pp. 65-66). Deanesly referred to this Latin Bible as “the Visigothic Vulgate” and indicated that it was later superseded by the Paris Vulgate (p. 66). James Roper maintained that the two Provencal versions “are derived from the Latin text of Languadoc of the thirteenth century, and hence in Acts contain many ‘Western’ readings of old Latin origin” (Jackson, Beginnings, III, p. cxxxviii). Roper added: “The translators of these texts merely used the text of Languadoc current in their own day and locality, which happened (through contiguity to Spain) to be widely mixed with Old Latin readings” (p. cxxxviii). Referring to Codex Teplensis and the Freiberg manuscript, Roper wrote: “The peculiar readings of all these texts in Acts, often ‘Western’ go back (partly at least through a Provencal version) to the mixed Vulgate text of Languadoc of the thirteenth century, which is adequately known from Latin MSS” (pp. cxxxix-cxl). Roper asserted: “A translation of the New Testament into Italian was made, probably in the thirteenth century, from a Latin text like that of Languadoc, and under the influence of the Provencal New Testament. It includes, like those texts, some ’Western’ readings in Acts” (p. cxlii). Since Languadoc or Languedoc was the name of a region of southern France, especially the area between the Pyrenees and Loire River, and since Narbonne was a city in southern France in the same region and it was also the name of a province or kingdom in this area, both authors seem to have been referring to the same basic region. For a period of time, this area was not part of the country of France. The Catalan, Provencal, and Piedmontese dialects are considered to be dialects of the Romaunt language, the vernacular language of the South of Europe before the French, Spanish, and Italian languages were completely formed. The above evidence indicates that the mentioned Waldensian translations were made from an edition of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate that was mixed with some Old Latin readings, especially in the book of Acts. William Gilly had the Romanunt Version of the Gospel of John printed in 1848. L. Cledat had the N. T. as translated into Provencal printed in 1887 (Warner, p. 68).

Glenn Conjurske cited Herman Haupt as maintaining that “the old Romance, or Provencal, Waldensian version invariably reads Filh de la vergena (‘Son of the virgin’) instead of ‘Son of man’--except only in Hebrews 2:6, where (of course) it has filh de l’ome, ‘son of man’,” and Conjurske noted that he verified Haupt’s claim (Olde Paths, June, 1996, p. 137). H. J. Warner observed that “in St. John 1, the Romance version had ‘The Son was in the beginning,‘ and in verse 51 ‘The Son of the Virgin’ for ‘the Son of Man,‘ and so throughout all the Dublin, Zurich, Grenoble and Paris MSS. in every corresponding place” (Albigensian, II, pp. 223-224). William Gilly maintained that “wherever the words, Filius Hominis (Son of Man), occur in the Vulgate, they are translated Filh de la Vergena (Son of the Virgin), throughout the whole of this Version of the New Testament” (Romanunt Version, p. xliii).

James Todd described a Waldensian manuscript preserved at Dublin that has the New Testament with the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Cantica, Wisdom, and Ecclelsiasticus in the Romance dialect (Books of the Vaudois, p. 1). Todd noted that its Gospel of Matthew includes “the prologue of St. Jerome.” Todd observed: “No intimation of the apocryphal or uncanonical character of the books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus occurs in the MS” (Ibid.). In an appendix of Todd’s book, Henry Bradshaw described some Waldensian manuscripts preserved at Cambridge, noting that Morland Manuscript A includes “a translation of Genesis 1-10 from the Vulgate” (p. 216). Bradshaw noted that Morland Manuscript C included a translation of Job chapters 1-3 and 42 from the Vulgate and “a translation of the whole book of Tobit from the Vulgate” (pp. 215-216).

Conjurske observed that the “Codex Teplenis is a fourteenth-century manuscript, which has never been modified at all, but exists today just as it did in the fourteenth century, and just as it was written by the scribes who wrote it” (Olde Paths, June, 1996, p. 138). Conjurske pointed out that Codex Teplensis included the Epistle Czun Laodiern, “to the Laodicens” (p. 133). He noted that this manuscript included a list of Scripture portions to be read on certain holy days and saints’ days and at the end included a short treatise on “the seven sacraments” (pp. 133-134). Out of the eighty-two places where the N. T. has “son of man,” Conjurske pointed out that “the Tepl manuscript reads ’son of man’ only seven times, all the rest having ’son of the virgin’” [sun der maid or meid or another spelling variation] (p. 137; also Oct., 1996 issue, p. 240). He affirmed that the “Teplensis itself reads heilikeit, that is, ’sacrament’” at several verses (Eph. 1:9, 3:3, 3:9, 5:32; 1 Tim. 3:16) (p. 139). Conjuske concluded that “it is an indubitable fact that the version contained in Codex Teplensis closely follows the Latin Vulgate and differs in a myriad of places from the Textus Receptus and the King James Version” (pp. 139-140).