Beginnings of KJV-Only Movement?

I wrote the credit as his name appears on the front cover of my Godbey New Testament --

I had assumed the "A.M." was an abbreviation for an academic honor.

 

Very little research has been done in the area of the English Bible as authoritative over the originals in the first half of the 20th century and before. This says to me once again that there was no KJVO movement per se then, though there may have been some sympathy as the Godbey quote shows.

The best research I've seen is King James Onlyism: A New Sect, by James D. Price. Agree with Dr. Price or disagree, this book is the result of massive research and has much information available nowhere else.

 

Do you own that Price book JoJ ? I've wanted to buy it , but have only been glancing through it once per week at the Christian bookstore . Pun intended : It's priceless .

 

Well (chuckle), I hate to drop names, but Dr. Price gave me a signed copy when I was in the States for a quick visit in June. He and another of my seminary profs go to the same church my Mom and sister do, pastored by a third man of my seminary profs. So it was good to see him and fellowship a little. He's a humble, spiritual guy, but very brilliant. :type:

 

Well I sure wish I "knew Him" as well as you . But I'll have to go by the old-fashioned method of simply buying it . That's a mighty fine book . Some day soon I'll secure a copy .

A lot of KJVO stuff is refuted by Price's documentation . The words of the translators are very revealing . He covers a great deal of other ground also .

 

Your assumption is correct.

The A.M. is a degree he attained, which was apparently awarded by Georgetown College (KY), and appears as an appellation to his name on the title page of the aforesaid book.

BTW, the degree of "A.M." is also the only one that Dr. John A. Broaddus, co-founder with Boyce, Manly, and Williams, and the second president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, ever attained and was awarded, academically, FWIW. His doctorate was 'honorary'.

Regardless of the name of his son (Didn't the son have a last name??).

Ed

P. S. [snipped by Ed]

 

I've been in a discussion on another board with a man who claims KJVO is actually quite old, and was already old before Wilkinson's 1930 book came out. He cites some of the writings by Philip Mauro, among others.

However, he has some obstacles to the veracity and correctness of his view he cannot overcome.

First, he ignores the fact that the KJV was the only readily-available English version there was before the latter part of the 20th century, except for the rather-groddy British RV. Naturally, people often spoke highly of the only Bible version available to them.

Second, he ignored the fact that more than one 19th century writer called for a new Bible version to be made.

Third, he simply cannot get past the fact that any older KJVOism was just as man-made & just as unsupported by Scripture as the current thingie. He is just-as-stuck with an unsupported theory as the advocates of the current doctrine are.

BOTTOM LINE-KJVO IS OF HUMAN ORIGIN,UNSUPPORTED BY SCRIPTURE, AND IS UNTRUE, BE IT OLD OR NEW.

 

621 pages of scholarship including 10 appendices! :thumbs:

 

I've been perusing a book I found on Live Search Books called:

In Discordance With the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible [LINK]
by Peter J. Thuesen (1999)

It can be purchased using Fetchbook for a very reasonable price.

It touches on this subject.

It's author writes concerning the early Revised Bible:

Rob

 

Sorry, Rob, this matches up to nothing I know of Fundamentalist history. I'd have to see some sources.

 

From a review by David Watt in Christian Century [LINK]

More from the book...

The book is adequately referenced and supported.

Using Live Search you can review any 50 pages of your choice (I suggest first reviewing the contents page).

Rob

 

Thanks, I'll check it out.

I well remember the Fundamentalist opposition to the RSV--McIntyre, John R. Rice and others. Fundamentalists (M. L. Moser, Bob Sumner, Ian Paisley, etc.) also opposed the New English Bible and the TEV. However, that had nothing to do with the modern KJVO movement, being for different reasons all together. Each of those versions had theological liberals on the translation committees, and that was what Fundamentalists opposed, not the idea of a modern language version. Those same Fundamentalists approved of and used the ASV.

To give one famous reason for the opposition to the RSV, it rendered the Hebrew almah as "young woman" instead of "virgin" in Is. 7:14. :type:

Added:
I just re-read your post and I see you quote Thuesen about the almah translation. Unfortunately Thuesen seems biased enough against the Fundamentalist position that he pooh-poohs the objection to almah as "young woman." However, the translation is is not as cut and dried in the liberal direction as Thuesen says, since the LXX in Is. 7:14 and the NT in Matt. 1:23 (quoting Isaiah) both translate almah as the Greek parthenos, universally agreed to mean virgin--and the RSV so translates it in Matt. 1:23. So, Fundamentalists had a very valid objection to the RSV rendering of almah.

In the index to the book, I do see that Thuesen appears to discuss what I just wrote. Guess I have to buy the book to know more.

 

Reading more in Theusen, I find him biased against Fundamentalism--not surprising considering this is an Oxford U. Press book--and that colors his scholarship.

For example, here is what he says on p. 112: "Dallas evangelist John R. Rice, editor of the widely circulating tabloid the Sword of the Lord, lauded the American Standard Version’s ‘holy reverence for the actual wording of the original manuscripts,’ even though the ASV’s copyright was registered to a predecessor organization of the National Council of Churches."

This is "guilt by association." The copyright issue was a non-issue with almost all Fundamentalists, though Theusen quotes a minor player named Edgar Bundy on it. In particular, John R. Rice never mentioned the copyright issue in any of his writings.

Again, on p. 113 Tuesen points to the phrase "contains the Word of God" as the "stereotypical liberal doctrine of Scripture" according to Fundamentalists. However, that phrase refers to the Neo-Orthodox view of Scripture according to Fundamentalists, not the liberal view.

So Tuesen needs to do more homework to understand Fundamentalism. Unfortunately, British churchmen have never quite gotten Fundamentalism, as can be seen by the infamous tar and feathers approach of James Barr's book, Fundamentalism (1977). Barr, an Oxford prof, lumped together all of Evangelicalism as "Fundamentalism." :type:

 

I think it goes back further.
The marketing of the NASB (and NIV among others) cultivated the bad seed that there during the early confrontation with the RSV.
Whether one agrees with Thuesen’s bias or not, the cases he documents are strikingly similar to the stance we see some take today.

Re: The Isaiah 7:14 text, it is covered in chapter 5, “The Virgin Text, Evangelicals and Liberals in the Quest for a Undefiled Book” (p 127ff).
I can appreciate the position of the translators of the RSV regarding this verse but personally enjoy a more Christological method of translation myself.

I’ll reiterate, 10 to 20% of just about any book can be previewed for free on Live Search, it's a great way to preview books before you purchase them.

Rob

 

Quote: " think it goes back further.
The marketing of the NASB (and NIV among others) cultivated the bad seed that there during the early confrontation with the RSV."

Having ministered since 1945, and having lived throught the RSV controversy, I tend to agree with this idea.

We tended to accept the KJV without declaring it to be the only translation acceptable to fundamental theology.

IN the 40's and 50's we dare not open another translation in a fundamental pulpit, or we would be labelled a "liberal".

From tradition, I still use the KJV and subconsciously hold a special reverence for it, although, intellectually I have moved far from that position.

It was not until the 60's we openly accepted reading other translations. If I remember correctly, one of the first modern translations we accepted inluced multiple words in parenthesis...I forget the name now, but I am sure someone will. We also accepted use of a RV for study.

On Isaiah 7:14, we used the idea that the NT clearly defined the proper understanding of "virgin" even though we understood the Hebrew meant "maiden".

Cheers,

Jim

 

Brother Jim, I have to say that I agree that if a preacher used the RSV in the pulpit in those days he would be strongly criticized, but I don't think he would have been called a liberal--maybe a New Evangelical (beginning in 1957) but not a liberal. That's in the circles I was in, anyway, though I have to admit you were much my senior.

Fundamental pastors in my circles in those days did quote from the ASV in the pulpit, and freely corrected the KJV. I've quoted earlier in this thread from Jack Hyles' (no less!) little commentary on the book of Revelation in which he corrected the KJV over and over. I'm sure I could find other examples in my library.

Again, when I went to BJU in 1970-72, they used the UBS Greek text and not the TR, and they use it to this day. In fact, I bought my first NASV at the BJU bookstore, a first edition of the NT which I still have.

Earlier in the thread I told how Dr. Lee Roberson of Tennessee Temple U. forbade the discussion of versions in the dorms. I was there in 1972-76, and we used the UBS there also throughout the 1970's, and profs quite often corrected the KJV. So the two first and largest (though TTU has shrunk considerably) Fundamentalist schools never were KJVO, and are not to this day.

 

You are quite correct, John. I speak for the UK and Canada, of course, and we did differ from the USA.

If you could see my original KJV, which I received in 1945 and still use to this day, you will see words crossed out and the "correct" word inserted, or marginal notations. When I read from or preached from my Bible, I automatically read the correct words. We called them changes in the language..For example, the change from "prevent" which meant to go before, and "to let" which actually meant prevent. This is how we handled it.

We had to be very careful because people in the pews were not educated in biblical controversies and original languages. I once taught a course on seeming contradictions in the Bible....one such as the age of Ahaziah (2Kings 8:26ff) at 22, and yet in 2 Chron 22: 2 he is shown as 42. The actual age is 22 because his father was 40 when he died. He could hardly be older than his father!

One person came up to me after a service and said his faith was shaken in the Bible seeing these mistakes. This is what we had to guard against in our circles back in those days.

I travelled in the same circles as Carl McIntyre (I was with the eqivalent organization in Canada) and Ian Paisley was a personal friend, so I am very familiar with what we did, the stands we took, and the terminology used back then.

Things have changed a lot since those days. I would not call myself a fundamentalist to-day. We linked the New Evangelicals with Carl F.H. Henry and that movement, which was an attempt to understand Karl Barth and his evangelicalism.

To understand Barth, one had to understand where he came from, the German rationalism. He was not as radical as we labelled him, given this history, yet many fundamentalists labelled people if they even mentioned Barth's name. I was labelled liberal because I graduated from a very liberal school, The University of Chicago. That's the way is was back then.

I think having lived through it, and reading about it, can be two very different things. I learned not to use labels, except on medicine bottles and clothing, and especially not on people.

Now, I think there is an understanding on how we viewed the KJV in the early days, and the way it is trumpeted by the KJVO movement. This is what I was trying to point out from experience and not from books or even articles in Christianity To-day and other such magazines.

Cheers,

Jim