Should the Hebrew and Greek texts be our final authorities?

Any translator worth his or her salt anywhere in the world will tell you that the originals always, ALWAYS carry the authority in a translation effort. If I were hired to translate something into Japanese, I would be ethically answerable to the author or to whoever hired me if it was not the author. This is especially true with some genres of document such as diplomatic, legal, or contract translations.

This is also a Biblical principle. I find it completely ridiculous to argue that the Bible never touts the original documents as being authoritative. Anyone who says that really doesn't know language and doesn't know the Bible. In most cases the KJVO position is an indication of naive linguistic ignorance. (Americans are notorious for being lousy at other languages.)

Here are some Bible examples where the original is clearly authoritative.
Gal. 3:16--"Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." (Paul's whole inspired argument rests upon the grammar of the original.)

Matt. 27:46--"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (If the translation were more authoritative in this very important statement, God would not have given us the original.)

And there are many more. But if you want to know if there are any cases where the target document (the translation) is more authoritative, here are two:

1. Translating movie subtitles. Obviously, if the target audience doesn't understand the original (in humor, for example), you ditch the original and redo the meaning in the target language. But I'm pretty sure the most rabid KJVO person does not want to compare the Bible to a movie translation.

2. In the deconstructionist translation theory of Jacque Derrida, the target document is more important than the original. The translator is free to make whatever changes he or she wishes, because the goal is not faithfulness to the original, but the production of an entirely new document. Considering that Derrida is a Godless post modernist, I'm pretty sure this is not our model for Bible translation either.

This means Ruckmanism, the belief that the target document KJV is more important and authoritative than the originals, is linguistic hokum. I've never read a complete bio of Ruckman (don't think there is one), but I'm pretty sure he didn't know any other languages than English (and a little Greek, though he often erred there).

 

More about Derrida. (For a good article about his philosophy, see: Derrida, Jacques | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Writing about translation, he said, “As for the word (for the word will be my theme) — neither grammar nor lexicon hold an interest for me." (Jacques Derrida, “What Is a ‘Relevant’ Translation?” Lawrence Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2000, 424.) In other words, faithfulness to the actual meaning of the original text was meaningless to Derrida. He preferred to produce his own target text.

So theoretically, Ruckmanism is a type of to deconstructionism, because neither care about the original documents (for the Bible, the Hebrew and Greek originals) near as much as they care for the target document (the KJV).

In Bible translation, we use the word "faithfulness" to discuss the relation of the translation to the original. The KJV is a very faithful translation. However, to make it the source of authority rather than the original documents is to be a deconstructionist, albeit unwittingly.

 

Which Hebrew text? Which Greek text?

But yes, Orginal languages carry more weight than the translations. That being said, we have numerous well done and accurate English translations, but English translations cannot override the the original language.

JoJ gave a very good answer above.

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Weird things happen when you try to translate the KJV into an Asian language. In the case of Japanese, I think I would have had to use a lot of classical Japanese to get the "Japanese KJV" into that language. Even then it would not have been a "Japanese KJV," which is impossible. It would have been a Japanese translation of the KJV.

I once had a man in Texas ask me, "Do they have a KJV in Japanese?" My answer was, "No, the KJV is in English." That answer satisfied him, strangely enough.

 

For the record, my information is that Ruckman had his Ph.D. from BJU in education, not Bible or theology, so that is why his knowledge of Greek was insufficient. An opponent once told me, though, that he had a Th.M from somewhere. Up through 1986 in a pamphlet I have of his, he only claimed the Ph.D. I suspect that he only got the Th.M. through some degree mill. Usually people that get a degree that way won't reveal where they got it.

His website doesn't mention a Th.M. or anything other than his B.A. and Ph.D.: About Dr. Ruckman

He spent time in the army in Japan after WW2 and did some bizarre stuff, but there is no indication in his books that I have read that he learned the Japanese language.

But hey, you too can earn an internet degree. Just read a book and maybe write a brief report on it, and they'll give you 3 credits right there. After all, that's how H. D. Williams got his Ph.D. Why, just read his book that he says was his "doctoral dissertation": Word for Word Translating of the Received Text. (Then read my review of it on Amazon, for which he attacked everything about me--my education, my martial arts, being here on the BB, my Mom and Dad--not really).

Don't ever cross a Ruckmanite. They'll call you all sorts of names (as seen on the other thread). I don't mean to say Williams is a Ruckmanite, since he doesn't quote Ruckman in his "dissertation"--just the eternally weird Gail Riplinger.

Things Ruckman called my grandfather, John R. Rice: Bible rejecter, used of Satan, blockhead, naive and shallow, stupid, liar, blasphemer, hypocrite. These are not even intelligent insults! (See my thread on that in the humor forum.) (Just found another--"cultist." Ruckman was just bizarre.)

 

Ruckman shows some knowledge of the Greek in his books, quoting various Greek NTs and commenting on them. However, he probably never took a course in Greek, but was self taught. As proof, here is one thing he wrote: "...an incorrect spelling, which no Freshman (sic) studying Greek grammar would have ever picked up" (Handbook of Manuscript Evidence, 98). Of course, BJU didn't and doesn't teach Greek to freshmen. All of the Bible colleges I know (and I've looked at many catalogs) don't teach Greek until the sophomore year. And everyone who took it remembers that very, very well. I already have my sophomores writing for help to get started in the fall, because taking Greek is a big deal to them.

Now, in Ruckman's terminology the KJV is "advanced revelation." Unlike his typical follower, he actually admitted that there are errors in the KJV. He wrote, "Moral: 'Mistakes in the A. V. are advanced revelation! '" (The Christian's Book of Manuscript Evidence, 1970,126; emphasis in the original).

In the world of professional translators, to have the translation correct the original is considered to be unethical. For example, in skopos theory, the skopos (translation goal) "is negotiated between the client and the translator, with reference to both the source text and receiving audience" (Edwin Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Theories, 2nd. ed., 73). In other words, there is a responsibility of the translator towards towards faithfulness to the original text depending on who hired him or her: the author, a company, etc. The type of translation then depends on the wishes of the man with the money.

In the case of Bible translation, it is the Holy Spirit who leads the translator, and thus does the "hiring." In translating the NT into Japanese, I never, ever felt free to change the meaning, or to consider my translation to be superior to the original. If a KJVO translator wanted to use the KJV as the source text, they would certainly feel obliged to follow the KJV as close as possible in the translation. For example, one effort to get the KJV into Japanese (working for about 30 years now with no end in sight ) mandated that if you wanted to join the effort you had to use their long, long list of prescribed Japanese vocab words that the lead translator felt best rendered the KJV! So, then, that being true, why do followers of Ruckman believe that the KJV is "advanced revelation" when they would never, ever say the same thing about a translation from the KJV to some other language? Would a Japanese Bible done from the KJV be "advanced revelation" to the KJV? It is to laugh!

There is is: Peter Ruckman's theory of "advanced revelation" is unethical, and thus sinful. Period. End of story.

 

I put the beginning of the KJVO movement in 1970. (I mean as an actual movement, not that individuals didn't take the position before then.) That is the year that two books came out that launched things: The Christian's Book of Manuscript Evidence, by Ruckman, and Which Bible, ed. by David Otis Fuller. Both of those books had great influence in beginning the actual movement. No fundamentalist or evangelical leader before then taught that the KJV was the only good translation, or especially that the KJV corrects the original languages (Ruckmanism). Of course it was Fuller's book that included the whole book by 7th Day Adventist Benjamin Wilkinson, Our Authorized Version Vindicated.

 

The peculiar if not hypocritical thing about David Otis Fuller is that while he was pastor of Wealthy Street Baptist in Grand Rapids and preaching from the KJV while pushing his brand of KJVOism, his ministry for the deaf was signing from the Living Bible! Go figure.

 

What? Inconsistency among KJVO folk? Can it be? As if Ruckman never referred to the Greek meaning? And so forth.

 

Linguistic ignorance and naivete.