Would you consider your translation your final authority?

Final Authority

The Bible is my final authority, the translation of it does not matter. The scriptures are the scriptures no matter what translation they are. If we begin to subscribe to the translation as our authority then we are allowing ourselves to be directed and governed spiritually by man. Our authority comes down to the Word of God and not the translation of men. It was a great thing for Satan when he raised up Peter Ruckman to spread his sinful lies about God's Holy Word and many believers have had their growth stunted or even reversed because of this sin. Do not misunderstand, the KJV is a great translation, it is just not the ONLY translation.

 

Amen! Preach it!

 

Stating that it was satan who raised up Doc. Ruckman is just plain evil. One could just as easily say it was satan who raised up Metzger to spread his sinful lies...blah blah blah.

As our friend Roger has said; this is not about Ruckman, so get off it already!!!!!!!!

 

Who is the father of lies?
So if a person continually spreads lies, no matter who that person is, they are being influenced by one of two things...

1) Satan is controlling them
2) Their own prideful flesh is controlling them

When a person spreads a lie, and continue to spread it after it has been shown to the person to be a lie, that person is is doing the work of the devil...

And I am not talking about anyone specifically, but just life in general.

 

You make an accurate observation. More often than not, the person doing the lying is carnal; that is IF we are speaking of a christian person. Although satan is the "father of lies"; I think you will find that Jesus made that statement in the context of evil intent on the part of they with whom He was speaking at the time. You will be hard pressed to prove evil intent on the part of Doc. Ruckman or Piper or Metzger or Jim Baker for that matter! :laugh:

Speaking of "lying" in general, my point was that the accusation was purely subjective. For example, I have seen strict Calvinists accuse Arminians of lying and vice versa, yet obviously neither is lying since their particular theologies are not based on an intent to deceive. While they may be wrong based upon your OWN understanding, they are not lying per se.

The point at which your hypothetical fails is exactly the point I am illustrating. Your understanding of a set of facts are skewed by your own experiences and knowledge as are that other person's. The burden of proof falls upon the one doing the accusing.

Since you appealed to Scripture here, WHO is the accuser of the brethren?????

See how that works? One can say "so-n-so's" statement (lie) is satanically inspired and one may reply that that person's ACCUSATION is satanically inspired. Who is right?

But this is WAAAAAAY off topic. I was simply reminding someone to lay off of Ruckman as directed by Roger since this thread is NOT about him.

 

I edited out the unfortunate remark about Ruckman and now I agree 100% with this statement. :thumbs:

 

The word of God, in numerous translations, is my final authority. I know for many that is uncomfortable because we are accepting differences but I can honestly say that I have never, never, never had a doctrinal difference come down to one translation or another. God's word is more powerful than that.

 

Putting the slander upon a brother in Christ aside; I cannot agree with this post. It is self contradictory.

1. If the 'scriptures are the scriptures no matter what translation they are' then to be true to Scripture you must ALSO submit to the translation of them as authoritative.
2. But if "our authority comes down to the Word of God and NOT the translation of men" then the first statement is false.
3. There is NO complete Bible in any "original language"; therefore one is forced to submit to "men" who have collated what MSS we do have to produce a complete Bible.
4. Even IF one were to rely SOLELY upon the collection of MSS which we do have, one is FORCED to rely upon men since it was men who penned those COPIES of COPIES of COPIES etc.
5. No mater which position one takes, one is FORCED to rely upon men to give you your 'Bible'.
6. Which leads to the conclusion that the position ("I do not rely upon man to give me my Bible") is wholly untenable unless one is ALSO willing to admit that God is not only able to guide these men in translation but has in fact done so. That is unless of course you believe that God may guide YOU but He DID NOT guide them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I only use one translation of the Bible. I would like to know if different translations contradict themselves or if they change the meaning of the context from version to version ?

If I were going to counterfit a dollar bill I would need to have an original to do so. How do we know what is the dollar bill and what is counterfit ?

 

No one ever said the KJB is the "only" translation. Of course there are many translations, just one is better than all the others.

 

You stumped them on that one.

 

The OP asked that this not be a KJV thread.

 

I did not mention what version I use and even if I did, a person that uses one version reagrdless of what it is could have this same comment.

 

I actually think that is a good question, and I use many versions.

Since no originals exist, we have to try to reconstruct them from the various differing documents... This is where talented, and gifted textual critics are needed...

But it all boils down to one of 2 choices the way I have understood it.

1) Do you trust the oldest documents that are closer to the date of the originals?
Or
2) Do you trust a multitude of documents that because they are newer, they are more plentiful?

This whole argument boils down to this...

The KJV (and others) are translated from the TR (Textus Receptus) Which is a compliation of many differing documents that was put together by textual critics Stephanus (sp?) and Erasmus. These documents mainly date to a few yrs before the TR was compiled... and the logic is, if we have 100 documents and 80 agree in one place, and 20 disagree, we go with the 80.

Other Translations like the NIV (and others) are based on documents that are much older and closer to the original. The logic here is the closer to the original, the less mistakes it would have...
(And don't let anyone fool you, most all copies pre printing press has variants, differences in the text... someone made mistakes somewhere!)

So using our imaginary situation with the 100 documents...
And not even talking about the Bible, but some other book, in which you have 100 copies....

The originals would have been written, say, 100 AD.
80 of them date from 1800 to 2000
20 date from yrs 200 to 400.

80 agree in one place
20 have something else.
Which one will you choose?

Using TR only logic... you would choose 80 because there are a multitude saying the same thing.

Using MV logic.. .you would choose the 20, because they are closer in date to the original, and you would chalk up the differences in the 80 as a copyist error that has just been copied over and over.

I choose the older logic.

Simply because it makes sense.
Have you ever played the gossip game...
You whisper in someone's ear, and it goes through 20 different people...
The end result is never the same as the beginning...
And person 2 would be more correct to the original than person 19.

For me, the closer you can get to an original, the less mistakes a copyist would have made.

That is the reason, I choose a multitude of MVs vs. only one version.

Of course this is tiny's way of understanding this issue, and I am sure there are some others that will disagree with me...
Oh well...
This is one way I settled the issue in my mind.

 

1. Tiny, your simplicity is profound.

2. Just yesterday I was reading an interview, where Dr. Daniel B. Wallace of DTS was asked about Textual Criticism. Now, Wallace has invested 35yrs in the matter and is considered a leading scholar.

3. Much of what you outlined above, you will be glad to know, correspond with the expertise of Dr. Wallace. How about that!

 

I couldn't be complex if I tried!!! lol

Thank you.

 

You're welcome.

At one point, I totally dismissed the TR, but over the years I have learned to be eclectic, exactly what you have outlined and what Dr. Wallace is now championing.

 

Question

This is not a challenge, just simply a request. I would like to see where you got the information that you shared here. It would be of great help and interest. Thank you tim or anyone who can answer this question.

 

I wish I had just one resource... but I have read books on textual critism... and talked to older pastors, and have been lucky enough to go through some Bible History classes...

Plus....

This forum!

That's right...Baptistboard.

Let me tell you how I even found Baptistboard.

I was a moderator in our local association a few yrs ago. (wow, I just looked at my sign up date, and it is 2003!)

Anyway, as moderator over our local association of 20 churches, we had our annual meeting in August. It was mentioned at our meeting that a couple churches wanted to disfellowship any church in our association that used any other version than the KJV.

Well that set off a firestorm! Especially when the only churches that even baptized anyone that yr were the ones the rest wanted to disfellowship... that's right... the KJVOs wanted to disfellowship the MV churches even though the KJVOs were declining in membership.

Anyway, I had been a KJVO up until a couple yrs before this, and God was slowly opening my eyes to the possible usefulness of MVs...
And as moderator, I had to do something... so we agreed to import a good Bible History teacher to teach us about the history of the Bible.
Sad thing was, only one kJVO showed up, the rest stayed home and pouted....

Also, I started searching for the truth. I had to settle the issue in my mind. I typed in KJVO into Google search, and low and behold a link to this forum showed up... I clicked on it, and voila... I got more than I bargained for!!!!

There was hot debate back then, just like now... and I jumped in... just asking questions.... robycop, Dr Bob, Mr Ed, brian (what's his name lol), and a few more that are now gone, all helped me.
Even the KJVOs back then (anyone remember quickeningspirit?, askjo, Will,) helped...

So I got all this information and just kept researching.
Then one day. I had a bright moment.

I began to ask, was Jesus an onlyist?
You know what I found out...
Jesus didn't use the Hebrew text the KJV used...
Some beleive He used the Septuagent... I'm not for sure... but I do know it was different...
Wanna know how I know...

I compared his quotes of the OT with what is in the KJV!
Specifically His quotes in Luke 4, around verse 18 I think.... and the Isaiah passage he was quoting.... it is a little different...

So if Jesus didn't use the KJV underlying texts, why should I?1
I know a lot of good Christians that disagree with me... and that's ok... this issue will never be settled until we get to heaven and actually see the book that is preserved there!!

It will be my luck, God says, "Hey Tim, come here... Look what I have a 1611 kJV!" But for now, I have to stand on what has been revealed to me through study...

Here is an article I wrote back then....notice I even thought then that the LXX was what Jesus used.. I am not sure now... but here it is anyway...

I wish I had more to help you with.. just stick around here long enough and you will learn something...

Anyway, here is the article...

Which Version did Jesus Use?​

By Tim Barnhouse​

Luk 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.
Luk 4:17 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,

Luk 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
Luk 4:19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Luk 4:20 And he closed the book, and he gave [it] again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
Luk 4:21 And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

Isa 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD [is] upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to [them that are] bound;
Isa 61:2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;

Compare these 2 verses with below two. Both KJV.

Which is inspired in English?
(changes are underlined for easy reference)​

If KJV English translators were “inspired”, wouldn’t both passages read the same, or did Jesus approve an uninspired text?​

​

It has been argued that Jesus either changed the words that were read, or strung together parts of Isaiah to get the reading in Luke, and that he had the right to do this since He wrote the Book. That is all OK, except for the parts that I highlighted above. Notice It says “this scripture” and “the place”, and “it was written”. It does not say “these scriptures”, “the places”, or “they were written.”
It also says that He stood to “read.” It doesn’t say he paraphrased, but He “read.” Also, because the Jews held scripture to such a high place of honor, if anyone would have “cut and pasted” Isaiah together to get a reading, they would have not sat there with their eyes “fastened “ to him, they would have ran him out of the temple immediately.
The reading in Luke matches the LXX better than the Masoretic text that is the underlying text of the KJV. Therefore, I believe that Jesus used and read a different version than the Hebrew text we have underlying the KJV. And if Jesus used a version that differs from the KJV, then what is wrong with us using one. After all the KJV translators said themselves that the “meanest” (poorest) version of the scriptures is still the word of God.
Also for further study compare Acts 8:32-33 with Isaiah 53:7-8. Again the KJV in Acts matches the LXX better than the Masoretic.

 

TCG : Lest someone may get the impression that Dr.Wallace has only recently embraced "reasoned eclecticism" I want to point out that he has favored that approach for 20 years . You had said : ..." what Wallace is now championing ". He has had the same position since 1987 .