The KJV Only Controversy

 The KJV only Controversy

 

 

I want to talk about the King James only controversy… Now, while I’m not trying to be controversial, I want you to know up front that I am not a KJV only person, never have been and never will be.  I don’t have a problem with the KJV, I grew up with it and I like it just fine, but it’s written in Elizabethan English that no one on the planet has spoken in well over 200 years.  While that was great for the time since people actually spoke that form of English, we need to be using a Bible written in modern English today.

 

There are a lot of people that claim the modern versions of the Bible are somehow inferior and full of errors and missing verses and all this and that’s why I decided to do this little lesson in Bible history so you can be better informed on some things.

 

So, when the KJV was published in 1611, and by the way, you folks that are so fond of saying “KJV 1611,” we don’t use the 1611 version of the KJV today, the version we use today is the 1769 version. One other historical fact, there were at least 1000 editions of the KJV between 1611 and 1769, none of which were exactly the same. Just so you know.

 

So, when the KJV came out in 1611 there were at least a dozen different versions of the Bible available.  The Geneva Bible, The Great Bible, The Bishops Bible, Tyndale’s Bible, Wycliffe’s Bible, Mathews Bible, etc.  There was no need for a new English translation and I’m not going to go into the reasons why King James decided to have his version published that’s another story for another time.

 

Unlike today where Bible publishing is a big money racket, during the middle ages it was a criminal offence to even translate a bible into the English language let alone to publish one.  It was punishable by imprisonment and/or death.  During that era in church history, men who translated the bible into English were simply trying to get the scriptures, in the common language into the hands of the common man. It wasn’t about money as it is today.

 

Again, we do need a Bible in the modern language, but we do not need 12 dozen different versions. And I’m not even going to get into how obscene the whole copywriting the bible is.

 

Ok so a little bit of history…

 

Today, we have 25000 plus fragments of the Greek NT.  There isn’t one complete copy of the NT that predates the 4^th Century. Because in the 4^th Century Diocletian, the Roman emperor, over a span of 10 years, destroyed every church building and every house that was used as a meeting place, He killed every pastor, and he destroyed every complete copy of the Bible. He came closer than anyone in history to wiping Christianity out of existence.  Then he just retired.  He was the only Roman emperor to retire.

 

What people would do during these heavy persecutions was to tear pages out of their bibles and pass them around so that every individual or family would have at least one page of scripture.  That made it much more difficult to destroy the scriptures completely.  This is why we have all of these fragments today.  God has always preserved His word.

 

Now, during the Reformation period is when they started finding all of these fragments and they began to sort them out and in the 18^th century they began to sort the fragments into 2 families.

 

The Easter Text and the Western Text

 

The Eastern Text: the minority text is from Syria and Egypt.  They are older and there are fewer of them. Also known as the Critical Text.

 

The Western Text: The majority text. Rome.  The Textus Receptus or the received text. There are more of these and they are much newer.

 

So, we have 25000 plus fragments of the NT and the majority of them come from the the western family.

 

Now, let’s talk about the different versions of the Bible…

 

NIV, ESV, NASB, these came from the eastern family or the critical text, older and fewer.

 

The KJV an NKJV came from the Western family, the textus receptus, newer and more of them.

 

Now, the textus receptus, which a man named Erasmus helped put together in the 16^th century, now remember, there were no complete copies of the bible at that time and they didn’t even have as many fragments as we have today so Erasmus had to go to the Latin Vulgate and translate the Latin into Greek in order to fill in what was missing.

 

Ok, all of you KJV only folks and all of you modern version only folks, here is what you need to know…

 

The NT that we have today is made up of 250 pages of Greek text.  Now, we aren’t taking about the OT, there is little to no debate about the OT. But, we have 250 pages of Greek text for the NT.

 

Now, if you were to take all 250 pages, and I don’t understand the silly controversy about this at all…

 

If you take all 250 pages and tabulate all the differences between the eastern text and the western text…

 

Again…the eastern text. The NIV, ESV, NASB, etc. And the western text, KJV, NKJV

 

If you tabulate all the differences, it comes out to ½ of 1 page and that’s it.  And not a single doctrine is missing or imperiled at all.  The majority of the differences are spelling and grammar issues. Nothing to do with doctrine at all.

 

Well, what about the missing verses in the modern versions.  The KJV contains verses that the modern versions leave out.?  The modern version leave these verses out because they weren’t in the original manuscripts.

 

Here’s another thing about the KJV, when it was published it was not a new translation, it never has been and it was never meant to be.  The KJV was actually a retranslation of the Bishops Bible.  If you read King James instructions to his translators, he states that he wanted his bible to be as close to the Bishops bible as possible.

 

But, the history of the KJV is another story for another time.

So, I use the NIV, ESV, and NASB as the primary examples of the modern versions because they are top of the line versions.

 

The NIV has the finest Hebrew poetry.

The NASB has the finest Greek rendering, which actually makes it the most accurate translation of the NT that exists today. Like it or not, it's a fact.

The ESV has the best blend of both.

 

Now, I choose to use the NKJV and here’s why…Now, this is something for pastors, preachers, and teachers to think about.

 

If you look at all the collected sermons of the pastors from the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th centuries, if you look at the verses they quoted in their sermons, about 79 percent of them come from the western text. KJV and NKJV.

About 21 percent come from the eastern text.

 

Here’s why I use the NKJV.

 

1.   Number 1. The KJV is written in archaic English that no one has spoken in more than 200 years.  And while the KJV is fine for people like me who grew up with it and have no problem reading it and following along, younger people and new Christians who maybe have never read a bible are going to have a lot of problems with that kind of English.  I think the use of the KJV today can be spiritually harmful to people because of the language it’s written in.

 

2.   Number 2. The Eastern text is where most of the greatest heresies in church history have come from.  Arianism, Gnostism, Docetism, Pelagianism, most of the great heresies started in the east.

 

Now, before you go jumping on the KJV only train and saying down with all these modern versions…the heresies didn’t come from the modern versions of the Bible. They didn’t even exist at that time and neither did the KJV.

 

No, the heresies came from that group of manuscripts.  

 

Remember what we talked about.  The differences between the KJV, the NKJV, and the more modern versions of the bible only amounts to ½ a page and there is not one doctrine missing or imperiled in any way.

 

Now, I don’t understand the controversy.  I don’t even know why there is a controversy.  Most of it is probably simple tradition and some of it is probably simple ignorance of bible history.

 

I have sat in churches and listened to men stand in the pulpit or in a Sunday school class and say over and over again that the KJV is the only real bible, and all the others are from the devil.  I will not under any circumstances sit in a church where a man would stand before people and blaspheme the holy spirit in that manner.  And that’s what that is. 

It's blaspheming the holy spirit. And Jesus makes it clear that this is the unforgivable sin.

 

Now, I hear people claim that the only unforgivable sin today is dying without Jesus. Well, that goes without saying.  But, in Mathew 12:31-32 he makes it clear that contributing the work of the holy spirit to the devil will not be forgiven in this age or the one to come.  Now you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I’m going to stand on what Jesus said, because He is smarter than me or you.

 

I tell you; I don’t even want to be in the same room with people that say things like that because they might say it one time too many and God might decide He’s had enough and strike them dead on the spot and I don’t want to be anywhere near them when that happens.

 

Anyway. If you like the KJV that’s fine, use it.  If you like a more modern version, that’s fine also.  It doesn’t matter because they all say the same thing. But, whichever version of the Bible you choose to use, remember that God will not be mocked….

God Bless