Subject: Re: Kjv gods word & KJV ONLYISM
Date: 23 Jan 1999 04:29:13 GMT
From:  (Andrew Bromage)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian

G'day all.

 wrote:

>>      "It is also well known among students of textual criticism
>>    that a large majority of this huge mass of manuscripts-
>>    somewhere between 80-90% - contain a Greek text which in
>>    most respects closely resembles the kind of text which
>>    was the basis of our King James Version. Prof Z. C. Hodges

You will notice the shift here.  The King James Version was not based
on 80-90% of Greek manuscripts, but SIX manuscripts which "closely
resemble" them.  This is an extremely important point which the "KJV
Only" camp often gloss over.

>>     May I ask you what is your opinion of the Westcott Hort
>>     theory and versions such as the niv based upon it.
>>     God bless!

There are many parts of Westcott and Hort's theory.  I think the most
important detail to come from it which carries over today is that if
you want to find the reading in the autographs, it's not sufficient to
count manuscripts, but to weigh them, and to study the mechanisms
involved in copyist errors.

It's a fallacy to say, "Most manuscripts say this, so they must be
right."  It's equally a fallacy to say, "The oldest manuscript that
we have says this, so it must be right."  You have to _explain_ how
the discrepancy occurred.  That is the key to the study of textual
criticism.

To give one example to illustrate:

Suppose I say to you, "For God so loved the world..." you could
probably all finish the verse for me.  So if I were to give you a
version of John 3:16 which was slightly different, you'd probably
say "that's not right" and correct it for me.

This effect is called "harmonisation", and it's extremely an common
effect in the Byzantine text type.

Here's a classic example:

[Ephesians 1:2  NIV]  Grace and peace to you from God our Father and

the Lord Jesus Christ.

[Ephesians 1:2  KJV]  Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father,

and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

So far, so good.

[Colossians 1:2  NIV]  [...] Grace and peace to you from God our Father.

[Colossians 1:2  KJV]  [...] Grace be unto you, and peace, from God

our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Either the critical text (on which the NIV is based) is missing
something or the Textus Receptus (on which the KJV is based) has
something extra.

Well, suppose you're a monk who does New Testament copying, and you've
heard this greeting "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ" used over and over again in your liturgy.  You come
to copy Colossians 1:2 and you see "Grace and peace to you..." and you
say, "I know this!" and proceed to write it out.  Then you come back a
bit later and notice that the original you were copying from doesn't say
"and the Lord Jesus Christ" and you say, "Well, that's not how it goes.
The guy who produced this thing I'm copying from must have missed that
out.  That's OK, I've fixed it now."

That's how you can explain the _addition_ of the phrase.  Now how could
you explain the _deletion_ of the phrase?  Well, you could propose a
kind of conspiracy theory to remove the name of Jesus from the Bible as
many KJV Onlyists propose.  But that wouldn't explain the _presence_ of
the phrase in Ephesians 1:2.  If there was a conspiracy, it was a pretty
inept one.

In the end, the critical reading (as found in the NIV excerpt above) is
almost universally regarded as authentic simply because you can explain
the phrase being added, but you can't explain it being deleted.  That's
a very simplified but not too inaccurate example of textual criticism.

Of course, if you were to read a KJV Onlyist book, this is not how the
data would be presented.  They'd not mention Ephesians 1:2 at all, but
rather produce a table which goes something like this:


+-----------+-----------------------+------------------+

| Where     | King James Version    | Modern versions  |

+-----------+-----------------------+------------------+

| Col 1:2   | the Lord Jesus Christ | OMIT             |

+-----------+-----------------------+------------------+

Probably with a couple of dozen other examples.  Now it looks like a
conspiracy to delete bits from the Bible.  No, worse than that.  A
conspiracy to deny Jesus' lordship or deity or something equally
sinister.

But if you saw this table instead:


    Number of times the full title "Lord Jesus Christ"

               appears in the New Testament


                +-------+-------+--------+

                |  KJV  |  NIV  |  NASB  |

                +-------+-------+--------+

                |  86   |  61   |  64    |

                +-------+-------+--------+

Where's the conspiracy now?

This is what I find exasperating about KJV Onlyist writings.  They're
so dishonest in their presentation of the data.

In addition, you have to ask: Does this textual difference make any
real practical difference in the theological content of the New
Testament?  No it does not.  None of them do, unless we now think that
whether or not a statement in the Bible is true dependends on whether
it appears 60 or 80 times...

Ron Ferguson <> writes:

>You asked my opinion of the Niv and other versions.  Well I am aware
>that even the NKJV come under terrible attack from the advocates of the
>ONLY position so how would others fare.

Right.  The NKJV is an extremely important translation, because it _is_
based on the "80-90% of manuscripts" so beloved of KJV Onlyists, rather
than the six on which the KJV is based.  Yet for some reasons it is
attacked almost as strongly as the NIV is.  Bizarre.

>I know of many of the supposed
>criticisms of translated portions in the modern versions.  Not one is
>valid so I suppose we won't agree on any basis but i will tell you my
>opinion.

>I place modern versions in three groupings: - 
[...]

>3.  The loose and inaccurate translations that are a shame - Good News
>Bible and Living Bible.  They are interpretative and sometimes (often)
>very wrong.

I don't want to argue over matters of taste in translation --- if you
don't like the TEV, I encourage you not to use it --- but I'd like to
sau that it's not without point.  The Good News Bible was designed for
people with a small English vocabulary (e.g. young children).  It was
never intended to be a formal translation for study purposes.

You may argue that the TEV is now outdated.  I'd agree with you.
However, I wouldn't class it as a "shame".  It served the purpose for
which it was designed extremely well at the time when there were no
other real options available.

Cheers,
Andrew Bromage

Subject: Re: Kjv gods word & KJV ONLYISM
Date: 26 Jan 1999 12:06:50 GMT
From:  (Andrew Bromage)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian

G'day all.

In article <>,
   wrote:

>> When you speak of 90 and 85% of manuscripts agreeing with the KJV you
>> refuse to recognize the vast majority of those are late in origin so
>> repeat the copyists' errors from earlier times.

Correct.  The Byzantine text type was not "majority" until the 9th
century, and was unknown before the 5th century (compared with the
Alexandrian texts which go back to the 2nd century).

 writes:

>  Again scribes can't make the same mistakes in different areas.

One or two expanded manuscripts is all it takes.  Look how widespread
the Vulgate was.  (Or, for that matter, how widespread the KJV was, at
least in the English speaking world.)

>   PS FYI the original Westcott Hort theory stated that Lucan of
>      Antioch made a recension of the Greek text and Rabula of
>      Edessa made a recension of the Aramaic, when those two
>      fantacies were shot down, Gorden Fee came up with the
>      scribal tendency fantacy. In other words when the evidence
>      disproves the Westcott Hort Onlyists, they just came up
>      with another fantacy.

Uhm... there's no such thing as a Westcott Hort Onlyist.

The thing about a KJV Onlyist is that they believe:


The Word of God alone = The KJV alone

Now I suspect that you do not fall into this category.  From what you've
said, you're a Majority Text advocate, which means you would probably
happily use, say, the NKJV.

If this is the case, while I disagree with this position, it is at
least intellectually honest, unlike KJV Onlyism.  I'm sure we can
discuss the Majority Text with a little less heat than we seem to
have at the moment...

Cheers,
Andrew Bromage

Subject: Re: Kjv gods word & KJV ONLYISM
Date: 27 Jan 1999 15:06:55 GMT
From:  (Andrew Bromage)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian

G'day all.

 writes:

>  While the nkjv people meant well and maybe so did Westcott, Hort,
>  Bruce Metzger, DA Carson, Gordon Fee and others, I find the evidence
>  shows their scholarship isn't up to the Magisterial Reformers.

OK, this is excellent.  We're in agreement.  We agree that all of the
scholars presented so far had honourable motives, whether or not they
were correct.

Before I respond to the rest of your posting, I'd appreciate an answer
to a few questions, so that I fully understand where you're coming from,
so that we can hopefully find some more common ground:

1.  Do you believe that the KJV has any faults, as a translation?
    By this I mean: textual faults, translation faults, stylistic
    faults or whatever.  I guess the question I'm asking is: Is the
    KJV a faultless translation for someone whose native language
    is Elizabethan English?

2.  Do you believe that a "better" English translation than the KJV
    is possible?  "Better", for this purpose, can be defined as, "a
    more faithful translation for an average English reader of
    today."  The difference between this and the previous question
    is that that this is a question about a typical _modern_ reader,
    not a reader from the 1600s.

3.  Do you believe that the Textus Receptus (choose any edition) or
    the "Majority Text" (e.g. that of Hodges and Farstad) is the more
    pure Greek text?

You don't have to go into any great detail or anything.  I'm just trying
to understand your position in general terms.

God bless.

Cheers,
Andrew Bromage