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Why
I Use the King James Version Bible
By
P. E. Huffman I
was preparing for work the other morning and had some extra time, so I visited ninetyandnine.com and read the articles
I felt were disparaging the King James Version
(KJV) of the Bible. This article is my response. (As this is a multi-layered
topic, I've tried to simplify my explanations and must admit there are many
aspects that are quite detailed I left untouched.) Although
I use the KJV for all of my personal study, in this day I believe it's necessary
for a Christian to be familiar with the other translations of the Bible to be an
effective witness. A friend of mine
told me about a former pastor who lives in a predominately Roman Catholic
community. When that pastor goes out door-knocking, instead of bringing along
the KJV, he takes the Catholic version of the Bible that is common to the area.
If he didn’t do this, he would be assured to be rejected 99 percent of the
time because the KJV is a “Protestant” Bible.
This is in keeping with Paul writing that he had to become “...all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”
(1 Corinthians 9:22). So
in a world where there are those that have had some sort of church background,
but have yet to come to the fullness of the truth, it is necessary for us to be
familiar with the other versions of the Bible, if only for the fact that those
with church backgrounds have become biased against the KJV because they have
been taught that it is “too old-fashioned.”
As true believers, we cannot become so dogmatic about the KJV that it
hinders our chances of winning someone. Nevertheless,
for those that discount the value of the KJV for personal and church purposes,
and promote the supposed virtues of the newer English versions, “I have
somewhat against thee.” Please bear with me as I try to explain my reasons. These
newer versions change the Bible in ways other than modernizing the language. We
can see early on in the Bible that it’s Satan’s desire to pervert God’s
word because if he can pervert the word of God, he can cause us to lose our
faith with and in God. ·In
the garden of Eden (Genesis chapters 2-3), the first sin wasn’t the eating of
the fruit, but rather Adam and Eve's doubting God's word when the serpent said
that they would not die if they ate
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
·We
find that after Jesus had fasted in the wilderness for 40 days, Satan came to
the Lord and tempted him three times (Matt. 4, Luke 4).
In one instance Satan tried to distort the psalmist (“For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all
thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot
against a stone.” Psalms 91:11-12) to get Jesus to cast himself from the
pinnacle of the temple. In each of the three temptations our Lord Jesus rebuked
Satan by using the word of God. These
two examples show the importance of having as accurate a translation as
possible. An unperverted translation will help us to recognize error, and it
will help us to fight off the enemy, as Paul exhorted (Ephesians 6). Dr.
Daniel Segraves wrote, “Though there are many translations, there are really
only two Bibles, for there are basically only two texts.”1 Out of the more than 5,000 texts of scripture
found, 80-90 percent are nearly identical, word for word. This group
of texts has been lumped together in what is called the Majority Text. The rest
of the texts have been lumped together into what is called the Minority Text
because of errors, deletions and/or changes made in the text.
The men who translated the KJV used two texts from the majority grouping.
Whereas
most modern day versions of the New Testament have been based on a Greek text
that was formed in the 1880s by F.J.A. Hort and B.F. Westcott, who in turn based
their text on the Minority Text grouping. Of
the texts that Hort and Westcott used, the two that they relied on most heavily
were flawed (one was literally salvaged out of a trash can at a monastery on the
Sinai peninsula, and the other was an obscure text found on the shelves of the
Vatican library in Rome2). There
are many differences between the Majority Text that the KJV is based upon and
the Minority Text that Hort and Westcott produced.
The Minority Text has numerous omissions (among which are; John
7:53-8-11; Mark 16:9-20; Matthew 17:21 and 18:11, Mark 9:44,46; 11:26; 15:28;
Luke 23:17; 24:12; 24:40; John 5:4; Acts 8:37; 9:5-6; 24:6-8; 28:29; Romans
16:24; 1 John 5:7; “plus many other portions of verses, phrases, and words.”3)
In Revelation 22:18-19 God gives a curse on those that add or take away from that particular book. How much more would that be the case for the rest of the Bible? Then
there are disturbing changes that can be found in translations based on the
Hort-Westcott text. ·The
Good News Bible or Today’s English Version eliminates the blood of Christ in
many passages, and instead substitutes the word death. I see a large difference
between blood and death. A person
can die many ways without losing blood. It’s by the Lord’s shed blood that
we have salvation (Colossians 1:14). ·The
New Revised Standard Version, New World Translation and Revised English Bible
take Isaiah 7:14 and discount the prophecy of Mary being a virgin by calling her
a young woman. ·The
New International Version and many others do the same in Luke 2:33 by calling
Joseph Jesus’ father. ·These
same translations take 1 Timothy 3:16, where it says that “God
was manifest in the flesh,” and replaces it with “he,” thereby taking
away from the deity of Jesus. These
are just a few examples of the numerous changes. In fact there are over 5,000
major changes between the Majority Text and the Minority Text. With that many
changes, at least one of them has to be wrong. Both texts cannot be acceptable
because deleting portions of the scripture and changing the meaning of the
scripture is a perversion. In
Galatians 1:8-9 Paul said not once, but twice, that those that pervert the
gospel would be accursed. This
leads to the obvious question: Why would Hort and Westcott, as well as the men
who worked with them, choose to use the minority grouping as opposed to the
majority? Well, even though these men were teachers and held degrees in
theology, all but one refused to believe in the Bible’s infallibility. Many
did not believe that Jesus was God and even a few did not believe in God at all.
Knowing this, we can see why they were quite willing to change the word of God.4 I
have no qualms with trying to modernize the language in the Bible, because I
understand that the old English can be a stumbling block to many. I do take
issue with the modern translations that are based on the Hort-Westcott Greek
text which are in turn based on faulty texts from the Minority Text grouping.
Although there are no modern translations that I'm particularly thrilled with,
the New KJV is probably the most acceptable to me because it is partially based
on the Majority Texts. (As an aside, the New KJV, although purporting itself to
have only modernized the language of the KJV, has also fallen into the trap of
using the Hort-Westcott text over 1,200 times.5)
As
sincere Christians, we can't personally use a corrupt version. As the Old
Testament states, "Buy the truth, and sell it not..." (Proverbs
23:23). We can't settle for any imitation when it comes to the things of God. ninetyandnine.com 2000, ninetyandnine.com -------- P. E. Huffman lives in Missouri. He enjoys spending time with his family, reading,
teaching Bible studies and hiking. He is known for knowing something about
everything but not much about anything.
1.
Segraves, Dr. Daniel, The Search for the
Word of God, Hazelwood: Word Aflame Press, 1982, p.63. 2.
King James Version Bible Translation Errors, http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/kjverror.html 3.
Segraves, Dr. Daniel, The Search for the
Word of God, Hazelwood: Word Aflame Press, 1982, p.92. 4.
Ibid. p.17-29, 155-165. 5.
Fight Back—A Handy Reference for King James Version Bible Believers, http://www.av1611.org/kjv/fight.html
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