Well, now. First, I would absolutely
love to see any sort of theological evidence that King Jamess Men were in fact kept inerrant in their translation. Second, if they indeed were, would that not be sufficient evidence for everyone to convert to Anglicanism, being as how that is the one church which produced an inspired, inerrant version of Scripture?
Second, its important to recognize that
any version of Scripture depends on translators choices. Take the first two verses of Genesis as examples. The Hebrew for the first verse is grammatically a subordinate clause, a time-placement statement on the order of, When the KJV was translated,
. The traditional way to render it into English is In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, an independent stat ement. But that
does ignore the fact that the original Hebrew is grammatically connected with verse 2. Then we have reference to the Ruach Adonai hovering over the waters. But ruach is one of those words with several related meanings. Is that Gods Holy Spirit (KJV), or is it a wind sent by God (some modern versions)?
Both are literally accurate translations, but which is chosen carries more than a little theological weight.
Back in post #13, there was a complaint about the abbreviation of the Lords Prayer in Luke 11 in the NIV. But what most people dont realize is that several passages that everybody knows the familiar wording of are taken from Matthew, like the Lords Prayer, the Beatitudes, the Parable of the Talents, and that Luke includes stories when Jesus taught the same basic topic at a different time and place, with different wording and a somewhat different point. The KJV
amplifies the literal Greek of the Lords Prayer in Luke 11 with wording from Matthew. In Luke, Jesus boils down the response to teach us how to pray even further, giving us the rudiments of what a good prayer ought to be. Its not the version we all memorized, its even shorter, as an example of how to pray.
Now, Lynn73 very reasonably brings up the Textus Receptus. And I think this is important for everyone to grasp. You dont need to buy into either theory of manuscript evaluation, but in your choice of reading and study Bible you should be familiar with both. The Textus Receptus was the best possible reading of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament available to the scholarship of Renaissance times, and was founded on what the majority of the available manuscripts said. But scholars since, especially with the Dead Sea Scrolls and Oxyrhynchus papyri now available, have operated on a different theory. A lot of older manuscripts were lost with the overrunning of the Near East by the Arabs in the Islamic conquest. This meant that the majority of manuscripts were the later,
minusule script ones which were largely later copies of a few basic versions. And
all manuscripts tend to have copyists errors creeping in, simply because they
were copies. So modern scholarship has tended to emphasize the oldest manuscripts, particularly the half dozen very early
uncial codices and, where available, the Dead Sea and Oxyrhynchus texts.
This is particularly useful because annotations and Scribal glosses found their way into the Received Text. The three witnesses passage naming the Trinity in 1 John 5:7 is an example of this. Its part of the canon of Scripture, and in no way am I refuting its accuracy. But its clear from the evidence that it was originally an annotation by a scribe, not a part of what St. John himself wrote.
Im not pushing either theory as to which is most accurate. (I tend to prefer the modern one, myself, but I can respect someone reasonably holding to the Textus Receptus after knowing the facts.) The point is that you should not be misled by polemicists putting down one process or the other, but make your choice as to which to prefer based on informed reasoning.
The KJV is
literarily one of the great masterpieces of the English language. No doubt about that. That its the ideal
study Bible is quite a different question.
drummer4him said:
I am so sick and tired of watered-down,humanized,swindling church theism.
Thats a truly bizarre sentence. Since theism means the belief that there is a God who is active in the world He created, I would hope we are
all theists. Since Jesuss teachings about how to treat ones fellow man are the basis of ethical Christian humanism, Id hope that we are all Christian humanists following His commands. And its my experience that watered-down usually actually means People who focus on Gods mercy and forgiveness, and Christs command not to sit in judgment over your brothers salvation, as opposed to the judgmental and condemnatory Gospel that I like to preach.
I personally dont care for the NIV. A combination of the NKJV, the NRSV, and the New Jerusalem Bibles are what I use for study, tapping into the online Youngs Literal when I have a question about what a passage originally meant.
danlutgen said:
King James was a heritic and used no Bible. Why is it then the King James Version?
Whaaah? King James was a devout member of the Church of England (preferring it over the Scots Kirk) and something of a scholar by the standards of his time. And it was by his command that a single version to replace the questionable scholarship of the Geneva, Tyndale, Great and other Bibles up to that point was produced by the leading Bible scholars of his day. There
is some question about his morality, but he certainly
tried to be a good Christian king.
