Knurd

Thanks for the information, Yuri.
Obviously, I have a lot to learn. I find these discussions fascinating because of the limitations of my former fundamentalist viewpoint. I was amazed that you said some of the same things about the W&H text that my fundy pastors claimed. It's a lesson to myself: The claims of fundamentalists are NOT automatically wrong (although still suspect). My new mantra is, keep an open mind and verify, keep an open mind and verify... :rolling:

W&H greek only? Wow, I could have sworn that my fundy masters told me that it was the entire bible.

Since I no longer believe that the Bible is the plenary, verbally inspired, infallible, Word of God, I doubt that the text really matters, at least like I once thought it mattered. But still, I find it intellectually interesting, and I care from that viewpoint.

I too like the KJV better than the new translations. Partly because I’m most familiar with that translation, partly because of my subjective feeling that it is written in elegant and poetic language.
Thanks again!

andrewcriddle

Dispensationalism is not intrinsically committed to the KJV.

John Nelson Darby himself produced his own translation of the NT based on a (moderately) critical text, in an attempt to improve on perceived inaccuracies in the KJV.

Andrew Criddle

Vorkosigan

Not in Britain, Andrew. In the US Dispensationalism is the result of the work of Schofield. Who links it inextricably to the KJV. Even when they are whackjobs, Brits are still more sensible than we are...<sigh>

johntheapostate

Here is Ecclesiastes 3:18-21 from the NIV "I also thought, As for men, God tests them so they may see that they are like the animals. Mans fate is like the animals, the same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath, man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place, all come from dust and to dust they will return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth." The author expresses some doubt as to the fate of the soul, yet this is not unusual in the Jewish mind of the time. In the NIV the last verse flows as a natural progression from the earlier verses. But in the KJV the last verse has been altered in a subtle but profound way. Here is Ecclesiastes 3:21 from the KJV " Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth" The verse goes from doubt as to the fate of the spirit in the NIV to an indirect affirmation of the spirits desteny with just a manipulation of a few words. The meaning of the verse goes from something that represented the Jewish thinking of its day to something that was compatible with a well defined doctrine of the soul. In my mind this verse points to an editing change by the KJV translators or to a preference for a text that allready had the change made. I guess that all this only shows that even when translating religous text the biases of the translators is incorperated in the text. As an atheist I have trouble understanding how anyone can place so much trust in a document that bears the evedence of willfull tampering.

Dargo

King Jimmy Onlyism seems to be most common among independent fundamentalist baptist churches. These churches left the Southern Baptist convention in the 1930's because they believed it was too liberal. In the years since, there have been newer IFB churches started which were never part of the SBC. These churches seem to be the most tradition-bound and rule-anal of all American Chrisitians.

I can see two significant advantages to KJV-Onlyism that it's advocates would probably never admit. It's archair languages helps to mask "difficult passages" (fundy speak for errors, contradictions, and other embarassing things), and it also discourages people from actually reading the damn thing and noticing such difficulties.

Clivedurdle

The other main "users" of the KJV are pentecostals and televangelists who commonly use Dake.

Dake

Knurd

I'll verify that from personal experience. Rules out the wazoo, but claim that "We're not legalistic!"

I've never considered that, but you are right. If the KJV bible doesn't say what they like, they say, "The word XXXXX in this verse is an old english word that means YYYYYY." You almost have to be raised on the KJV to read it very much. Most people don't do more than study the proof texts.

On the other hand, among churches that use various versions, I wonder how much searching among translations is done to give the right slant to support a sermon.

BN@Home

Say "Oh really?" and then ask them if they mean the King James-the-First version or the King James-the-Sixth. Believe me, they don't even know their own history, there's absolutely no chance they will know ours.

Boro Nut

Yuri Kuchinsky

You're welcome, Knurd!

Well, for great many years I've been a very conventional 'liberal' in NT studies, so I saw the fundamentalists as the 'bad guys' -- just a bunch of irrational fanatics... And my view of the KJV was accordingly quite negative -- this was just a relic of the past.

But now, after I really went into textual criticism seriously, I see all these things in a very different light. Now, I see the KJV folks as really deserving more respect... It's the mainstreamers who seem irrational to me now!

Why? Because why did they abandon the traditional text so easily? Someone just walked into their churches, and said, "Give up your Bible, we have a better one for you". And the so-called 'scientific' arguments they used for the traditional text being 'bad' are mostly fraudulent (as I see it now)!

So it's the KJV folks, who refused to be persuaded by these mostly fraudulent arguments on the part of the Westcott & Hort drones, that seem entirely rational and consistent to me now. The other side, who bought Westcott & Hort claptrap, seem to me now as a bunch of suckers and fools!

I see this whole Westcott & Hort thing now as a con...

It matters as historical testimony, as a precious record of some momentous historical events that unfolded 2000 years ago and later, and changed the world forever. For me, Bible is history. It is also anthropology, because it tells us about how people lived in ancient times, and what they thought important and unimportant.

As a historian, as someone cares deeply about what happened in the past, it's a very important document. And of course it's also a work of literature, of poetry...

There are lots of reasons to study the Bible, other than seeing it as the book of rules about what to do and what not to do, or what to think or not to think.

Cheers,

Yuri

JoeWallack

JW:
The Bible in English by David Daniell has many interesting facts:

1) The original 1611 KJV was not designated "Authorised".

2) The number of Translators is disputed.

3) Exactly who translated what is unclear. This leaves KJV inerrantists in the comical position of believing the KJV is inerrant without knowing who wrote it (As Yeshu Barra said, "Sounds like Deja Jew all over again.").

4) Hugh Broughton, the best Hebrew scholar in Europe at the time in Daniell's opinion (of course this is nonsense as all the best Hebrew scholars would have been Hebrews. More on this later.) was not chosen for no apparent reason.

5) Originally, King James, easily the wealthiest person in England, appealed to the Bishops of England for financial support for the KJV which they largely ignored.

6) Per their instructions the KJV was not to be a new translation (as the Fundies claim) but a Revision of the Bishops Bible.

7) Robert Barker, who had the patent for printing the Bishops Bible, provided 40 large Churchbible Bishops Bibles for the translation teams to work from.

8) As soon as he starting printing KJV's Robert Barker went bankrupt (The Curse Of The KJV - HaShem's Revenge).

9) Barker lost his patent as a result of bankruptcy but later sued a successor, Norton, to regain his printing rights. The two became related by marriage but this didn't prevent Barker from having Norton put in prison related to the litigation (The Curse).

10) No one knows what the original KJV was. In other words, it's unknown exactly what was provided to Barker in order to print the first KJV. It may have been destroyed by the Great Fire (The Curse). Again, this puts KJV inerrantists in the comical position of claiming that an unknown is inerrant.

11) The seventeenth century saw England suffer three (sign if the trinity?) of its greatest disasters of all time, Bubonic Plague, The Great Fire and the defeat of the English Fleet at Medway by the Dutch (The Curse). See next.

12) Despite an excellent book Daniell is still a Liar For Jesus, heaping undeserved praise on a translation which he as much as anyone demonstrates is clearly one of the worst of modern times. What he fails to mention regarding 4) Hugh Broughton is that not only would Broughton not have been considered a top Hebrew scholar by Jewish standards but that at the time of the KJV mistranslation there were no Jewish Bible scholars in England or any other type of Jews there. They'd been previously banned! So the KJV mistranslators, despite acknowledging the superiority of Jewish maintained versions of the Jewish Bible over Christian ones and the difficulty and necessity of understanding the great Jewish commentators on the Jewish Bible like Rashi, Ibn Ezra and Kimshi had no Jewish translators available to help correct the corrupt translation of the the Jewish Bible portion of The Bishop's Bible. A dishonest omission by Daniell.



Joseph

"King James Was Here" - Graffiti written on an old public bathhouse at Chelsea.
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