The King James Bible is Perfect

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Mr Penfold and Modern Scholarship

In 2001, an Oxfordshire bookseller, Michael J. Penfold (hereafter MJP), wrote and published a tract entitled ‘Is the King James Version Perfect?’ which reflects predominant opinion among modern Bible critics with regard to the perceived imperfection of the Authorised Version. The present response seeks to expose the inadequacies of MJP’s reasoning in order to reveal the weakness of the general position to which he here subscribes. His argument, which is potentially discouraging and damaging to the faith of bible believers, is variously founded on fundamental failures of logic, the misleading selection of data and assumptions which are finally unscriptural.

In his first paragraph, MJP declares his belief that “the methods and manuscripts used and the learning of the men who translated it [the AV] were superior and better than the more popular newer versions such as the N.I.V, Good News, Living Bible and the Message.” The tract repeatedly undermines this claim however, since the changes he recommends are the very changes made by the translators of the NIV, Good News and Living Bible. For example, under the heading ‘Imperfections in the KJV’, MJP lists five instances of ‘erroneous’ translations. These five instances involve about ten Bible references. The chart below lists these texts and indicates the correspondence between MJP’s criticisms and the translations in ‘Bibles’ he says are the results of inferior scholarship.

* these are translated omitting the pronoun.

I am not here discussing the pros and cons of the above variations.  The table given simply illustrates that after telling us that the AV translators were superior to modern translators MJP agrees with the latter in almost every reference he cites.  I will take issue with some of the so-called ‘errors’ below.

MJP is not satisfied with the KJV.  In his tract on the NIV and GNB1 he expressed his disapproval of these versions as well, even though they often include the changes of which he approves. MJP, like the majority of modern scholars, would leave the modern Church without a Bible it can wholly trust.

What alternative does MJP offer us instead of the ‘KJV only’ view?  He offers us the prevailing opinion amongst modern scholars who, according to the start of his tract, were inferior to the AV translators in their learning.  His, and their view, is that God has preserved His word not in any single manuscript but across all the manuscripts.  That is, some manuscripts are right in one place and others in another.  Thus, he claims, God has preserved His word.  But it is obvious that such preservation is useless for practical purposes.  Nobody knows which are the correct and which are the incorrect readings by MJP’s method, as modern scholars have unwittingly demonstrated.  Take, for example, the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament2 by Metzger, Aland, Wikgren, Black and Martini3 - the Greek text, that is, which was used for the NIV. In the Introduction to the second edition (1968) we read:

“By means of the letters A, B, C and D, enclosed within “braces” [  ] at the beginning of each set of textual variants, the Committee has sought to indicate the relative degree of certainty, arrived at on the basis of internal considerations as well as of external evidence, for the reading adopted as the text. The letter A signifies that the text is virtually certain, while B indicates that there is some degree of doubt. The letter C means that there is a considerable degree of doubt whether the text or the apparatus4 contains the superior reading, while D shows that there is a very high degree of doubt concerning the reading for the text.” [emphases mine]5

Here are five modern scholars, who cannot tell you what is, and what is not, the word of God. One example of their ‘virtual certainty’ is the omission of Mark 16:9-20, alongside which they place an ‘A’, and yet Burgon provided strong evidence more than 100 years ago that the last twelve verses of Mark are authentic as found in the Authorised Version6.

Faith in a perfect Bible is consistent with the promises of God.  MJP’s position is not.

True and False Views of Perfection

MJP derides those who adhere to the ‘KJV only’ position. “They claim they have [the perfect word of God] in English!” he exclaims, dismissing their view by asserting that “Ultimately it is by faith” that they make this claim. He continues: “By faith they ‘believe’ that God supernaturally guided the KJV translators to pick the right Greek and Hebrew words and translate them perfectly every single time, despite having several options to choose from in both cases throughout all 66 books of the Bible.” Then he has the audacity to ask “Is this a logical position?”. Let us first look at MJP’s own logic. His first strategy is to seek to undermine the KJV only position by arguing that it is ultimately faith-based. Apparently faith in God to fulfil his promises is unwelcome in this debate.  His italicisation of “every single time” suggests an incredulous and dismissive attitude towards the belief that God could inspire translators to make a correct translation on each occasion. As he helpfully points out, there were “several options to choose from” throughout the translation process. So God can number the hairs of our head, but not distinguish between contrasting manuscripts. MJP does not explain how God could carry out the threats of Revelation 22: 18,19, if He is unable to know exactly who changes manuscripts and precisely how they change them. MJP’s own logic fails to take into account the difference between the day to day translation of humanly authored translations and the translation of the divinely inspired word of God.

MJP attempts to prove the ‘KJV only’ position illogical by showing the differences between different editions of the Authorised Version. His handling of this issue is subject to a significant distortion of the facts. In most cases, the dates given by MJP as ‘revisions’ are no more than reprints, either to meet public demand or to correct printers’ errors such as those he lists. And his point that “the 1850 KJV differs from the1611 edition in 75,000 details, 421 of which are noticeable to the ear when it is read aloud?” is largely self-defeating. Evidently 74,579 of the differences you would not hear if the 1850 or the 1611 were read aloud to you? MJP bandies about the figure “75,000” as if there were alarming and momentous revisions being made, but the changes are inconsequential. It has been observed that “according to the men that collated the versions and dealt with them, the variations were just under 24,000 (this includes chapter heading changes and marginal notes), and not one of them was a rejection of the Received Greek Text of the New Testament, or the Received Hebrew Text of the Old Testament. Not one of them was an intentional departure from the original words as written by the AV translators….”7 The changes are not changes to the translation therefore.

There is a similar misrepresentation of the facts in the eight examples MJP provides to indicate “where your KJV [i.e. 1850 edition] has added to, changed or contradicted the 1611 edition”. All these examples were corrected by 1638, though he gives the impression that these changes were on-going right up until 1850. Again, the eight examples he lists were printing errors and were not the result of theological revision.

So MJP’s argument that some of these editions must be corrupt rests not on errors of translation or theology within the AV but on slight differences of spelling, printing etc. It is based on the fact that difference must mean imperfection, as shown by his central argument here: “Was the KJV the infallible, inerrant and perfect word of God? If so, the modern KJV you use is corrupt. However, if the modern KJV is the perfect word of God, the 1611 edition was corrupt.” He proceeds to assert that: “If the 1611 KJV is perfect, whatever existed before that was imperfect and therefore could not be called the infallible, inerrant word of God.” The logic of both of these arguments relies on an unscriptural idea of perfection, whereby once the perfect word of God is identified, all else is imperfect or corrupt.

In Jeremiah ch.36, Jeremiah was told by the Lord to write a second roll of his words because the king had burned the first. About this second roll we read in Jer 36:32 that “Baruch…wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words.”[my emphasis]. By MJP’s reasoning above, if the second roll was perfect, whatever existed before that was imperfect.  Yet both rolls were the perfect word of God, and they differed.

MJP’s readers need to be aware that his concept of a perfect Bible is not a Biblical one. He supposes that God Himself is bound to adhere verbatim to “the original manuscripts” and that He cannot make a statement a second time in different words. The illegitimacy of these assumptions is easily demonstrated by the Scriptures. For example, Isaiah 7:14 reads: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Matthew’s quotation of it in 1:23 reads: “Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” These are both scripture, but words are changed and added. According to MJP’s approach, one quotation must be an error. Also, Micah 5:2 reads, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel.” Matthew quotes it in 2:6. “And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.” Again, according to MJP’s notion of perfection, one of these must be wrong. Dozens of such examples could be given. God gave both the Old and New Testaments and often changed His words. God is not bound by the kind of rules for perfection that MJP asserts.

But MJP doubts the sanctity of the subsequent Word that is the KJV, as evidenced by his willingness to propose alteration to its contents. In his second paragraph he writes, “According to the ‘KJV only’ theory, any old fashioned words in the KJV must be explained by the use of an English dictionary… The simpler solution – updating words whose meanings have changed – would be wrong, because it would imply the KJV was not perfect…”. We are here criticized for directing English speaking people to an English dictionary for old words that God gave the world in an English Bible, by a man who would take us back to the Greek lexicon. For those wanting to update the English would first consult a Greek or Hebrew text, would they not? Most English speaking Christians could not hold a Greek lexicon right side up. This is one reason why God had it translated into English for us.

MJP’s suggestion that updating words whose meanings have changed would be a simpler solution, seems to overlook important considerations. Namely, why do the meanings of words change and who changes them? Is it not most likely, in view of the Bible’s description of fallen mankind, that the trend of such changes will be away from words that give offence to sinners. I am confident that this is often the case but the field of enquiry is too broad to enter into here.

It will perhaps suffice to offer Biblical precedent for the rejection of updating archaisms in favour of glossing them. In 1 Samuel 9:11, the question is asked, “Is the seer here?”. But what is a seer? Verse 9 informs the reader, “he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.” A seer, then, is a prophet. It is important to notice that at the time I Samuel was written, the word “seer” had become outdated. But the divinely inspired writer included the old word, when he could have updated the language, preferring instead to explain the meaning.

This is indicative of a common trait in the Authorised Version of the scriptures explaining their own words. The KJV is its own best dictionary. Where does one learn what marriage is? Or what a Christian is? Or what sin is? Not from the dictionary primarily, but from the Bible. The Authorised Version often defines its own words.8 It has the function of a dictionary built in. For example, 2 Kings 9:26 “…cast him into the plat of ground…” What is a plat? We are told in verse 25, “…cast him in the portion of the field.” It means portion.

This understanding establishes a further means of testing MJP’s notion of perfection against scriptural warrant because it encourages us to search the scriptures for a Biblical definition of the word “perfect”. The KJV reveals that the word contains several senses. According to the way in which scripture defines it, the word ‘perfect’ in the Bible means, just, faithful, upright, having integrity, and being mature. The following texts support the many aspects of this definition.

Just

Deut 25:15 “But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have.”

Faithful

Deut 18:13 “Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God.” Read this in context, vv9-14

2 Chron 19:9 “And he charged them, saying, Thus shall ye do in the fear of the LORD, faithfully, and with a perfect heart.”

Upright

1 Kings 11:4 “…his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.”

Compare this with:

1Kings 9:4 “And if thou wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness…”

See also the text and margin at Gen 6:9 & Gen 17:1

Integrity  

See 1 Kings 9:4 &11:4 above

Job 2:3 “…Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity,..”

Integrity means wholeness. When the Lord Jesus says, “The scripture cannot be broken,” he speaks of its integrity.

This is the meaning in the much misunderstood Matt 5:48, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” It means here not having a double standard in our dealings with others. This is a further example of the A.V. glossing its own words without the need of a lexicon or dictionary.

Mature

Isaiah 18:5 “For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening….”

Eph 4:13,14 “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. That we henceforth be no more children….”

Biblical perfection includes not only all of these many senses, but also suggests that that which is perfect is acceptable to God. Leviticus 22:21 makes this clear. “….it shall be perfect to be accepted…”[my emphasis].

The Authorised Version meets all of the above criteria: it is acceptable to God; it is perfect. Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Tim 3:16,17, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect…”[my emphasis]. If we do not have a perfect Bible we cannot hope to be perfect. 

So Called Imperfections

MJP then lists what he claims are “imperfections, mistakes and erroneous translations” in the KJV. These are, however, only examples of translations which do not concur with his seemingly ill-informed, personal preferences. There is no basis for his claims that these are obvious errors, as the following discussions exemplify.

1) MJP complains of the AV translators calling the Holy Spirit ‘it’ in John 1:32, Rom 8:16&26 and 1 Pet 1:11.

Having rightly informed us that the nouns and pronouns are neuter, he writes that these nouns & pronouns “do not demand the use of ‘it’ in English”. MJP objects here to a literal translation; insisting that the translation should be interpretive because the Holy Spirit is a person, but when he comes to his later point concerning “Let it not be” he tells us this is an error because it is not a literal translation.  It is clearly acceptable at times to translate literally and at others interpretively.  MJP inadvertently agrees with this but expects us to follow his choices and not the Bible God has blessed for 400 years. MJP would have us follow him or whoever he may recommend, but how does an unlearned believer know who is the best Greek scholar?  He doesn’t.  But God does, and has been blessing their work, His word, for centuries.  Heb 5:4 I believe has equal application to Bible translators, “And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.” MJP adjusts his Bible to agree with his doctrine.  God expects us to adjust our doctrine to agree with His Bible.9

2) MJP objects to “Paraphrasing the Greek words mee ginomai as “God forbid”- rather than giving their literal meaning “Let it not be”.

To begin with, Mee ginomai does not mean, nor has it ever meant, “Let it not be”.  It is first person.  The Greek texts actually read “mee genoito” - third person. So MJP is offering himself as the final arbiter in determining the correct renderings of the word of God and yet makes the above error in a six-page tract.

Even allowing for MJP’s mistake, his argument is ill-founded. He claims, “The word ‘God’ is not a translation of any Greek word in this case. Thus it is not a ‘perfect’ translation.” While we might again take issue with MJP’s use of the word “perfect”, even in his sense his argument is illogical. Quite simply, to argue that a translation cannot be perfect if it contains words which are not literal translations of a word in the original is fundamentally incorrect. Burgon rightly stresses the need to convey English idiom in translation, in his critique of the Revised Version10:

“Now, that we may not be misunderstood, we admit at once that, in teaching boys how to turn Greek into English, we insist that every tense shall be marked by its own appropriate sign. There is no telling how helpful it will prove in the end, that every word shall at first have been rendered with painful accuracy. Let the Article be [mis-] represented – the Prepositions caricatured –  the Particles magnified, - let the very order of the words at first, (however  impossible) be religiously retained. Merciless accuracy having been in this way acquired, a youth has to be untaught these servile habits. He has to be  reminded of the requirements of the English idiom, and speedily becomes aware that the idiomatic rendering of a Greek author into English, is a higher achievement by far, than his former slavish endeavour always to render the same word and tense in the same slavish way.

“But what supremely annoys us in the work just now under review is, that the schoolboy method of translation already noticed is therein exhibited in constant operation throughout….We are never permitted to believe that we are in the company of scholars who are altogether masters of their own language. Their solicitude ever seems to be twofold:- (1) To exhibit a singular indifference to the proprieties of English speech, while they maintain a servile adherence ….to the Greek:- (2) Right or wrong, to part company from William Tyndale and the giants who gave us our “Authorised Version”.”

MJP is guilty of making the same schoolboy error as West-cott and Hort. Burgon had already dealt with this particular point of translation: “In ver. 12 (Matt. 2) the RV is careful to print ‘of God’ in italics, where italics are not necessary: seeing that χρηματισθεντες implies ‘being warned of God’ (as the translators of 1611 were well aware.)”.11

The contextual justification for the translation as it stands in the KJV has been further established by Ruckman: “…Who is it that lets things “be, or not be?” Who is it that can let a thing happen, or prevent it from happening?  Are we to assume a converted Orthodox Jewish rabbinical scholar (Phil. 3) wouldn’t have THAT in mind when he said “Let it not be!”?

“…If you were a Bible-believing Christian, you would know that it was a PRAYER, as well as a denial.  Paul is asking God to forbid such a thing from ever happening.”12

3) MJP writes, “Missing the deity of Christ in Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1. Through ignorance of the ‘Granville Sharp Rule’, which was not defined until the late 1700’s, the KJV reads, “God and our Saviour Jesus Christ,” rather than the correct “our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

It will perhaps be helpful to give a brief description of the Granville-Sharp Rule first of all because MJP gives no details of it. James White, like MJP, an opponent of KJV onlyism, gives a brief and suitable definition. “Granville-Sharp’s rule states that when you have two nouns, which are not proper names (such as Cephas, or Paul, or Timothy), which are describing a person, and the two nouns are connected by the word “and”, and the first noun has the article (“the”) while the second does not, both nouns are referring to the same person. In our texts, this is demonstrated by the words “God” and “Saviour” at Titus 2.13 and 2 Peter 1.1. “God” has the article, it is followed by the word for “and” and the word “Saviour” does not have the article. Hence, both nouns are being applied to the same person, Jesus Christ.”13 MJP writes “through ignorance of the Granville Sharp Rule … the KJV reads” etc. This implies that divergence from Granville Sharp’s rule, whenever it is applicable, must result in incorrect translation. Are there no other considerations which might justify departure from it? I believe there is one such very important consideration. It is the employment in scripture of the figure of speech called hendiadys.

E W Bullinger, describes hendiadys as “Two words used, but one thing meant. …The two words are of the same parts of speech, ie. Two nouns (or two verbs) always joined together by the conjunction “and”.14

Examples of the figure hendiadys in the AV from both Testaments are:

Jer 36:27 ‘…after that the king had burned the roll and the words which Baruch wrote..”

Dan 4:13 ‘….behold a watcher and a holy one came down.”

Zeph 1:16 ‘A day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities…’

Matt 21:5 ‘…sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass,’

James 1:27 ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this…’

The KJV translators have simply preserved the Greek idiom in the verses about which MJP here complains. The KJV translation, “God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” in Titus 2.13 is an hendiadys as is 2 Peter 1.1

MJP is not alone in his assertion that the KJV translators erred because they did not know the Granville-Sharp Rule. Modern Scholarship generally agrees with him here. They tell us that the fruit of this KJV ‘error’ is to miss or obscure the deity of Christ. However if we turn to Ephesians 5.5 in some modern translations we find:

NASB:              “in the kingdom of Christ and God”

NIV:                  “in the kingdom of Christ and of God”

Good News:       “in the kingdom of Christ and of God”

New English:      “in the kingdom of Christ and of God”

In these instances, they have not followed Granville-Sharp’s rule themselves. They have left the text as though different persons are meant. By their own rules should they not have translated, “the kingdom of Christ our God”? If it be replied that the word “our” is not in the Greek Text, that did not stop them adding it in James 1.27.

The translation given to us by the KJV in Titus 2.13 and 1 Peter 1.1 is a literal translation. It also preserves the figure hendiadys. The modern translations frequently omit Greek and Hebrew words and remove the figure hendiadys. At times they translate literally and at times interpretively and criticise the KJV translators for doing the same. MJP also has done this in the tract under discussion. Modern translators add words and delete words and criticise the KJV translators for doing the same. MJP is in bad company. Evil communications corrupt good manners.

Having now answered three of the so-called imperfections claimed by MJP, I trust it is clear that MJP is simply giving us his preferences. Since the publication of the Holy Bible in 1611, so-called scholars have ceaselessly pointed out its ‘imperfections’. Ruckman, aware of this, makes a telling observation:

“Why has no one produced an inerrant translation in 380 years if they KNEW the errors contained in the Authorised Version?  Did you ever think about that?  They are still “working at it,” but still confessing they cannot produce a perfect translation.  Why not, if they know where the imperfections were in the previous ones?  Do you mean to tell me that 3,000 plus saved men, with all of the “best and oldest manuscripts” and “Dead Sea Scrolls” and “better knowledge of Hebrew and Greek” all working together, cannot produce an inerrant Bible?  WHY NOT?  THEY WERE THE ONES WHO PROFESSED TO HAVE ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE TO FIND THE ERRORS IN THE ONE GOD GAVE THEM.  Surely, if they can spot an error, they can correct it, can they not?  They made more then 35,000 corrections in the Authorised Version – without PERFECTING IT?  Then what was the point in correcting it? Seventy Bibles full of  “corrections” in eighty years, 120 bibles with “corrections” in 100 years?, and THE CORRECTIONS HAVE NOT ALL BEEN MADE YET?”15

The ‘KJV only’ position is the Bible believing position.

MJP writes in his fourth paragraph, “KJV only advocates do not claim to have the perfect word of God in the original languages.” This is not exclusively true. According to the scriptural definition of the word “perfect”, the perfect word of God can be found in those copies of the Masoretic Hebrew and Greek Textus Receptus that God has honoured. MJP later in his leaflet asks which edition of the Textus Receptus. The answer is all those editions God was pleased to honour including the 1598 edition of Beza, which was followed by the AV translators. In the entire New Testament text the AV translators departed from Beza’s text only 190 times and none of these changes were of doctrinal significance. The kinds of differences between the Beza and the texts chosen by the translators include such changes as the spelling of ‘Eunice’ in 2 Tim 1:5, the addition of the Greek definite article before ‘synagogue’ in Mark 1:21, the addition of the Greek definite article before ‘father’ in Eph 5:31 etc. FHA Scrivener has listed all 190 departures from Beza.16 These are changes are only problematic if you retain MJP’s unscriptural definition of ‘perfect’.

Other MJP Complaints

On MJP’s fourth page we read: “When you examine an original 1611 KJV, it immediately strikes you that, whatever the ‘KJV only’ people think, its actual translators did not believe they had picked exactly the right word or phrase in every case.”  Ruckman writes, “MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE and JUDE did not profess to be “inerrant” before or after writing what they wrote.  …There is not one verse in any translation of any edition of any Bible from any set of manuscripts on this earth where the original author of Esther, the Proverbs, Jonah, Mark, 1 Peter, Joshua, or 2 Samuel ever professed to be INSPIRED, INFALLIBLE OR INERRANT.”17 Because the translators never professed inerrancy does not mean the KJV is not inerrant any more than are the books of the Bible listed above.

We read, “Samuel Gipp, a radical KJV only author, asserts that if a Russian wants to read the perfect, inerrant and infallible word of God, he has to learn English and read the KJV.”

We reply; MJP, a radical scholarship only author, asserts that if a Russian wants to read the perfect, inerrant and infallible word of God, he must learn Hebrew & Greek and read what was originally written.  MJP does not tell us where we can find what was originally written.

On his last page, MJP writes, “What use is a ‘perfect’ English translation if you can’t understand parts of it!” He then quotes 2 Cor 6:11-13 saying, “What does this mean?”

Has he never read 2 Peter 3:15&16?

“…our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to be understood…”

Has he never read Isa 55:8&9?

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Has he never read Proverbs 8:8&9?

“All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing froward or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge.”

“The AV is too hard to understand” is the same vacuous prattle we have been hearing from bible translators for at least fifty years.

MJP’s Position

Having gone to considerable trouble to warn God’s people that the AV is not perfect, we expect MJP to tell us where the word of God is which God has promised to preserve.  He tells us in his final paragraph “The word of God exists wherever a faithful translation is made of what was originally written”.  Which begs the question, on whose grounds is faithfulness to be determined? MJP? AT Robertson? Metzger? The NIV Committee?  Faithful on whose grounds? Don Carson? Kenneth Barker? J. B. Phillips? Faithful on whose grounds? How about faithful on the grounds of the 47 men behind the KJV?

If we are to locate the word of God, then, according to MJP, we must have access to what was originally written. But modern scholarship is in complete disarray as to the identity of the original writings, hence the need for the UBS editors to indicate relative degrees of (un)certainty. Here are the opinions of some twentieth century scholars:18

“Rendall Harris (1908) said that the New Testament is more ‘unsettled’ after Westcott and Hort (1884. C.T) than before. Kirsopp Lake (1941) said that it is quite unlikely we shall ever know the ‘original forms’ of the Gospels.  KW Clark (1950) said that the editing of the ‘original manuscripts’ is extremely elusive and obscure… H Greeven (1960) said that the nature of the original New Testament text IS and always will be “hypotheses,”…R.M. Grant (1963) said that the recovery of what the New Testament writers wrote is ‘well nigh impossible’

If someone were to find all of the original autographs bound together in one volume, I believe that modern ‘Christian’ scholarship would still say they could not possibly be the originals. See Genesis 3:1 for an example.

Conclusion

Modern scholars talk as if God died when the New Testament canon was completed. God not only gave the Scriptures, He watched over them to preserve faithful copies and He called and oversaw the translators of our KJV. He is watching over His word right now.

Anyone depressed and discouraged by reading MJP’s tract might be encouraged and refreshed to read such Scriptures as Psalm 12:6,7  “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.  Thou shalt keep them O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” or Matt 24:35 “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” or John 17:8 “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me…” or 1Pet 1:23 “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” [my emphasis]

Our position is that God knows what a faithful translation looks like and God knows what He wrote in ‘the originals’. He has given all of this to us in the KJV 1611.  Modern scholarship simply doubts this, but can prove nothing.

MJP’s tract may appear convincingly argued, but it does not stand up to rigorous interrogation in terms of its logic, nor when it is measured against the word of God. In particular his restrictive and reductive definition of perfection is unscriptural, principally because he uses it to disqualify any new appearance of the word of God subsequent to the ‘original writings’. Similarly, his stated preference for updating the Bible is at odds with scriptural precedent. His reasoning is flawed when he presents human obstacles to the ease of translation in order to suggest the unlikeliness of perfection in translation, because, according to scripture, the translation process is subject to divine oversight. The alleged imperfections in the KJV are just instances of personal dissatisfaction with the translation, often founded on limited bases and even sometimes inconsistent with each other. Finally, MJP is unable to direct us to the infallible, inerrant word of God, other than to imply that we must accept the guidance of scholarship such as his, as it is found in this tract, in order to locate the occasions of ‘faithful translation’. But on the evidence of this tract, faith in guidance such as his might not be rewarded.

“…but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.” Isa 66:2

Colin Tyler

June 2002

Copied by permission.  All rights are reserved to Colin Tyler.  Hard copies of the leaflet can be obtained from Colin Tyler, 48 Greenwood, Yardley, Birmingham, B25 8YU, England.  If you wish, you may send an email to Colin Tyler.

 

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