Rocky Cape Christian Community

Dear John,

Greetings in Jesus, the Living Word!

Since you asked me what I think about the tract you gave me this week on the KJV Bible I will respond, although I have not done so for years. Ordinarily I simply smile, say thank you and drop such tracts (or the books that get mailed to me every so often) into “file thirteen.” But because I know you gave me the tract in all honesty and brotherly kindness, I will respond in the same spirit. I know you will consider what I write and even though you may continue to use the KJV as your translation of choice, you may understand from now on why I do not.

Like a very large castle built on sand, the entire KJV argument rests on false assumptions.

First it rests on the assumption that King James’s translators were able to work from vastly superior or more original manuscripts (in Greek or Hebrew) than anyone else. That is not true.

The Greek text of the New Testament, the so called “Textus Receptus,” used by translators of the KJV Bible (although they by no means translated directly from it) does not come from “Bible Times.” Neither was it a particularly pure or accurate text. Prepared by Erasmus of Rotterdam, it first appeared in 1516—that is, well over one thousand years after the last of the New Testament was written. Erasmus himself knew it contained additions (extra words and phrases put in to “clarify” the text, repeated fragments in the Gospels, some things never appearing in any manuscript at all) and struggled hard to keep the New Testament to its original purity. But the Roman Catholic church to which he belonged would not hear of it, and forced him to include the additions. Some of the Textus Receptus was actually translated from the Latin Catholic Bible back into Greek.

Even then, the Textus Receptus did not stay a uniform text, and some printed versions of it included more of the additions than others. The particular version the KJV translators used is known as the “Bauer Variant.” Not that I blame them for this—it was simply what they had available.

For their Old Testament Hebrew the KJV translators used the Masoretic Text, prepared by openly anti-Christian Jewish scholars long after Jesus’ time. Obviously this was not the “best” Old Testament text, but quite likely the worst! By using this manuscript the KJV translators were able to come up with their strange inconsistencies and paradoxes between the Old and New Testament scriptures. If you ever try looking up verses that New Testament writers quote you will soon notice that they do not seem to match the KJV Old Testament. That is because the New Testament writers used the Septuagint Greek version based on much older Hebrew manuscripts.

So much for that (although many books have been written on the subject of Bible manuscripts and the information regarding them is virtually endless). In the light of known fact I firmly and permanently reject every KJV claim to “superiority.”

Next, the writer of your tract heads into the false assumption that other newer English translations (such as the NIV) deliberately skip parts of the Bible and must therefore be inaccurate, or the result of some wicked plot to overthrow the Word of God.

That is obviously not true. Some of the verses and phrases your tract writer quotes as his “evidence” are simply not repeated two or three times in the newer versions (as they are in the KJV) but left in their original places. Apparently some scribes in the Middle Ages thought the Gospels would read more smoothly if they were more streamlined. So they copied pieces out of Luke’s Gospel into Matthew’s and so on. The Textus Receptus followed those changes. But shall the fact that something is not repeated several times mean it was “dropped out of the Bible”? Or that if it appears only once it is because the translators did not believe in it?

I am sure you know the answer. You also know that if I translated or recopied Peter Riedemann’s work and kept adding little pieces here and there to “make it better” that my work would not be considered superior. It would be rightfully rejected as a corruption of his text and all serious scholars would go by the original, not by what I had done.

That is all the NIV translators, for instance, were trying to do with the Bible. They were just as competent (without a doubt much more so), just as serious, and included many more scholars with many more perspectives than King James’s crew. They also had manuscripts to work with that were over one thousand years older, and much more authentic, than the ones the KJV translators worked from. But even then, to prove that they were not prejudiced or “up to some sinister plot” they included all the Textus Receptus additions in their footnotes.

The third thing your tract writer assumes (falsely) is that actual doctrines or teachings of the Bible are skipped in the newer versions because their translators did not believe in them. That is absolutely untrue.

Not a single teaching, doctrine or idea of the KJV Bible is presented any less forcefully in the NIV or other newer and more accurate versions. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Because of the newer versions’ more readable English, many of the Bible’s teachings are presented even more forcefully within them.

There is no such thing as any heresy on earth that comes from a “modern version” of the Bible. No church has ever divided over issues that became unclear because of the newer English versions, nor has any subject ever come into dispute because of them. The whole idea is a frivolous one and reminds me of nothing else than Henny Penny running about in the barnyard and squawking, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” because an acorn dropped on her head.

You will remember, John, that none of our Anabaptist ancestors had access to the King James Bible. And even though its additions (such as the famous one in 1 John 5:7) were completely unknown to them, they seemed to get along just fine. That their descendants should now pick up on a foreign argument, the American Baptist and Fundamentalist case for the “KJV only,” would no doubt strike Peter Riedemann or Menno Simons as really strange.

The KJV argument has not lent itself to greater unity in the church. Neither would the church be better off if all English speakers read nothing but the KJV. In fact the whole business, as I see it, is only another of the devil’s innumerable plots to set people up against one another over issues with no substance in truth or fact.

And now, I dare not finish without making a few observations from the other side. Most of the KJV’s changes and additions are simply harmless reshufflings of words. The kind of things that happen all the time when we translate from one language into another, or try to put ancient writings into modern speech. I faced a lot of the same while translating Anabaptist texts from German to English for “The Secret of the Strength.”

Under no condition would I place such editorial changes under the curse of “adding onto or taking away from the words of this book.” But a few of the KJV’s additions or slants are not so innocent.

King James I (an openly homosexual man) commissioned a new translation of Scripture as a direct political manoeuvre to force Anglican (English Catholic) supremacy over the Puritans who already had an excellent version of the Bible in their language. For this reason the entire KJ Bible favours the use of Anglican churchly speech (no longer in common use in England when the translation was done) and such words as “bishop” instead of overseer, etc.

What is worse, the KJV Bible includes some distinct errors and misleading statements—“Jesus” instead of Joshua, “angry without a cause,” and the fairy tale about the angel troubling the waters, for instance. None of those things appear in any ancient manuscript, and some of them squarely contradict what the Bible teaches. Since when is it okay to lose your temper except when you have no reason to do so? Since when does God have his angels perform indiscriminate healings on people that are simply quick enough or selfish enough to get there first?   

The greatest error, however, of those that insist on the KJV only, is not textual but doctrinal. It is the doctrinal error of confusing the Word of God (Jesus) with the written word. Yes, we worship the Word of God. But we do not worship the Bible. We do not kiss the Bible, bow down to it, or set it among candles and flowers like the Bible-worshipping Protestants. In fact we consider that idolatry, plain and simple, just like the idolatry of worshipping crosses or holy water or images of the saints.

I want nothing to do with “religious speech” (thees and thous) as opposed to straight-forward English or German, just like we speak it one to another. For as soon as we distance ourselves from Jesus through religious speech and ritual, we lose a crucially important part of our daily brotherly walk with him. He became one of us, not some English knight or nobleman.

So, even though all Baptists and Protestant Fundamentalists in the world may keep to the quaint and sometimes indecent speech of the King James Bible, I choose to read God's words to my children in a language and terms they may respect and understand.  

I am sure you want to do the same.

Yours,

Peter Hoover
3 December 2005