3 Ways to Engage Modern Translation Onlyism

WM 100 offers a review and critique of the article and closes with a suggestion of three ways to respond to those who suggest Christians should only use modern translations. Here are my notes for those three suggestions:

First: If they are willing to listen and understand, help them to understand the difference between a truly heretical KJV-Onlyist position and a KJV preferentialist position. Help them also to understand those who are Majority Text advocates and Confessional Text advocates. Help them to understand that it is not helpful or charitable to confuse these categories into a mishmash.

Second: Talk about a confessional view of text criticism. Walk them through WCF/2LBCF 1:8. Explain the historical roots of modern text criticism in the Enlightenment. Explain the difference between a reconstructionist view of the text and a preservationist view of the text. Explain how post-modern text criticism is no longer even interested in finding the original text and no one really knows what future editions of the modern critical text (and thus modern translations) will even look like.

Third: Talk about how important the KJV is as a treasure not only for the Protestant Christian English-speaking world, but for all of Western civilization. Suggest that rather than dumbing down the liturgical language of the church we should be lifting it up. Ask them why the KJV is loved in the English department but villainized in the religion department. Suggest they read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death or T. S. Eliot’s review of the New English Bible (listen here). Explain that using the KJV might just be one small way in which we might swim against the tide of this world.

JTR

Source: Pastor Jeff Riddle: WM 100: Rejoinder to Mark Ward: 3 Ways to Engage Modern Translation Onlyism http://www.jeffriddle.net/2018/07/wm-100-rejoinder-to-mark-ward-3-ways-to.html

The Quest for the Historical Text

There’s nothing innocent or innocuous about trying to find the historical text, because there’s a presupposition in the enterprise of questing for the historical text that is identical with the higher critical presupposition, and namely it is this: that the church has fabricated the data and the evidence about who Jesus was, what he said, and what he did. And in order to find out the truth and the reality of the Christ experience and event of the first century AD we have to go behind what is called the ecclesiastical text and rummage through the fragmentary sources that exist behind it from the second and third centuries, and speculate on into the third century, in order to find out what really happened, because the church [via the received text] told us a colossal lie.

Theodore P. Letis, The Quest for the Historical Text

A Response to Mark Ward's Article Critical of the KJV and Confessional Text

A Response to Mark Ward's Article Critical of the KJV and Confessional Text

Mark Ward, PhD (Bob Jones University) has written an article critical of those who prefer the King James Version (KJV) and the Textus Receptus (TR)…

3 Ways to Graciously Engage KJV-Only Believers https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/3-ways-graciously-engage-kjv-believers/

In his article which, according to its title, supposedly deals with “KJV-Only Believers,” Ward says,

“The mainstream KJV-only movement insists that its ultimate concern is not actually the KJV. It’s the full ‘preservation’ of the Greek and Hebrew texts from which the KJV was translated, namely the Masoretic Hebrew Text and the Greek Textus Receptus, or ‘TR.’ KJV-onlyism is actually, officially, TR-onlyism.”

Ward, here, shifts from KJV-only believers to those who believe in the “preservation of the Greek and Hebrew texts from which the KJV was translated.”

Contrary to what Ward asserts, here, about “the mainstream KJV-only movement,” many confessional Protestant Christians believe God, by his providence, watched over and preserved sacred Scripture over the centuries, in order for the people of God to always have access to the written Word of God. In fact, the historic Protestant confessions of faith, in their Scripture references, refer readers to passages found in the Masoretic Hebrew text and the Greek Textus Receptus (TR).

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1:8) states that the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture, “being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical,” meaning: God has providentially preserved the original language biblical texts throughout the ages.

It’s not extremist to believe God inspired and preserved his written Word.

It’s not something we should pity our poor misguided brothers and sisters for believing.

The inspiration and providential preservation of Scripture used to be something all Protestants believed, which tells us how far Ward and many other modern day “Protestants” and “Evangelicals” have drifted from historic Protestantism.

Further on in his sad article, Ward betrays his failure to grasp the subject with which he is dealing….

“But here’s something every KJV reader ought to know: Elizabethan English is no longer fully intelligible, and 1 Corinthians 14 tells us explicitly and repeatedly that intelligibility is necessary for edification. 'If with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air (1 Cor. 14:9).' Even KJV extremists know it contains ‘dead words’ and obsolete phrases no longer present in the real-life lexical stock of English speakers.” 

Is Mark Ward correct? Let’s read, in the KJV, the same verse he quoted,

“In the same way, unless you use your tongue for intelligible speech, how will what is spoken be known? For you will be speaking into the air” (1 Cor. 14:9, KJV).

Does anyone believe this verse in the KJV is not intelligible?

No doubt the KJV does contain some obsolete words, but it’s not hard — let alone impossible — to read the KJV if one desires to do so. I read it every day. When I do come across a word I don’t understand, which is rare, I look it up.

I look up the meanings of words all the time. In all sorts of books and articles I read. I’ve done this all my life, and I always will. It’s how I learn and increase my vocabulary.

There are dictionaries available that define the meanings of outdated words found in the KJV, such as the one available (free of charge) from the Trinitarian Bible Society; there are glossaries of outdated words bound in some editions of the KJV (e.g., Cambridge Concord); and some editions of the KJV include modern word alternatives in their margins (e.g., Westminster Reference Bible). Not to mention, there’s always Google.

What about Ward’s assertion that the KJV is written in Elizabethan English?

Is this true? No, it’s not.

The translators of the KJV gave us a unique form of English.

Unlike modern translators, whose translations Ward insists we use, the translators of the KJV reshaped early modern English by adapting it to the original language texts they were translating, thus providing us with a unique form of English; a unique biblical English shaped by the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture.

The spelling and grammar of the KJV was updated in 1769, making the English of the KJV very accessible to readers today.

In short, Mark Ward’s article is pathetic. I suggest you ignore it, and him.

“While the Renaissance Bible translator saw half of his task as reshaping English so that it could adapt itself to Hebraic idiom the modern translator wants to make no demands on the language he translates into.”

“The basic distinction between the Renaissance and the modern translators is one of fidelity to the original. Partly the loss of faith in the Hebrew and Greek as the definitive word of God has led to the translators’ loss of contact with it, but more responsibility lies in the belief that a modern Bible should aim not to tax its readers linguistic or interpretive abilities one bit. If this aim is to be achieved then it seems clear that a new Bible will have to be produced for every generation—each one probably moving us further away from the original text, now that the initial break has been made.”

Gerald Hammond, The Making of the English Bible (2; 12)

++++

Suggested Resources

Gerald Hammond, The Making of the English Bible https://www.amazon.com/Making-English-Bible-Gerald-Hammond/dp/0856354333

Alan Macgregor, Three Modern Versions: A critical assessment of the NIV, ESV & NKJV, and reasons for keeping to the AV http://www.bibleleaguetrust.org/publications/three-modern-versions/

Robert Preus, The Inspiration of Scripture: A Study of the Theology of the Seventeenth Century
Lutheran Dogmaticians https://www.cph.org/p-655-The-Inspiration-of-Scripture.aspx

Garnet Milne, Has the Bible been kept pure? https://www.amazon.com/Westminster-Confession-providential-preservation-Scripture/dp/1522039155

Edward Hills, The King James Version Defended https://www.heritagebooks.org/products/the-king-james-version-defended-hills.html

Theodore Letis, The Ecclesiastical Text https://www.amazon.com/Ecclesiastical-Text-Criticism-Biblical-Authority/dp/0965860701

Theodore Letis Resources: http://www.holywordcafe.com/bible/Letis.html

Jakob van Bruggen, The Ancient Text of the New Testament https://tinyurl.com/yctj2o2r

Why Use the Authorised (King James) Version? http://www.tbsbibles.org/articles/why-use-the-authorised-king-james-version

TBS Bible Word List  https://www.tbsbibles.org/store/ListProducts.aspx?catid=607222&view_type=0

Confessional Bibliology http://confessionalbibliology.com/

Word Magazine https://tinyurl.com/ycereb4y