KJV: THE ENGLISH BIBLE
by Dr. David W. Dickerson

The ministries at Peachtree Baptist Church stands uncompromisingly for the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Scriptures.  We believe and teach God has providentially preserved the Word of God in the English language through the King James Version.  As pastor of Peachtree Baptist Church and president of Georgia Baptist College, I can testify without hesitation that the King James Version is the only translation we use in the pulpit and classroom.

When discussing translations of the English Bible there is a great deal of ignorance with which to contend in our society.  My dear mother used to say, “Nip ignorance in the bud lest it go to seed and multiply.” I am not sure that all of those that are contending for the King James Bible fully understand why they should be standing for it, but one thing is for sure, God has and will continue to preserve His Word through His people (I Timothy 3:15).

We do not believe nor advocate the position of Dr. Peter Ruckman and his followers.  One does not correct the Hebrew or Greek manuscripts with the King James Version.  The King James Bible is not "re-inspired" but rather a translation through which God has providentially preserved His inspired Word for the English-speaking world.

Many brethren boast about their preaching and teaching only from the 1611 King James Version, when in fact their Bible is not the 1611 edition.  “The King James Version of the Bible in America at present is in fact the 1769 edition.  (There were also eight other revisions and editions of the King James Version between 1611 and 1769…  All of these essentially were to correct typographical errors or to modernize spelling or punctuation.  They were revisions
nevertheless).”1 

We believe the King James Bible is the best translation because it is based on the Hebrew (Old Testament) Masoretic Text and the Greek (New Testament) Textus Receptus.2

The original manuscripts, known as autographs, were predominately written on parchment made from animal skins and some were written on papyri, a type of writing material created from the papyrus plant.  There are no original autographs left, because they have deteriorated with time.  One would believe God allowed them to deteriorate lest men worship the manuscripts rather than God.  However, God preserved the scriptures down through the ages by transmission.  Transmission is the process by which the biblical manuscripts were copied and recopied.  Those copying the scriptures were known as scribes.  God allowed the original autographs to disappear, but not before scribes made copies.

The Hebrew Old Testament was so accurately preserved down through the centuries that when the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date back to 150 BC, were found by a shepherd boy in 1948 and subsequently compared with existing Hebrew manuscripts of AD 900-1000, they were virtually identical.  These manuscripts included portions of every Old Testament book except Esther,3 thus confirming the trustworthiness of our English Old Testament.

The same is true of the New Testament books, for they were hand written by the scribes until the middle of the fifteenth century AD, when the Gutenburg printing press changed the process of transmission.  It is true that there were minor scribal errors, but God preserved the scriptures from error to this present day.  It might be added that even Bibles printed in the twenty-first century sometimes have minor printer’s errors, but they do not effect the text and are easily corrected.

The purity of the transmitted scriptures is without question.  When one holds a copy of the King James Bible in his hands he can safely say that it is a dependable translation because of the text from which it was translated.  Further, we believe it is a trustworthy copy of the inspired and infallible Word of God. 

Paul refers to the process by which God gave us the original writings of the Bible as "God-breathed."  It is the Greek word theopneustos translated in 2 Timothy 3:16 as “inspiration of God.”4

In 2 Peter 1:20-21, we learn that the scriptures did not originate with man but “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”  God used holy men of old, taking from their vocabularies the very words He would have recorded in Holy Scripture.  Therefore, we believe in verbal inspiration as well as plenary, or complete, inspiration.

We might add that it is imperative that we believe that God, who is Omnipotent, has promised to preserve the inspired scriptures down to the very words.  We do not ascribe to a dynamic inspiration.5  We believe the very words of scripture are inspired.

The Psalmist said, “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 forever” (Psalm 12:6, 7, emphasis added). Jesus’ use of the Old Testament proves his confidence in the preservation of the Word  (Luke 16:17; Matthew 22:42-45; John 10:34-36).  He later declared that the Old Testament had been preserved and would be preserved.  “For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled”  (Matthew 5:18).  Our Christian faith and practice are based upon the absolute trustworthiness and authority of the Word of God.  It is prudent for us to be certain that we have a sure foundation.  We must be careful not to let ancient or modern apostasy rob us of our Bible.

Godly church leaders down through the centuries assembled the existing Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the Bible.  These compiled manuscripts of the Masoretic Text and the Textus Receptus formed the text from which our King James Bible was translated.  For almost two thousand years a majority of Bible believing churches accepted these manuscripts as the preserved Word of God.

In the late nineteenth century, B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, textual critics from Great Britain, produced a new Greek text of the New Testament from what is known today as the Alexandrian Text.  The Alexandria Text is primarily made up of the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus.6   The Codex Sinaiticus was found in 1844 in a Greek Orthodox monastery on Mount Sinai.  This manuscript became known as Aleph.  The Codex Vaticanus was an ancient manuscript that had been lost in the Vatican library until the middle of the nineteenth century, and it became identified as manuscript B.  Both manuscripts Aleph and B were dated back to approximately AD 350.  That meant they were the oldest known existing manuscripts of the New Testament.  Operating on the assumption that older is better, Drs. Hort and Westcott collated the Aleph and B manuscripts, which have greatly influenced what is known today as the Critical, or Eclectic Text from which the vast majority of the modern English translations and versions of the Bible have been published.  These include the RSV, ASV, NASB, TLB and the NIV to name just a few.

Though there are some other minor textual groups known only to textual academia, the two major textual groups today are the Alexandrian Text and the Received, or Preserved Text.  “The Alexandrian textual group is the predominate source of the modern Critical Text.  The Received Text is that lineage of manuscripts, which trace back to the earliest days of believing, orthodox Christianity.”7 

During the Reformation Period there was a flurry of translation activity throughout Europe, and they all collectively recognized the Masoretic Text and Textus Receptus as the preserved Word of God from which they translated the scriptures into their own languages. Only in the last one hundred twenty years has the Received Text been in question.  It all started with the turn of the nineteenth century and the rise of textual criticism.

Textual criticism is the “science” of comparing existing manuscripts and noting any scribal discrepancies between different copies.  However, "modern" textual criticism has advanced the idea that the true Word of God has been lost and must be “reconstructed” by scientific means.8 One of these supposed scientific premises suggests that the Alexandrian Text is older, therefore it is better.  Older does not necessarily mean better.  One must remember there were corrupt enemies even in the Apostle Paul's lifetime.  He warned the Corinthian Church, "For we are not as many, which corrupt the Word of God" (2 Corinthians 2:17).  Even at that early date, there were no doubt scribes who deliberately modified the text to fit their own theological scheme.

Based upon the belief of providential preservation honest believers recognize that the Received Text has been the text that God has used to preserve His Word for over nineteen hundred years.  It has been the text of the Reformation and every major revival movement in the world.  The King James Version has proven itself to be the translation of choice by the English speaking church and the blessing of the Holy Spirit.

If one emphatically embraces the Critical Text and rejects the Received, or Preserved Text, he must confess that the Church had no Bible for over nineteen hundred years. 

In contrast, the Critical Text compiled from the Alexandrian manuscripts by Drs. Hort and Westcott, came into existence only a little more than one hundred years ago.  It is actually a relatively new text and its history is sordid.  The vast majority, if not all, of the modern English translations are taken from the Critical Text.  With their deletions and dilutions, the modern English translations have marred cardinal doctrines, such as the shed blood of Christ, the deity of Christ and inspiration of the scriptures.

The King James Bible soon after publication became the most popular of all English Bibles, and it is still the world's best seller.  For the serious student of the English Bible, the King James Version is the best translation because of its literal rendering and literary style, which inevitably supports analytical study.  F. F. Bruce said, “By sheer merit the Authorized Version established itself as The English Bible.”9

FOOTNOTES:

1 David H. Sorenson, Touch Not the Unclean Thing  (Duluth, MN: Northstar Baptist Ministries, 2001), p.17.

2 Textus Receptus, or the Received Text, is a designation given to an edition of the Greek New Testament printed by the Elzevir Brothers in Holland in 1633 (after the King James Version).  It was an edition of a series that was printed since Erasmus published the first one in 1514.  The King James Version used these editions of Erasmus, Robert Etienne and Beza in their translation.  They are all basically the same.  The term Textus Receptus is often used by King James Version defenders to speak of the whole majority line of Byzantine manuscripts that agree, in contrast to the Critical Text, which is in the minority (15%).

3 Irving L. Jensen, Jensen’s Survey of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1978), p.p. 20-21.

4 Theopneustos is a compound Greek word made up of Theos (God) and pneustos (to breathe).

5 Dynamic inspiration means God inspired the thoughts of the Scriptures but left the choice of words to the biblical writer.

6 Codex is a Latin word meaning a bound volume in contrast to a scroll.

7 Sorenson, Touch not the Unclean Thing, p.49.

8 Ibid, p.23.

9 F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (Westwood, NJ: Revell, 1963), p.229.