22. King James Onlyism Part 1

This is the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring to light the legalism and abuse in the independent fundamental Baptist movement, and to encourage believers to grow in grace through the scriptures. Now, here's your host, John Holyfield. All right, here we go. We are back. It is the new year 2021. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast, everybody, and some exciting things. James is back with us, but it's not just back. He's back for good. James is now the co-host of the podcast. So, James, welcome. Thank you, John. How are we doing today, everybody? I'm glad to be a part of this show and to be one of the hosts of the show. And I'm excited about going into this new year. Me and John sat down over Thanksgiving break when he talked to me about this, and we laid out the next probably six months of episodes. And we're really excited about what we've got going on. We had a brainstorming session with a whiteboard. And so it was official with our planning side of it. So, yeah, I'm pretty excited. Yep. Yep. And, you know, interesting thing is when I started this podcast, the whole one of my main focuses is I wanted to get into the theology and dissect the theology of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement and get into the nitty gritty stuff. It has taken us 22 episodes to start getting to that. I did not anticipate that, but I felt that the history of the movement was important to get started to give a context to what we're talking about. And then as the four aspects of the podcast is talking about the errors, exposing the errors and the abuse. And so I decided to do a few episodes on abuse. And then as it just kept on going, I was like, man, I want to have this person on. I want to have this. So I started inviting guests on and we started talking about certain things. And then before long, you know, you're at 22 episodes, 22 episodes, and you're finally getting around to the topic that the getting into the topics. Now, the intention is, is we're going to go through what I think is probably one of the big deals that Independent Fundamental Baptists characterize themselves as is KJV only. If you ain't got the King James, you ain't got, hey, let me just say that ain't bothering a few of you educated people. If you don't have a King James, you don't have a Bible. You better get a, you better get an authorized version. Praise God. Amen. Open your Bibles, please. Doesn't matter where, it's all good. If you have a King James Bible. If you don't, open your song book. It's more, more inspired than the Bible you have. And, uh. If they ain't got a King James, they ain't got a Bible no how. What a tragedy. If they're not preaching out of a King James Bible, they're a heretic. Let me specify my position. If they're not using a King James Bible, that is heresy. You don't have to like this. You can lump this. Bless God. Put it in your pipe and smoke it. Bless God. I was preaching before I come in here and I'll preach it when I leave out of here. And, uh, a lot of times you'll find this on their church sign. A lot of times, you know, even in their own words, they'll say, you know, Bible believing King James Bible, uh, uh, church, you know, and that's, that's used as one of the qualifiers of whether they're a good fundamental church. And so this is a very key aspect. After we get through this, and this is probably going to take several episodes. After we get through this, we want to cover, um, before we get into the theology, I want to do a couple episodes on interpretation. And, uh, that's going to be important to understanding how and why we are dissecting some of the things that is taught within the movement. So without further ado, let's get into this. And so this is going to be about, if we can get through these notes, this is going to be about, uh, King James only as in part one, the history of the English Bible. Okay. So, um, uh, let me also say this, this is not like, uh, I've studied this subject for several years and I am gleaning from several resources. If you are somebody that likes to dig in deeper than what this podcast is going to go, um, a lot of my research and information came from several books. Um, one, uh, probably the best book out there. And I highly recommend it. If you want to go deeper, this is a must read. It's called the King James only controversy by James White. It is the book on the subject. Now there's been other books that have been done on this subject and other material out there. Uh, one book that I've read that if you want to go deeper than white, I say white is the best, uh, King James only controversy is the best book. Probably the most exhaustive work on the subject is King James only ism by James, uh, or King James only ism, a new sect by James price. Uh, there's some other things out there. Doug Kudelik has done some good work on it as well. He's got a website that offers a lot of information, but he also wrote a book, a smaller book called J Frank Norris and his heirs. And it talks about just tracing where the King James only ism sort of began within the movement. So, and, and we're going to cover that's part of going to be an aspect that we cover in this. But so a lot of my notes, I just, I'm just going to say this without having to go back and credit them. A lot of my material is coming from that. So before James, before we talk about the history of the English Bible or even the argument of the King James only ism, I think it's, it's important to define. There are different stances on King James only ism and different people hold different positions. Um, I was once a King James only ism stance was more along the lines of, I believe that the King James version was the only version because of the manuscripts it came from. Now, were you once a King James only ism? I was. Yeah. I was mainly a King James only ism because of the way I was raised. Um, we were taught that to use the King James and that's what was preached from. We went to Bible college, the same thing. And then my first ministry, um, was taught only from the King James. I remember having a conversation with some local youth pastors in Idaho and, uh, they were given some input on different things and they asked translation wise, what do we use? And, uh, cause I would have them come in for chapel and I would tell them, Hey, King James only, that's all we use. And they would sort of look at me a little weird and say, that's the only one you use. And I said, yeah, I said, and I was already starting to, to sway from that only view. But my argument was we use it for continuity issues. Everyone has it. Everyone's using the King James. If you come in with an ESV and you start reading, everyone in the crowd is going to have something different than you. And I would use it as that argument, but as I left Idaho and as well began studying that for myself, I started to realize that, okay, I was on this only ism mindset because of the way I was raised. Um, and because it was drilled to me that if you use anything else, um, you're going to go to hell and no one can get saved unless it's part of the King James. You just, that seed faith that Jack house preached years ago. Yeah. Well, you know, I, I sort of stood on it. Like I knew why I believed it. Like I thought I had the argument. I thought, you know, most people that, that don't, uh, are not King James only, they just were ignorant. They didn't know. And I, and this is the interesting thing before I came around and started studying the issue from the other side, I did not think there was any type of counter argument. We weren't taught that. No, no one is taught a counter argument to King James only ism. And you know, that's, that's sort of the way it is in the IFP with, with a lot of issues. You're not taught a counter argument. You're not given the other side. And so when I started finding out the other side, I said, okay, well, let's look at the other side and weigh the, weigh the two and see which one holds up. And well, I will say that in the IFP movement, we were only taught the other side when it didn't go biblically. For instance, baptism. I was taught in Bible college that baptism was by immersion. We went through the Greek study, went through everything showing that it was true to disprove infant baptism, to disprove sprinkling. Okay. But when it doesn't have a biblical background, they never taught the other side. Yeah. And, and that's the position that King James is not a, you know, an issue that can be found in the Bible. Now there is, there is arguments and we're going to get into the arguments. There is arguments that try to put it there. But one of our intentions are to, to get through the arguments, but the various stances of King James only is you have group one. These are the people that say, I like the KJV the best. I'm cool with these people. Yeah. I preach out of the King James because I'm most familiar with it. And our church is most familiar with it. Now my personal study, I go between the David Jeremiah King James Bible or the new King James study Bible, and then my MEV. But personally, I preach out of the King James because I'm most familiar with it. Yeah. Yeah. Our church here is not an independent fundamental Baptist church. And we have used the King James version for most of the time. We just switched translations. We, and we switched not really getting too crazy. We switched over to the new King James. And most of it was because of the majority of our people. You know, that's what they'd always used and, and, and, and just the familiarity. So trying to, uh, a sort of a soft move, uh, with that. Um, I prefer the new American standard and, uh, study when I do my study, I study with the new American standard in the ESV. Um, but those are, those are good translations as well. So, uh, so group, group number one that says that they, go ahead, James. Do you still have people in your church that are still using the King James or have they all pretty much totally switched over? Uh, they probably are. I didn't go around and check and ask, uh, the thing with the thing with using the new King James, if you have a King James in your lap, you're not going to be lost. It's, you're going to be able to follow pretty easy. You could use an ESV and follow along with the King James rather, rather well. Uh, using a new American standard, you're going to get lost a little bit. If you get into a more of a dynamic translation, like a new living translation or an NIV, you're really going to get, you know, you're going to have a hard time following if you're using a King James, but that's a whole nother discussion of, uh, group number two, the textual argument group number two is the textual argument. And these are the people, this is where, uh, I think I was, this was the saying that there's two lines of manuscripts. And we're going to talk about this in a minute. One group of manuscripts is corrupt and one group of manuscripts is the right one. And the reason that the King James is the best is because the group of manuscripts that the King James come from is not corrupt. Probably the biggest proponent of this argument is Sam Gipp. And listen, here's a clip by saying, yeah. As a rule, uh, Bible manuscripts only come from two places. They come from Antioch in Syria or from Alexandria in Egypt. And, um, and now here's, here's where you can take Bible from, from Antioch. And we believe that Antioch is a place to get Bible manuscripts. Uh, our, uh, our adversaries, our, our, our contentious brethren, uh, they believe that Alexandria is the best place, uh, to get Bible manuscripts. Let me tell you why they think Alexandria is the best place. Prejudice. They are prejudiced in favor of this text. And so they won't even consider Antioch. Let me tell you why we believe Antioch. Prejudice. That's right. We are prejudiced in favor of Antioch, just like they are for, for Alexandria. And we won't give Alexandria the time of day. So as long as we, we approach it from that, from that direction, we are never going to agree. So that's a little bit about that, that argument. Uh, that is a little bit more problematic and we're going to, we're going to dissect the holes in that. The next group, uh, James, why don't you give the next, next group? Next group is a received text only. And so there's these two lines of texts. Um, and so the ones that were the basic received text is what, uh, this argument is. And that they're, they're the King James because of the majority, the received text that comes through that. Okay. So they're the majority text runs through to the Greek new Testament, which is, uh, called the Texas Receptus or in English, the received text. And so these people stand on the King James because they think that it's the better Greek text. So a lot of your modern translations are being, uh, put out and use the UBS fourth edition or UBS fifth edition, which means the United Bible Society Greek text. Um, or the Nestle Island 25th or the Nestle Island 24th, which is the Nestle Island, uh, group that, that collates and puts together a Greek new Testament. And so they say those are corrupt. And the King James is based off the Texas Receptus. Um, I'm going to explain that a little bit when we get into that argument. Um, what the Texas Receptus is that the Texas Receptus actually was not copyrighted until after, uh, way after 1611. When they talk about the Texas Receptus, this is not a completely default of, of debunking that argument because, uh, you know, they had a Greek text that they used for the King James, but it was a conglomerate of a guy named Baza, a guy named, uh, Stephanas, um, a guy named Rasmus. We'll get into that. But these people say, this group says that they're King James only because the received text is superior. Uh, we'll talk about that as well. Uh, group number four, James. Group number four says the KJV is inspired. So this mainly, I believe my, my interpretation of this would go back to Jack Hiles's preaching when he basically said that the King James was a double inspired, the authors, the translators of the King James was an inspired book. Um, and so the King James Bible alone is the word of God alone. Like there is no separation from, from the King James and any other manuscript. First Corinthians 16. As he comes down to the end of this particular book, he says, verse number 13, watch you stand fast. What? In the, amen. Right here in this thing right here. Hold on to it. Don't abandon it. You know what's happening today? I, I, I, I, I, it's hard for me to believe, but I don't, I don't, I don't go on the internet a lot. I mean, I do, I do some study and I do some, um, this and that, but, uh, um, I, I, I don't watch a lot of other preachers. I don't, I don't like to, I just don't. But, and, but you know what's going on with guys that were fundamental, Bible believing? They're going in apostasy. I mean, they're getting, they're going into getting even other versions other than this. Guys that said they believed the King James version. They're going to this, what's this called? What's the new one called? Is it E? ESV. ESV. That's a popular version. I found that out the other day. I mean, guys, if you, uh, men that maybe some of you know, uh, but you wouldn't have ever thought and they went to some Bible colleges that, you know, believed it or said they did. I'm not a TR man. I'm not TR and King James. I'm King James it. And when you go that TR and take, you know, both, you know, you have two, then you have two authorities and they conflict. I mean, you'll have a Greek and I don't know Greek, Danny could get up here and probably, probably teach you. He took Greek, but he probably flunked it a couple of times. I don't know. But I know guys that could do that and tell you about that. But where it contradicts and you got the same verse and a word and, and the Greek will say one thing in the, uh, English will say another. What are you going to do? What's right? They can't both be right. Uh, and so that's where that comes from. And if you remember just a couple of years ago, I would say probably 2004, 2005, maybe, um, Jack's cop and the other pastor up in New Jersey, I believe, um, got into a big argument about the King James. Um, they were both King James only, but they both got into one was saying it was inspired and one was just saying that it was another Bible. So. Yeah. And this is why there, there gets to be so much hatred. And let me say this, I think that this, what the statement that you said, the interesting thing about it is, is it it's tagged with the King James version is inspired, but the same people, uh, that do the majority or the textual argument or the received text only argument, they see it the same way. And that is that the King James Bible equals the word of God alone. So any refutation or any type of pushback on the King James version being the only one is an attack on the Bible is the way they see it. And so, uh, they believe this. I never, I never subscribed to this belief because the original writers of the text, Paul, let's talk about the new Testament, Paul, John, Peter, uh, Jude, uh, Matt, uh, Mark, Luke. Those guys were the ones that the Holy spirit inspired. Yes. The King James version is inspired view begins to say that there was a second work of inspiration that happened with the King James version. They also, and I talked about this earlier, I talked about how they try to work the Bible into, or the King James Bible into the Bible. And that happens in the Psalms 12, six and seven thesis, which is another argument that I never bought into even when I was King James only. Uh, and there's a lot of guys that are King James only, even those that consider themselves, uh, I'm using air quotes here, everybody King James only apologists. Um, they don't subscribe to the Psalm 12 and six and seven thesis as well. And, but, but there are some to do. And that's the, the verse where it says the words of the Lord are pure words, a silver tried in the furnace of earth. You shall keep them old Lord. You shall preserve them forever from this, from preserve them from this generation forever. All right. So we'll break that down. And, uh, and the, one of the issues with this is the King James version was not the first English translation. And it won't be the last. All right. Now, James, what is the most extreme group? The most extreme group, it would be the King James version as the new revelation. Uh, and that would be the group that goes as far as to say that the Greek and Hebrew texts, um, should be changed to fit the reading found in the King James, that the King James perfected the Greek and perfected the Hebrew. And we should go back and we should change those to make the Greek and the Hebrew line up with the King James. This is the most extreme. Yeah. And, and there's really only one pocket of, of, of people that believe this. And one person that really pushed this. And that was Peter Ruckman. Peter Ruckman taught this. Peter Ruckman pushed this. Um, and basically his, his most devout followers, uh, push this now. The interesting thing. Let's give a little background on who Peter Ruckman is. Maybe our, our audience doesn't know who he is. Uh, he's out of Florida. He's out of, I believe Pensacola. Is that correct? Pensacola. Yeah. Yeah. He's out of Pensacola, Florida years ago. And while he was alive, which is interesting, people didn't really follow him a lot. He had a small group of gathering, he had people, he had a Bible college down there. Uh, but it wasn't until recently when he passed away, where more and more people began to jump on this Ruckman night view of, of scripture. And I think his following is still relatively small in the whole scheme of things. I don't think it was ever. The thing about it is, is that those who are Ruckman nights are the loudest. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. They, they make you feel like there's more of them because when there's one around, you surely know that it's one because they are going to be in your face. They're going to go looking for fights. They're going to pick fights. They're going to be making the videos out there going around attacking people as much as they can. So, uh, the Ruckman nights are definitely the loudest. Now there are some followers of Ruckman who are very staunch King James only, but may not even promote this position. And I, and I, I want to treat people honestly, because one of the things that I found in this studying the subject is the dishonesty from a lot of King James only us that do not give the whole side of the story and give and treat things fairly. You know, I totally disagree with Sam Gipps argument and I'm going to, I'm going to break some of that down. But to be honest, I've listened to a lot of Sam Gipp stuff and I have his book as well. I've never really seen Sam Gipp push this position. Now he definitely is somebody that I think that is, is promoted Ruckman. Uh, but I've never seen him push this position. Uh, as far as the King James version is new revelation. Now, if I think if you pushed him into a corner, he's probably going to be like, he's always going to go with the King James, but I've never really heard him push that position. So those are the different groups. You have the, those that like it the best. We're good with those people. Those, those are not, you know, I wouldn't categorize them as legalism or an error, but the next one is the group that says that the two lines are, are the one line of manuscripts are the, uh, better and the other one's corrupt. Group three is the ones that the textus receptus, the received text is the best one. And that's why we use the King James. Number four is the King James is inspired. And then the worst one, number five, the King James as new revelation. So, uh, our, our, uh, subject we wanted to get into was the history of the English Bible. Cause I think this is important to set a groundwork on this. Cause I think that before we do that, let me ask you this just to clarify our position. Are we against people that use the King James? No. Okay. So when you just already admitted that you did. Yeah. So, so I don't want people to take us and say, oh, we're just doing this episode because we're against it. I love the Bible. I love reading different versions. I love seeing different commentaries of what people get out of it. And so we're not doing this episode to say that King James is wrong and you shouldn't use it. We're doing this episode to enlighten them, to educate people on the history of it. And I think that's the important thing to take away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And no, I think one of the biggest things that would help people understand this is if you really just understood the King James is a translation. Now, if you think about that and meditate on that just a minute, it is a translation of a work. Now, when you get into saying it's the only, that's a very Western American arrogant view of saying that our language is superior and therefore we are superior and therefore our Bible is the only one. In fact, there was a, and we have, one of our plans is we want to dissect this. There was a debate in the nineties and me and James want to do a couple of, maybe an episode or two on going through this debate because it was so, it was so good where they lined up guys that worked on different translations. And then they lined up guys on, it was the John Akerberg show in the nineties and they lined up guys that were for King James only of them. And I'm going to, I'll play this clip. This is Sam Gipp asked if somebody from another country should have to learn English in order to get the true word of God. Here it is. And I'd like to start with you, Dr. Samuel Gipp. You've written quite a few books on this topic. In your answer book, a book for Christians, you have said that the supposition that there must be a perfect translation in every language is erroneous and inconsistent with God's proven practice. Why do you believe, Sam, that the King James Version of the Bible is the only perfect translation today. And what's more, that if these guys were going to do a translation into Swedish or Ethiopian or some other language, that they're not to use any of the Greek texts, but they're to use the 1611 English text to translate those other versions. Why? Well, the first reason, of course, picking the Bible above all books that are called holy books, I accept the Bible academically because of fulfilled prophecy. Now, when I give the Bible that inspiration from God, then I take its statements on itself as far as inspiration and preservation. Now, at that point, it's got to become an argument of faith, not academics. In other words, you're going to find places where the King James Bible doesn't agree with even the textus receptus or something like that. So I believe the King James Bible is the preserved word of God. I don't call it the inspired word of God. I call it the preserved word of God. And English is, without a doubt, the language of the world. It is the language of missions in this world today. The reason I say that there doesn't have to be a perfect Bible in every other language is because the reason that's inconsistent with what God did is when He inspired the Old Testament, He inspired it predominantly in one language. I know there's some Chaldean, but predominantly it was in Hebrew. When He put it in Hebrew, He did not feel obligated to inspire an Egyptian. He did not feel obligated to inspire a copy of it in every other language of the world at that time. When He brought out the New Testament, when He inspired that, He inspired it in Greek. He did not feel obligated to have even a Hebrew copy for His own Jewish people. So if a guy's in Russia and he wants to really get to the truth of the word of God, would he have to learn English? Yes. Yes. Okay. And there you have it. I mean, he didn't even skip a B. I mean, yes, they got to. They got to learn English. I mean, how arrogant is that? That debate was the one that really, John sent it to me, it would have been four or five years ago when I was going through this transition in my life and then really studying it. He said, hey, you got to listen to this interview. And so I think it's divided in like four or five parts on YouTube. Yeah, I got the audio of it. I got the audio of it in like one three and a half hour audio. Yeah, so it's like a three and a half hour. It's a very long one. So it took me several days to dissect it, listen to a couple, go do something else, come back, listen to it. But that was really the turning point in my life was listening to that. And to see both sides of the argument was really what was eye opening to me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I think that it's important. Let's lay the groundwork here of the history of the English Bible. I think a lot of people don't think about this. And this is really helpful in understanding how we got the Bible. So let's go back to the New Testament. The Old Testament is pretty settled. There's not a whole lot of debate on the Old Testament. So let's start with the Bible was written on manuscripts. So you have the biblical languages. You have Hebrew, biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, which is portions of Daniel and Ezekiel, and then Greek, which was actually classified as the Koine Greek, which is the common language Greek. It is a more technical language, a more precise language than either Hebrew or English. So the manuscripts were copied in different ways. You had a codex. A codex was basically their way, their first way of putting together actually a book. So it was taking the manuscripts and then fashioning them actually into a book style of how, you know, it was one of the, you know, an innovation for them. Next one was probably the most common because it was the most, it was the cheapest. And that was papyri or papyrus. They didn't have, they couldn't go to Walmart and just get paper. Okay. They used papyri and this was a inexpensive writing material. A more expensive writing material was a vellum or parchment. This was made off of goat skins. So you have to think about what was able to do this in order to be able to write on this. This was a little bit longer lasting and a little bit more took care of what you were writing. And lasted longer. So you had to take the goat. You had to kill the goat. You had to, you know, clean the goat, get all the blood and the guts out, all that stuff. And then you had to skin it. And then on the underside of that, of the skin, you had to clean it and dry it. And then you started cutting it into thinner layers. And then you were able to use that as a writing material. All right. The next one is unsealed texts. All right. I'm not going to bore you with some of these things, but you have unsealed texts and minuscule texts. And those are different ways of writing. You have different text traditions on how they wrote. So, I mean, imagine this. We have ways of reading and writing, James, with, you know, punctuation, lowercase, uppercase, spaces. Cursive. Yeah. Cursive, print. With unsealed texts and minuscule texts, a lot of, with these different texts, you're talking about picking up a manuscript, has no spacing, has no lowercase or uppercase. Everything's in the same case. And no punctuation. It's just straight up writing. And so that's, you're talking about the work that people have had to do to translate these things and to work on this. So then this is where we get into some important information about the King James-only argument, and that is manuscript traditions. Manuscript traditions. And this is the reason why. The reason why is because the argument goes, and Sam Gipp presents this. Let me just give you a clip of him talking about this as well. I think I played one earlier, but here's another one. And when I say there's two Bibles, you go into a bookstore, I know, and you see a... Thank you. Oh, thank you very much. And you see a bunch of them on the shelf, and you go, no, there's got to be more than two. But the fact is that every Bible that you can buy today comes from only one of two locations. There's a line of manuscripts that come from Antioch and Syria. There's another line of manuscripts that come from Alexandria in Egypt. Now, what do you know about from the Bible? What do you know about Antioch and Syria? I think it was the place where the disciples were first called Christians. Absolutely. We got our name Christian comes from Antioch. It was also the head of the New Testament church. When the Apostle Paul, when he went out on a missionary journey, he left from Antioch. When he came back, he came back to Antioch. That was the center of New Testament Christianity. In fact, many of the originals that we have today may have been penned there. All right, today in existence on this planet are 5,909 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Some entire books, some pieces of manuscripts the size of this sugar pack. The vast majority read with what is known as the Texas Receptus. That is the Greek that comes out of Antioch. So it comes from Antioch through the Texas Receptus into the King James Bible right here on this desk. It would be like this coffee, okay? This is the line of manuscripts. The vast bigger than this one because most of them come out of Antioch. The other line of manuscripts, which officially is known as the critical text, which if you think about that, just the fact that it's critical should tell you there's a problem, they went down to Alexandria, Egypt. Now, what do you know about Egypt from the Bible? Not a lot of good. It kind of represented the world. Israelites were in slavery. Absolutely. In fact, when God wanted to use a bad example in the book of Revelation, he wants to say something bad about Jerusalem. He compares it to Sodom and Egypt. So the only good thing about Egypt is it can be used as a bad example. So good manuscripts went to Alexandria. So here he says that you have two Bibles, right? Two Bibles. You have the Alexandrian Bible and you have the Antiochian Bible. Can I just say the only people in the world that call the manuscripts that come from the Byzantine area, Syria, Antiochian, are Sam Gipp and his followers. They are not classified as the Antiochian manuscripts, but it fits their narrative, so they changed the name of it. It's the Byzantine manuscript tradition and the Alexandrian manuscript tradition. It's not even the manuscripts of Alexandria and the Byzantine area. In fact, there's actually more than two. There's four traditions. So explain a little bit, James, about the Alexandrian. So the Alexandrian was found mostly in papyrus or papyrus, and it was the Codex N or the Codex B, if you know your history there. Most of these came out of Alexandria or Egypt. And if you listen to Sam Gipp, he says that anything out of Egypt is wicked and evil. And so if this text is going to come out of there, it can't be good. It was a more concise text, and the majority of these texts come from the first through the ninth century. Okay. And anything out of Egypt is bad. Well, and we're going to break that down a little later on debunking that whole line of thinking. But we see a predominantly text tradition in what James said, Codex N and Codex B, that's Codes Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. Those are attacked a lot by King James. Only they're books of the Greek New Testament put together in these type of papyri. But the idea is that these manuscripts, get this, were found in Alexandrian Egypt. Because the Alexandrian library was a great archaeological find, and many manuscripts were there. And then many others have been unearthed. But not all of them have been unearthed there in Alexandria, Egypt. And not all of them, see, the way GIPP presents it, and the way that those on this side present it, is that Egyptians were writing these down, and Egyptians wrote these down, and they were written, these manuscripts were originated in Egypt, and because they were originated in Egypt, they're corrupt. Because the Egyptians were corrupt. That is not the case. That is not factual at all. The manuscripts, we can't tell who wrote them. What they're talking about is that when they found these manuscripts, they found a new text type, a new way of writing. Okay, so for instance, if you look at handwritten letters from today to handwritten letters in America from the 1700s, there's a different way of writing. There's a different way of how they're doing that. And so what they found when they found these manuscripts is that they were written in a different way. So they classified these as a tradition, as a text type. They're finding papyri in that text type all over the place. You know, in other regions other than Alexandria, Egypt. They did not, it's not, some of them may have been written in Alexandria, Egypt. But it's not saying that Alexandrian manuscripts were all written and originated from Alexandria, Egypt, and Egyptians wrote them. And therefore, they're corrupt. Now, the other thing, and James mentioned this earlier when he was talking about the, one of the stances about the text type, was that the majority text. And so a lot of people go towards the Byzantine text because they say it's the majority text. We have so many more manuscripts than that. Well, that's also a half truth as well. We have more manuscripts in a certain period of time. From the 1st to 9th century, so you're talking about a period of 800 years and the first 800 years closest to the time of Christ and the apostles, the Alexandrian tradition was the majority text. We have way more manuscripts that date back to that time period than the Byzantine. In fact, the earliest piece of manuscript that we can find from the Byzantine dates to about 400 AD. We're talking about almost 300 years or just a little bit more than 300 years removed from the time the apostles actually lived. All right. So that's just some information about the Alexandrian text type. The next one is one that's not necessarily a lot of manuscripts have been found. That's the Western text type. They have found both Greek manuscripts and in translations into other languages, especially Latin. These were found from the Western end of the Roman Empire. Then what we've been talking about, the Byzantine text type, which Sam Gipp likes to call the Antiochian text type. And where were Christians found first? Antioch. They were called Christians first in Antioch. So, yeah. This is found in the majority of later uncial minuscule manuscripts. This is the more, you see this more medieval type of writing styles. They have the color. They have the calligraphy and that kind of things. There's more of them because it was in a time where you had more people within the church copying them. And so they're newer. Yes. And they're newer. And so the majority of the copies that we find were also copied later on. So you have one guy copying and he makes a copy and that copy survives after his generation. And so the next guy says, well, let's make two copies of that. The next generation, next generation. So you have more copies of it because it went along further. And this was the majority text from the 9th to the 15th century. All right. And then probably the least well-known is the Caesarean text type. And this is disputed by some as being legitimate. But it is, you know, a few manuscripts found in that. All right. So let's talk about, we got some time left in this. Let's talk a little bit about the translation. Now, James, define what is translation? What are we talking about? We talk manuscripts is the recording of God's word and the copying of God's word onto these manuscripts and copied and passed down. That's different from translation. What is translation? Translation is taking it from one language into a different language. So if I'm translating, like when I went to India or when I went to Peru, I had a translator there. And as I spoke, they translated my English words into Spanish or into the language in India that I was speaking so that the people there could understand it. Oh, James, James, James. I know this has nothing to do. This has nothing to do with King James. But you got to tell that story about you preaching. Was it Peru? Yeah, it was Peru. Oh, this is a fun time. Mike Kennedy was there. He was the missionary. We went down to see. I had surrendered to preach maybe like a month. It wasn't a long time. Hadn't preached a sermon yet. I'm walking down the street. My pastor says, hey, you're going to preach at the next block. And I sort of said. How old are you at this time? You're like, what, 17? 17, 18. Yeah, I just surrendered to preach. And I looked at him and I said, man, I've never preached a message in my life. Well, God will give you what you need to say. So like three minutes later, I get out to the block where we're at. We get a crowd around us and we start street preaching. And the translator, he said, you just preach. And I'll just translate as you preach. You don't need to stop. I'll just preach. And I swear he didn't preach anything that I said. I think he preached his own message and I preached my message. It was like all of like five minutes. It was on John 3, 16, because it was the only verse that I could think of. And so I just preached God loving the world and he's sending the son to die for us. And he preached a message and I sort of stopped and I said, I'm done. Like, I don't have anything else to say. And so he just kept on going and gave an invitation right on the street. And so I don't think that he actually translated what I was preaching. I think he just preached his own message and I was just there talking. Oh, that's wonderful. That is, I love that story. So there's something, and this was, there's, we have a member of my church who, he, I was teaching on this and he talked to me afterwards and he, his wife is Cuban. And so the, her, his mother-in-law just, she didn't speak English at all. She speaks Spanish. And he was talking to me. He said, there's something whenever you translate into any language. And he said, it's actually a phrase that's used with translation. It's called lost in translation. You ever heard of that? Yeah, I have. Okay. What that means is, is that it is actually impossible to translate anything word for word into another dialect. And so there are things that get lost in translation. Even, even, you know, break that down even to sign language, because what you have to do is you have to fill in the gap or you have to make up the gap because our verb is different. Our, our sentence structure is going to be different the way we speak. And so while the message of what you're saying, like say James is preaching in Peru and the guy is actually translating what James is saying, while he's giving the same message that James is saying, it's not the exact same words or in the same structure, because there's what's called lost in translation. That's very important to understand when we're talking about this. James White said this in religious matters, two extremes are always present. There are always those who seek novelties in religious experience. At the same time, there are always those who resist any change, all change at all costs. And what James White was trying to get as he, he believes, and he may be right on this, is that a lot of what the issue is with King James onlyism is a pushback, a refusal at something different, at change, at a basically line in the sand or a stomp your foot in the ground of, this is my tradition and I don't want to change. And, and, and that's human nature. You know, we see this in churches and church work. We see it all the time. We make a change. And then what do people do? I don't like that. Am I right? One of the things that I heard years ago with our former pastor, he said this, he said when he was in the seminary, they had given a statement about music. And they're talking about changing music in your church. And the professor said that people like what they know. They don't know what they like. And it's basically this is people know blessed assurance. They know amazing grace. They know how great they are. And when you get up and you sing those songs, they like it because they know it. The things that they don't know in Christ alone, whatever other song you want to sing, the reason they don't like it because they don't know it. But once they learn it and they know it, they begin to like it. And so people don't like what they know. They know what they like based on what they are familiar with. That's why I don't want to go on the subway. Because I'm not lying. When we go to, like, my wife's like, I just want to go to subway. I was like, okay, well, you make my sandwich. Because I know I'm such a child. Whenever I go to subway, I know what I like individually. I don't know how to put it all together. But when my wife puts it all together, I'm like, I would have never picked banana peppers. But you put banana peppers on the sandwich with this and this and this, and I love the way it tastes. But if I'm sitting there picking for myself, I'm like, ew, I don't like banana peppers by itself. And I'm not picking it. I mean, that's why I don't like bars. Not bars, but like bars or places where you make your, you know, I see this new restaurant open up called the Burger Bar. And I'm like, what is that? They're like, it's where you can put your own burger together. I said, nope, not going there. Yeah, because we like what we know. We don't know what we like. We heard it our whole life. We heard the songs. We heard the preaching. And so, therefore, we like when we hear that. And we hear something different. Well, we've never heard that before. Do I really like that? And it takes some time for human nature to learn to like that. Oh, I'm going to get on a rabbit trail here. Because, and I think this is what's played not just fundamentalism, but I think it's played a lot of Christianity. Because what happens is, is you have things that as men get in pulpits, they find things they don't understand. And because they don't understand it, they don't like it. And so, then they make the attempt to try to find some type of justification against it using the Bible. I mean, for instance, especially with new things. All right. I'm not a video game guy. I'm not a gamer. But I don't have a problem with people who play video games. Okay. But what you have is, you have guys in fundamentalism that don't understand why a grown man would play a video game. So, what do you end up hearing? You're preaching against video games. You know, film. Any type of art. They don't understand. And what happens? They try to twist some verse to find some justification to preach against it. It happens all the time. Yeah. It does. We were so accustomed to it in camp meetings and whatever else we were in. And that was just the way of life. Yeah. Tony is getting up and preaching against what he doesn't like. Oh, I heard him go against soccer. Yeah. He preached against soccer one time. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, James White said, this is not the first time in history that people have argued that a particular text or a particular translation should be used exclusively by those who would be faithful to God. It happened with Jerome and Augustine. And basically, Jerome. So, you had the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And it was around for a few hundred years, even through the time of Christ. And that was pretty much one of the standards that they used up around 400 whenever Jerome was alive. And Augustine was alive. Well, Jerome decides he wants to translate and give a translation into the Latin. And this is where we end up. And he completes that. We know it today as the Latin Vulgate. But Augustine's immediate reaction to Jerome's work is he didn't like it. He didn't like it. He pushed against it. And he actually wrote a letter to Jerome. And I want to read that to you. This is one of the quotes that he said in the letter to Jerome. My only reason for objecting to the public reading of your translation from the Hebrew in our churches was, lest bringing forward anything which was, as it were, new and opposed to the authority of the Septuagint version. Sort of sounds like the King James Old Testament. It does. Now, Augustine presented, did some great works in the area of doctrine as a church father. But, come on, we can admit that this was, you know, this was his, and don't step on my grass, okay? We should trouble by serious cause of offense the flocks of Christ, whose ears and hearts have become accustomed to listen to that version to which the seal of approbation was given by the apostles themselves. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like they should learn the Hebrew before they read anything else. Instead of going to a different manuscript. Ugh. If the key, if the King, I think White writes this, if the King James Version has been your standard, have you ever really looked into why you accept it as such? Where did the King James Version come from? Who translated it? What texts were used in its translation? Who produced those texts? Are these not important questions for any honest person who wishes to prove all things? So, and it happens again. It happens again in the 1500s with, basically, after a while, the Vulgate that Augustine had an issue with becomes the standard. And then in the 1500s, a guy named, a Catholic priest, a Catholic priest, a Catholic priest. I say that not because I have a problem that he's a Catholic priest. And I know, okay, now I really made people mad. But that, I know King James only has to have issues with Catholicism. But their Greek New Testament behind the King James Version was done by a Catholic priest. I don't have a problem with that. But that's also a significant piece of information they like to just leave aside while they also bash on Catholics. Because this is one that I hear from a lot of Ruckmanites. All modern perversions are Catholic Bibles. Yeah. Where did your Greek New Testament come from? A Catholic priest named Desiderius Erasmus. And he begins to work. He wants, he makes it, his life's legacy is he wants to put together, for the first time, a collated, brought together Greek New Testament. And he starts to work on this. And so, there is pushback on his work there. No one had done that up to this time. His work was done in 1516. How many manuscripts did he have? Now, we talked today about having 1,500 manuscripts of the Byzantine text type. You know, 1,000 manuscripts of the Alexandrian text type. Over 2,500 manuscripts in total that we have available to us of the New Testament. How many manuscripts did Desiderius Erasmus use in putting together his first work of the Greek New Testament? I think you can count them on one hand. Yeah. Our best estimation is he used around five. Five. And it's not a knock against Erasmus. It's what he had access to. They didn't have the travel and the availability of doing things that way in his time. There was another guy who was actually going to put together a Greek New Testament. But he was doing this, and this is a crazy word, called a polyglot. A polyglot was sort of what we would call today like a parallel Bible. You go to your Bible bookstore, and you have like a Bible, and it has like four different versions in it. Yeah. I've got one right here. Yeah. It's the King James and the MEV. It's a parallel Bible. Yeah. Yeah. So a polyglot was similar to this, but it was done in different languages. So you'd have Jerome's Vulgate on one column, and you'd have the Greek in another column. And so this guy was putting together the Compotentian polyglot, and his name was Cardinal Xemines. And so there was sort of like a rush to try to get the first one out, because they got word that this guy was going to have a Greek New Testament in his polyglot. So Erasmus had to take a chance to get this thing and get it printed before this cardinal did. And so you know what he did in order to do, to put out there without getting approval from the church, from the Catholic church before he did it? You know what he did to try to sort of, what's the old saying, ask forgiveness before he asked permission? It's sort of what Erasmus did, but his little thing of trying to soften the blow, what he did was he dedicated the first Greek New Testament to the Pope. Okay. So all you guys that hate the Catholic church that are King James only, your Greek New Testament, one of the portions of your Greek New Testament behind your King James Version was not only done by a Catholic priest, it was dedicated to the Pope. Again, I don't have a problem with that. But they do. Okay. So not only this. I think you have in your notes here this, the same Pope that excommunicated Martin Luther. Yeah, Pope Leo. Because this was put out a year before the Reformation began in 1517. And so not only this, Erasmus' Greek New Testament actually is not considered a perfected work, not even by Erasmus himself. In fact, as soon as he rushed that work to get printed and put out there. And it does become, and it goes down in history, as the first Greek New Testament that is printed. As soon as it's printed, he goes back to work to working on the new additions to fix mistakes. So right at the beginning, Erasmus himself recognized mistakes he needed to fix. And he went through five additions, 1516, 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535. And many believe it would have gone through more additions had Erasmus not died himself. He was always continuing to work on that. That's one area. That's one part of the Greek text. I think what you're saying is you can continue to work on things and make things better with more knowledge and technology and understanding. Yeah, they all understood this even back then. Somewhere along the line, we've grabbed hold of that tradition of the King James Version and thought there's nothing that can be done better. Yeah. Yeah. Even though we use the 1611, but we all know that. Oh, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Oh, I have one. Dang it. I left it. I left it at the house. I got one in my house. It's a copy. It's not an original. Definitely don't have that. But it's like a copy of an actual 1611. I'll have to bring that. We have to read some. We're almost out. I want to talk out of time. I want to talk about this guy. The next guy to start working on a Greek New Testament after Erasmus was a guy named Robert Estian. And he went by the pen name Stephanas. And he was a Catholic who became a Protestant. And he did four editions of a Greek New Testament. 1546, 1549, 1550, and 1551. So what does that tell you again? That it needed to be worked on. He was always working on it. Then the next guy. The next guy that also did a Greek New Testament was a French Protestant Christian theologian. This guy's name was Theodore Beza. Now, what's the interesting thing about Theodore Beza? Theodore Beza was the disciple and successor to a guy that King James only, as independent fundamental Baptist, cannot stand. His name was John Calvin. Theodore Beza took over John Calvin's church in Geneva when Calvin died. He was a close friend to Calvin. And Theodore Beza also worked on a Greek New Testament. And he produced his edition of it in 1565. Now, I say all that, all of that to say this. When we get to the King James Version in 1611, it's Greek text that those guys, those translators used were Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza. They drew off all of those. And those were compounded together to what eventually becomes known as the received text or the textus receptus. So you have to understand, if you're going to jump on that argument, you have to admit that these guys that you think nothing good can come out of, a Calvinist, a Catholic priest, did the work behind your New Testament. Again, I don't have a problem with that. Do you have a problem with that, James? No. It's going to shake some people's bones when they hear it. Well, some of them know it. That's why when I did my research and did my study on this, and as I was doing this, I wanted to listen to what the other side had to say about each counterargument. One of the problems I had with it is that the King James only aside, a lot of those guys that do that work, they're just straight up dishonest because they do know about it. And they either change the information or they completely dismiss it and they won't even address it. And so that was one of my issues with it is like, okay, if you have an argument, if you present a counterargument, if you're trying to argue with me, James, that Chevy is better than Ford, okay, and you have information or I give you information that is factual information about how the engine works and that kind of thing, and you sit there and distort the facts or something like that, you know, I'm not going to argue with you anymore because you're not listening and you're not engaging in the arguments. Yeah. But I like Ford better than Chevy. I'm sorry. I'm a Dodge guy. You're a Dodge guy. Yeah. Oh, help us. All right. I think that we are running out of time there. I'm going to stop there and then what I want to do the next time is we'll jump in the next time we'll get into. So we basically took it up to the English translation. So where we're going to start at next time is basically starting at whenever it starts getting into the English language. Okay. So that's where we'll finish there. James, any final thoughts over what we covered today? No, I think it's something that, you know, it's taken me five, six, six years or so to start really getting my hands around and still haven't fully gotten to that point. But I'm growing every day. And I think that's the whole point of this is to continue growing and continuing our education and studying it out and figuring out exactly what we believe and why we believe it. And we just went on a trip with our teenagers to Gatlinburg and they, we sat down on the very last night and I had a couple of teenagers say, hey, I've got a couple of questions for you. And so I was answering them and all of a sudden an hour and a half passed and we've been asking questions and giving biblical responses because we're wanting to grow in our faith. And some of them I had to say, hey, I don't really know the answer to that. Let me go study it out. Yeah. And so that's where we've got to be in our life of our Christian growth. And that's a, that's a great point, James. We should encourage the asking of questions. We should be able, if our faith can't stand to the scrutiny of asking questions, then we have a pretty poor faith. Yeah. And that whole session started by one teenage girl saying, I really don't understand the Trinity. Can you explain it to me? I said, well, you decided to start. Okay, great. Thank you. No one can. Thanks for the softball. Thanks for the low grasp there. And so I did the best I can. But then all of a sudden that question turned into a couple more teenagers hanging out into half of our group being in one room, just discussing biblical questions that was spurred by one question. And if I had said, I don't care about that question, we wouldn't have ever got the great conversations that we had at that night. But we've got to be open to willing to learn and to continue our education. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I just want to say to everybody, as we get into this, I know that there are going to be times where I come across as sort of snarky or sarcastic. I try not to. It's really not my heart to do that. But let me say this. This is a hobby horse of mine. This particular subject has been close to my heart because it was a big deal in my life. It was one of those rock solid things that I stood on. And as I study it, I mean, it's one of those things that I think a lot of people, and I'm not going to get into the discussion on the IFB cult issue. I am planning. I do want to do that one day in the podcast. We're going to talk about cults and the IFB, whether it's a cult or not. But I think that I identify with those that have come out of cults because whenever I studied this stuff, I felt lied to. And that was the feeling, the overwhelming feeling that I had. And I don't know about you, whether you're listening or something, but for me, when I feel like I've been lied to about a certain thing to then be drawn to made to believe a certain thing based on a lie, just who I am, my disposition, how God created me, that angers me. So I get passionate about this subject because this was a huge deal. I feel like there was a lot of dishonesty about presenting its position. So I appreciate guys listening. Let me say this. I appreciate the support of the podcast. James, check this out. I didn't do an episode from November to this week. So almost two months off. And we ended up having almost 1,200 downloads during that time. And those of you that's reached out, just kept on listening. We are back and we are going to attempt to get on a weekly schedule. We're back to a weekly schedule. Try to stay with that as best we can. And we'll be continuing to work through this. And James will be on with us every week unless there's some kind of scheduling conflict. But thank you for listening. You can follow the podcast on Facebook and Twitter. And be sure to leave us a rate and review. Until next time, guys, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. We will be on thekomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkomkom Thank you.

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