Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So let's just, first of all, let's pray and then we'll get into our lesson. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you are good to us, Lord.
We run to you, Lord, for refuge and for strength. Lord, we seek the COVID and the shadow of your wings as we try and serve you and live for you, Lord. Even as our church meets today, Lord, we certainly need your grace, your protection, your help, your wisdom. Lord, bless our meeting today and our fellowship with one another. And I pray you bless our Sunday school as well. Not only here, but also downstairs where the kids are studying your word. And please give grace, Lord, there's some among us who are unwell. There's also some who are traveling. Please give them protection and healing.
And Lord, we just. We ask you to meet with us and manifest your presence among us. Stir us up. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
All right, so the page that, the first thing I want to look at before we get into our lesson, here is the page I just gave out, the last page I gave out to you.
So what that page is, if you can probably, you can probably tell, that is a facsimile. That is a copy of a leaf of the 1611 edition of the King James version of the Scripture. Okay? So what we have in our.
I'm getting ready to shock you, okay, I'm getting ready to shock you right now. What you hold in your lap is the 1769 edition of the King James Bible, alright? That's what you have. You have the 1769 edition.
And sometimes, and the reason I wanted to give that to you is because, listen, all we're in pursuit of is not a defense of a position.
We're in pursuit of facts and truth, okay? That's all we want.
And one of.
In this particular issue, and we're not going to spend too terribly long on this. This is maybe this week, maybe next week, and we're going to move on to something else. But there is a lot of, as they say, misinformation. There's a lot of statements made on this particular issue of which Bible you're supposed to use and that kind of thing.
And so sometimes it's hard to discern what's true and what's not. One of the things, the reason I gave this to you is because one of the things that's, that's sometimes stated whenever someone says, well, I use a 1611 King James. Well, no, you don't.
Technically you use a Bible that was translated in 1611, originally published in 1611, but it's the edition of 1769. Now what the changes are very. I mean, we talk miniscule between the two, but sometimes people say that and you say 1611, and they scoff. You use 1611, you don't use 16. You couldn't even read the 1611 King James Bible. Well, that's what you're looking at.
So you can read it. Okay. The hardest part about the 1611 edition of the King James Bible is the fact that it is in a Gothic font and not in a Roman font. Like is what you have in your Bible. Almost all Bibles have Roman font, and that by itself makes it a little bit more difficult.
But if you put that thing into Roman font, it's a little bit different than our Bible as far as, like, extra e's on the ends of spellings of words and things like that. But it's perfectly legible. So anybody says, well, you can't even read the 1611. Well, yeah, you can. And so now you have a copy of it. The one other difference between the one that you have is the original was big. In fact, at Bob Jones University, they have, or at least they used to have at the Library, 1611 edition of the King James, a printed edition, which are pretty rare.
And actually at the Ark.
It was at the Ark, I think. Or this. Yeah, it was at the Ark. There was a 1549 edition of the Matthew's Bible, a full printed original edition of the Matthews Bible at the Ark. Again, large, but not as big as the King James. The King James was big. And we're talking like this tall kind of big. So that's just shrunk down. But as you can see, you can read it.
It's a little difficult with the font, but you can read it. And if it was in Roman font, you would have no trouble at all, even though some of the words are a little bit different.
So again, we're just.
I'm just trying to deal with these things as we go because there's so much, so many ideas that get tossed around about this and that, that I just want to cover them as we go.
So last week, what we talked about was the.
In our study of the reasons that our church holds to the exclusive use of the King James Version is first of all, the text. And we talked about that to some degree, which dealt with the handouts I gave you. What I want to go into now is you have three things. Remember, you have. The three primary reasons are the text, the translation, and then practical questions. Okay? And we'll cover those later.
So what we want to look at today is the translation. So what do I mean by translation when I say the text? Okay, What I'm referring to is the scriptures, the original language, Scriptures that were used, what edition, what version were used to translate into English. Okay? Now if any of some of you in here are bilingual and you know that if you're translating as an example, Brother Jim, from Spanish into English, you're interpreting in that way, if the Spanish is different, the English is different. I know that's profound, is it not? So that deals with the text. That deals with the text. But whenever you translate from one language to another, even if the text is exactly the same, yet the target language, in this case English can be different because languages, no two languages upon the earth.
I don't care what anybody tells you, no two languages on the earth have a one to one correspondence. It doesn't exist. It just doesn't exist. So let me give you an example. There is, for instance in Korean, there is a King James in Korean.
But even though it's called the King James in Korean, I think that that particular Bible is translated from the King James Bible, but it's not the same as the King James. There are definitely going to be. It's not like thou, thou shalt shalt not not. It's not like that. Translating between two languages is just not like that.
So when you deal with translations, you have to answer difficult questions like do you put charity, love, and if so, why? For instance, First Corinthians 13, very often misquoted, but in the King James it says charity.
And in other places that same word that's put as charity says love. Why? That's a translation question, not a text question.
Everybody follow me.
Anybody have any questions? Up to this point I haven't gotten very far, but so what we're looking at now is, and this is an important question to ask and to answer, which is, okay, so say we agree on the text with the underneath.
Does it matter about the translation?
Are some translations better than others or are they all the same? And this question is important because as we, as we mentioned last, I don't know about last week, week before, maybe about the new King James, because the new King James Bible was translated mostly from the same source as the King James, which is why they say very similar things now. There are differences, there are a few departures and things like that throughout the Bible, the new King James, but.
So why don't we use it?
Right? Why don't we use it after all, it's easier to understand, right?
You see what. So this is the question, you know, when you're dealing from a church's, you're looking at the church's policy and the church's direction. And you know, what is going to be the standard that we use and that kind of thing. These are questions we have to answer. So these are questions again of translation. So I thought it'd be good. I actually printed this out.
What this is, is the translators to the reader. I don't know if you have.
If you would open your Bible. If you have your Bible with you in printed form, it's probably not going to be on your phone. If you're looking at that, go to the very beginning.
You might or might not have this page. In fact, I don't think my Bible has it. Sorry, dogs.
How many of you have on the title page?
The title page.
Let me look one other place just to see.
No, the title page. Some Bibles on the title page will say in the King James, it'll say King James Version.
It'll say translated from the original tongues.
With the former translations, I think it says diligently compared and revised. Thank you. I was going to mess that up. Diligently compared and revised. And that tells you how they did it.
That tells you how they did it. So some Bibles, like my Bible, has this. Although it doesn't have the title page, it has what is called the translators to the reader, like this. Your Bible may or may not have it. Most do not because it's pretty heavy reading.
But what I did is I printed it out. And this is the original version of the translators to the reader. What is this? Well, it's simple. It's the message from the translators to the reader to give us information about what they did and why they did it. Now, it doesn't cover every verse, Obviously. This is 14 pages. Okay.
If you want a copy of this, I can provide you with a copy of it so that you can read it yourself, if that's in your lane and you like that kind of thing. Again, it is language from the early 1600s. It has not been revised or updated at all. And so it's. I mean, it's heavy reading. You'll have fun reading it. But it is very insightful. It has helped me a lot, actually.
If you would like a copy of this, if you can, just let me know if you. And next week I'll try to have a copy ready to give to you and you can read it at your leisure. We're going to look at a few things from it today.
So in the translators to the reader, when we look at the translation of the Bible, it is therefore helpful for us to look at something like this that was written by the 50 plus translators because they explained themselves and why they translated the Bible and made the choices that they chose in general terms.
So I thought it would be important for us to look at what they said firsthand as to how they understood their work, not how we understand it, but how they understood it. Now why is this important?
Because in our day, we are 400 plus years past that and everybody has an opinion, right? Everybody that wants to have an opinion has an opinion on this version or that version and why it's this way or that way.
And some of those are true and some of those are false. And it's important for us to see how they understood their own work.
Because if we think something of their work that they didn't think something of their own work, that would be a little unusual, would it not?
I'll give you a comparison.
Let me ask you, let me pose a question to you, all right.
Did the writers of the Bible, David, Paul, Peter, etc. Did the actual men who wrote the scripture down, God led to write them down?
Did they know that they were writing the scripture when they did it? Did they know that they were writing God's word?
Was that their belief of their own work?
Have you ever thought about that?
Because we believe it is.
But did they believe as we believe?
What do you think?
Some of them that could be, yes, sir.
Okay, that's a good, that's a good counter. That's a good counterpoint. Well, I mean it's, I guess it adds to what Andrew said because both are, both are true depending on where you look. And I don't know that you can say like with broad brush every single person.
But what you do see is, is in various verses, for instance, the prophets say thus saith the Lord over and over. So they knew when they were writing it down it was God's word without question. They believed it was God's word. We believe it was God's word. John is an example of that. Some places like the psalms like Andrew mentioned are less plain. But then you do find psalms written by the same writer where he does seem to clearly understand. Right?
Like the spirit of the Lord, let me see, was upon me, spoke by me, things like that. And so, and then you go to, for instance, you go to, I think Second Peter and Second Peter refers to Paul and how that Some men would take the writings of Paul and would wrest them as they did the other scriptures. So even Peter recognized Paul's writings. So here's the thing. We are safe because we believe that the writing of Scripture was the word of God and is the word of God. But they also, speaking generally now, they also believed it. Okay, now we go to the King James Bible.
Do we believe of the King James Bible what the translators themselves believe? Now, I know the translators are not the same as the Bible writers. It's not the same. And that if we have the idea that the translators and their work were equal to what the original writers were doing, that's not right. That's not right. They translated the Bible and they believed that they were providentially guided by God. They said so in this. That's how we know. But that's different than inspiration, right?
It is, because inspiration happens one time when the Scripture is given.
All scripture is given by inspiration. And then God preserves it.
That's what we've been talking about with the text. And then people faithfully translate the Bible, right? And they have throughout the years, and this is not new. What's interesting is these translators understood that and recognized that was their role. And they also recognized people who had translated the Bible prior to them going back throughout the years, because many of them were scholars that knew languages that are not really in existence anymore. And so what did they say?
I'm going to read a couple of passages for you from this. I'm not going to belabor it too much, but under this section called A Satisfaction to Our Brethren, here's what they say. Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the later thoughts are thought to be the wiser. So. So if we, building upon their foundation that went before us and being Holpen helped. Some of you have heard that. Holpen. Holpen, that's an old Southern word.
And being Holpen by their labors do endeavor to make that better, which they left so good. No man we are sure hath cause to mislike us. They we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us.
Who are they talking about? They're talking about the people who had translated the Bible previous. He says, they say plainly, if they were alive, they would say, thank you for helping this work get better. That's what they would have said. That's what they would have said.
And then in another page, it says this.
But it is high time to leave them and to show in brief what we propose to Ourselves and what course we held in this, our perusal and survey of the Bible. Truly good Christian reader. We never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one, a good one, but to make a good one better.
Or out of many good ones, one principal good one.
Not justly to be accepted against that there that hath been. That hath been our endeavor, that our mark to that purpose. There were many chosen that were greater in other men's eyes than in their own, and that sought the truth rather than their own praise.
Here's what they're saying in brief.
They said we did not start out to start something brand new. That's why I wanted you to read the title page.
With the former translations diligently compared and revised. So they translated from the original text, but they were using the work of men of God, faithful men, and using and comparing it to make their own. Not because. So they were. So this idea that they were making and translating the Bible because they disdained all that went before them is not true.
That was not their cause at all.
So this was how they understood their own work. In fact, if you note in this, it says that.
But to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principle good one. So they were essentially saying, we're trying to make one principle good Bible that nobody can have cause to find problems with in their translation. Do you see? So did they understand that they were trying to do something that was a standard? Yes, they did.
So that in as much as we understand that, we understand it exactly as they did. All right, so let me put that aside, and I want to give you a brief history of English Bible versions, starting with the first one that was printed by the printing press. Okay? If you want to write these down, you can. I'm going to give you the name and I'm going to give you the year if you're writing this down. Okay, the first one is the wycliffe Bible of 1382.
Now, this one does not really count, although it was the first Bible printed in English, printed on the press.
It doesn't count because it was not translated as our Bible was from the original biblical languages. It was translated from the Latin vulgate. So that's why it's not usually counted. Okay. Because its source was different.
Okay. Number two is the Tyndale Bible of 1525.
This Bible only contained. It was done by William Tyndale, who ended up being a martyr. Why?
Because of the Bible.
Right. He gave his Life.
Because he wanted the Bible in English.
1525. He translated the New Testament and certain portions of the Old Testament. Then you have. After that was number three, Coverdale. The Coverdale Bible, 1535.
The Coverdale Bible was the first complete printed Bible from the original languages.
All right, The Coverdale Bible.
So in the order here, if you count from Bibles from the same source, you have Tyndale Coverdale. Next, number four in our list. But number three in this set is the Matthew's Bible of 1537.
This Bible was compiled by John Rogers, but it was mostly William Tyndale's Bible.
Okay, you notice how the Matthews Bible is using Tyndale before him.
Coverdale using Tyndale before him. Tyndale was William Tyndale. You would do well to study that man's life.
That's.
We cannot look lightly on Tyndale. Did you know that 84% is calculated? I didn't do this personally. This is research.
84% of the language of our Bible comes directly from William Tyndale.
Why?
Because it's right. It works. Why change it? Right? 84% of it. In other words, these scholars, who are much more knowledgeable than William Tyndale, were looking at Tyndale's Bible when they were translating the King James and they said, it's good.
Why change it?
Right?
This is something you have to get on, and this goes deeper than just scholarship and things like that.
On a factual level, there is something to giving due deference to people like William Tyndale and what they. The price they paid and what they did as a pioneer to get the Bible into English.
We can't just lightly dismiss it on some little pretext like, well, it's too hard to read. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Or it's not modern enough, and you just chunk it.
You can't do that and also show due deference to Tyndale. Now, there's a lot of lip service, but modern, modern Bibles. Now, I know the text is different in modern Bibles like the ESV and seva, but modern Bibles don't use the wording of Tyndale. It's completely redone.
Completely redone.
So there's something to be said about that spiritual heritage that has come down to us, and it should not be lightly dispensed with because people paid a high price for that. And you say, well, you know, that's all fine and good, but the scholars, well, hold on.
God isn't working only through scholars. Remember, God is working through his People, that's why we have the text of scripture that we have is because God's people recognized it and copied it over and over and over. And that became what is the basis of our Bible.
Okay, next is the number five in our list is the great Bible of 1540.
It's called the Great Bible because of its size. So this was an enormous Bible. This was printed by the Church of England in order to be placed in every parish church.
So it was supposed to be a Bible that you display here like this. So it was very large, called the Great Bible. Next was the Geneva Bible of 1560.
This Bible was produced by English Protestants who were exiles and in Geneva, Switzerland.
This what the Geneva Bible was the Protestant Bible. The Geneva Bible was the Bible that was brought over on the Mayflower because those were, those were non conformist. The Pilgrims were non conformist. They brought the Geneva Bible with them. Okay, then you have the bishop's Bible of 1568. This was a Church of England revision of the Great Bible previously mentioned.
And then lastly you have the King James Bible. The primary kind of tension at the time of the King James translation was the people who held to the Geneva, the non conformists, they liked the Geneva and there were reasons for that. I won't go into all that, but they liked the Geneva and the Church of England liked the Bishop's Bible. And so there was tension. So the King James was kind of an answer to that where. Because on the translating committee there were nonconformists and then they were Church of England people.
And so.
And when you look at the text, there are definitely words where it could go either way. For instance, in the Geneva Bible, they preferred the word congregation rather than the word church. The bishops preferred the word church rather than congregation.
And you know what you find in the King James? You find both.
And we've already looked at that. And so you can see marks of that. So the King James Bible was translated and completed in 1611.
Now why did I read all that to you?
It's because I want you to see that the Bible that we use, you notice after the King James, basically it stopped.
You know why?
Because it was God's. People came to the conclusion that we're good, we're good, we have a faithful Bible that has been the culminating work of years of faithful translators.
And just like the translators themselves understood and they saw no more need to continue. And so yes, there were other translations, but they never gained any serious popularity.
And so the King James Bible became the standard Bible for English for the next 250 years.
Okay.
And that's. That. That's significant.
Again, we cannot simply dismiss all of this in favor of the next new translation.
That's just not wise generally. Right. In life, because. And this is what I want to show you next is this.
There is a mark of divine providence in this history that I've tried to describe to you.
There is good cause to believe that God provided in his providence, provided his word in this way at this time.
I'm referring to with the King James translation, because remember the King James translation, it was translated at a time when in which the Bible's text, that is the original languages, which is the basis, was settled.
The Protestant Reformation has. They were coming out of. Basically coming out of the Protestant Reformation. It was still kind of in there, but the 1500s, in particular 1600s, freedom of religion started to pop up in England and things like that in the 1600s.
But the Bible of the Protestant Reformation was the Textus Receptus, which was then translated into English in all these versions I've described.
And there was no question about that. There was no argument about that. It was a settled issue at that time. Now, were there little issues about this or that? Yeah, there were. But broadly speaking, there was no two competing texts of Scripture. There was one, and that was it.
And remember, during the Protestant Reformation, one of the battle cries was sola scriptura, which is only the scripture. So the question of the Bible and what it is and what it's supposed to be is a very important question. They spend a lot of time on.
Now, here's the problem.
In many ways modern, or you might. They're technically called critical theories of textual criticism that have led to and produced modern text. And English versions are a regression.
We're going backward. What do I mean by that?
Now you understand modern versions, every one of them is the next. And new has the latest scholarship. Right. You know how it's promoted, especially in our marketing culture. It's the latest, you know, we got the latest information. We got the Dead Sea Scrolls, we've got the lost books, we've got this and we've got that, you know, and it's promoting it because really now, especially nowadays, it's. It's all profit. That's all it's about, really.
That's really all it's about. But it's the next new thing. The next new thing.
And they consider that to be progression, moving forward, getting closer. And the narrative is this.
People would say something to this effect because we have new discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls like Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus. Because we have all these new discoveries, we're coming ever closer to the original text of scripture. That's the narrative. So every time there's something new, we're getting closer and we're getting closer. Well, it begs the question, what do we have now?
What will we have in the future?
I mean, that is an open question that really matters.
And they say, well, we're moving forward.
Well, that sounds nice, but that is actually, if you think about it, that is a regression from where we were in the 15 and 1600s.
Because at that time the text of scripture was settled.
It was settled. It wasn't an open question. And now it has become an open question basically since 1881.
And we already saw this before, but the manuscripts that are the basis of the King James Bible and the other versions that, that I just mentioned were the texts that were actually used by the church over the centuries, which is why they're younger. Right.
Whereas the three were much older. And we've already discussed that. We've already discussed that.
So I want to, as we get close, we're going to have to pause here in a minute.
So I want to pose this question. Is newer always better?
Yeah.
[00:31:22] Speaker B: I had this debate with a friend of mine that started using the newer versions.
If you believe the newer versions are more accurate and therefore he said as much. If you don't believe King James is without error, then God failed. He promised to preserve his word. So for several hundred years there, all we had was inherent.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: That's right.
So there it's.
So we go to the question of this is newer always better. Now I want you to understand a lot of this is a cultural question. Think about it.
Just think with me. In our culture, the next new thing is always thought and understood to be better. The next phone, the next computer, the next iOS, the next car, the next rocket, the next Tesla. Everything's moving forward, forward, forward. And that is presented as the best. Who says that's, that's a true principle.
Who is the one that established that everything that is new is better?
Because that's a guiding principle. It's almost like hardwired into our thinking in our marketing driven world. Because you know why it's newer? It's better because you're supposed to buy it.
And if your old phone works. And to be honest, I like the new phone. Okay, I like the new phone.
But if you think I like my phone, it's good, that's okay.
That's okay. Because when the motive is you gotta buy it, you gotta buy it, you gotta buy it, you gotta buy it. There has to be something different than before. Otherwise you say, what?
It's the same one, which is basically what's happened to the iPhone. But anyway, I digress.
Some of you that are in that joke know about that joke. All right, so this is a basic assumption. Newer is better because modern versions are newer and technology has increased.
The newest ideas, the newest methods and translation choices in Bible translations are necessarily better.
Newer is better. I want to tell you something. This has gone crazy.
How many of you have heard of this technology where computer software has been invented to input.
It takes as an input the original languages of the. Of scripture and it translates the Bible for you.
And I've heard, anecdotally, I've heard people tell me that they have heard those, those people that push that say this, this translation will be more accurate than any other translation because a computer did it.
Brothers and sisters, when are we going to come back to real life?
And when are we going to give due deference to the labors of those who paid the price, who went before us, not blindly, but to show deference to our spiritual elders? Right?
And to start with a place that maybe they weren't as stupid as everybody assumes they were.
I mean, to put it bluntly, the King James translation was undertaken at the high point of both faith and scholarship in English history.
In many cases, the translators. I want to say something. There are. Look, I can't speak of all of them, but it is not uncommon to find people who translate the Bible who do not believe the Bible they're translating is without error. Okay, that is not uncommon. The translators of the King James believed the Bible was inerrant. Okay, that matters.
That matters. Okay.
Were they faultless men? Were they apostles? Certainly not, but. But that's not where we're hanging our hat. Anyway. They were men. They were failed men, just like you and just like me in many cases. Remember, you're talking about the next thing, the next thing, the next newest piece of information, the next newest technology, the newest way to translate the newest reading of a particular passage. In many cases, these translators were aware of alternative readings in translations, but decided against them. It's not that they didn't know, it's that they chose the other.
One of the greatest strengths of the King James Version's translators method was that they did not change a translation if the previous one was good and right.
They defaulted to leaving it as it was.
You see that deference to those who went before?
I want to read a couple of passages on this, and we'll close this says this.
But what about piety?
But now what piety without truth? And what truth? What saving truth without the word of God? What word of God? Whereof we may be sure without the Scripture? The Scriptures we are commanded to search.
They are commanded that they are commended that searched and studied them.
The Scripture is the word of God. That's what they're stating.
This passage says this. Let me see if I can find the beginning.
But mention we three or four uses of the Scripture. Whereas whatsoever is to be believed or practiced or hoped for is contained in them. Or three or four sentences of the Fathers.
You know the quotations of the Fathers.
Since whosoever is worthy of the name of a Father from Christ time downward hath likewise written not only of the riches but also of the perfection of the Scriptures.
The Scriptures then being acknowledged to be so full and so perfect. How can we excuse ourselves of negligence if we then, if we do not study them of curiosity, if we be not content with them?
You know what these are? These are statements of their faith in the perfection of Scripture of what they're translating. I think that matters. Just saying.
I think that matters. Whether you believe what you're translating or not.
And then on the subject of their scholarship.
Let me read you this passage.
None of these things. The work hath not been huddled up in 72 days. He's referring to those of you that know the lxx 72, the Septuagint, Greek translation of the Old Testament. But hath cost the workmen. They're referring to themselves now. As light as it seemeth the pains of twice times 72 days and more.
Matters of such weight and consequence are to be speeded with maturity. For in a business of moment a man feareth not the blame of convenient slackness.
Neither do we think much to consult the translators or commentators. Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek or Latin. No, not. Nor the Spanish, French, Italian or Dutch. Neither do we disdain to revise that which we had done and. And to bring back to the anvil that which we had hammered.
You know what they're saying. If we see something that's deficient, you know what we're going to do? We're going to take it back to the anvil and we're going to hammer it again.
All these languages are mentioned. These are languages they had familiarity with.
He says this.
But having and using as great helps as were needful and fearing no reproach for slowness nor coveting praise for expedition. We have at the length, through the good hand of the Lord upon us brought the work to pass that you see, there can be no question about the scholarship or the faith of the translators. Does that matter?
Absolutely. Absolutely. We'll break off there. Let's pray.
