Scott McMahan

I have obtained a copy of the 1971 book "Which Bible?" (second
edition) edited by David Otis Fuller. As far as I can tell, this is
the beginning of the KJV Only movement we know today. I would not
write this article if I had not gotten a copy of the original edition
of this book myself and had read it myself. (I have heard that another
early KJV author, JJ Ray, produced a similar book, but I have not
found it.)

Most of the book is a reprint of Dr. Benjamin G. Wilkinson's 1930 book
"Our Authorized Bible Vindicated". In the remarks about the author,
all that is told of Wilkinson is that he is "all but unknown to the
world of scholarship" and he "taught for years in a small and obscure
Eastern college". Wilkinson was the dean of theology at Washington
Missionary College in Washington, DC. This is a Seventh-Day Adventist
school which is now known as Columbia Union College
(www.cuc.edu). Nowhere in "Which Bible?" is any mention made that
Wilkinson is a SDA, although for Wilkinson's book to have been
reprinted, the original authors must have known its origin since they
had to have had a copy and know the "small...Eastern college" where
Wilkson taught.

The full text of "Our Authorized Bible Vindicated" is available
online. Comparing the original text to the reprint in "Which Bible?"
is essential, since the version in "Which Bible?" is not complete. The
most salient omissions are Wilkinson's original footnotes, and
Wilkinson was a capable scholar who produced a well-documented,
scholarly book, citing such authorities as EG White carefully by page
number. When these are stripped out, it's even less obvious who
Wilkinson was.

Certainly, there was some movement against modern Bible translations
before "Which Bible?" came out, but without the contributions of
Wilkinson, this does not resemble today's KJV Only movement. Wilkinson
has contributed most of the main talking points of the movement today:
the villification of Westcott and Hort and Origen (and others), the
idea of the two textual streams (the "bad" Alexandria and "good"
Antioch), and so forth. Almost every major defense of the KJV today
comes from the SDA Wilkinson. The only point used today that Wilkinson
didn't mention was dynamic equivalence translations, which didn't
exist in 1930. While it is a good point, it is not sufficient to get
people to abandon modern literal translations. In fact, with the ESV
and NKJV and other solid translations, the KJV Only has shifted away
from objecting to the translations themselves (on which they have no
basis for an argument) to underlying texts, making them even more
dependent on the SDA Wilkinson than they used to be, since he is the
sole source for these sorts of arguments.

To preserve his word, does God need a cultist? Could the Holy Spirit
not have used a Christian to make these points? (It is ironic to see
how many people both denounce the SDA movement and at the same time
use a SDA's defense of the KJV Bible.) Then would God use someone who
took this SDA material and deceived people by not telling where it
came from? That just doesn't add up, and anything built on this
foundation is going to be flawed.

What I encourage Christians to do is look at these issues
yourself. It's not hard to get a copy of "Which Bible?" (and they're
cheap). Get a copy of "Our Authorized Bible Vindicated" online and
compare them. Be like the Bereans who did their own study and came to
their own conclusions.

(Note: I don't have any problems with people who like the KJV, are
comfortable with it, and want to use it. That's not what this is
about.)