In studio today, a friend, a guest, a scholar in residence at Grand Canyon University, and the author of The King James Only Controversy, James White. Delighted to have you in studio today. It's good to be with you. You have written a controversial book about a controversy, and I want to be the first to say that I think this is a tremendous piece of work. In my endorsement of this book on the back cover of the book, I say a clear, compelling, and conclusive case contradicting the claims of King James Version-only advocates. Your confidence in God's preservation of Scripture through credible translations such as the NIV and the NASB will be solidified. And I think that's one of the things that you wanted to do through the book, is enhance and solidify the confidence that people have in the Word of God. That's very true, especially in light of the claims that are commonly made by King James Only advocates who would cause people to doubt whether the Bible translation that they're utilizing, if it isn't a King James, is going to accurately lead them to a knowledge of God. I've had many people contact me who were using another translation and the book has helped them to get through the confusion and the concern, the real concern that was caused to them that maybe I haven't been getting everything God would have me to have. Your problem is not with the King James Version, but with King James Version only. Exactly. The King James Version of the Bible is a tremendous work of scholarship, and it certainly served the Church tremendously well. But the King James only movement makes the King James something that the translators never intended for it to be. And really, in many ways, I'm standing for what the King James translators believed about how you should do translation, the necessity of revision, so on and so forth. And so we are not here to say, if you find the King James Version to be your translation of choice, that there's something wrong with you, or trying to convince you to abandon the use of that translation at all. Instead, the book responds to those who would say, unless you use the King James Version, you're not actually reading God's Word. Let's take a little bit of a whirlwind tour from the secular Koine Greek, the Greek, the common language of the day in which the majority of the New Testament came to us. From the secular Koine Greek of the day to where we are today. Okay. Well, first of all, the language itself, a very beautiful language, very expressive language, and it's the language that people spoke at the time. So God communicated to us. in a way that was understandable to the people of the day. He didn't write it on a kindergarten level. He didn't write it in the high classical Greek. He communicated to people like you and I in a language that we could understand. By the way there is a principle there for us in looking at modern Bible translations. Very much so. I am concerned about many of the translations that have come out very recently that are attempting to make the level of the Bible simpler than the Holy Spirit did. You don't want unnecessary confusion but neither do you want to lose anything that is there. It is a tight line that has to be walked and I believe there are a number of modern translations that do it quite well. But from that language you have the writing of the Scriptures themselves. They are God-breathed. It is the Scriptures that are God-breathed. Not the men that are writing them. They are not described as being God-breathed. It is the Scriptures that are God-breathed. It is God speaking to us. But we don't have what Paul wrote to the letter when he wrote to Ephesus or to the Church of Colossae. We don't have that letter anymore and in fact I think you would probably agree with me if we did it would probably be some place in a shrine and people would be lining up to worship it just like they did in Israel of old. We don't have those and so the question that looms in everyone's mind is How did those words that were given by God come to be in my possession today in my English Bible? What was the process? And unfortunately the King James only controversy thrives in the fact that that's not something we talk a lot about. It's not something that we emphasize a lot in our sermons and our teaching, helping people understand that. What we recognize is that the first difference between the Christians and the Jewish people before them is that the Christian people wanted everyone to hear about Jesus Christ. And so they were very open in allowing their scriptures to be copied. If a letter was, for example, found in the church at Colossae, when a Christian would come through and he said, I want to read about this, it talks about the preeminence of Christ, they would be allowed to make a copy. And very, very, very quickly entire sections of the New Testament ended up buried in the sands of Egypt, they ended up in Gaul, in Italy, they're being translated into Latin and other languages. Very, very quickly the scriptures were spread all over the known world because people everywhere believed that people needed to hear the message of the good news of Jesus Christ. Now there are two side effects of that methodology that God chose to use. The first is a wonderful one and as you know I deal a lot with Mormons in dealing with the claims of the LDS Church and one of the claims they make is that the Scriptures have been altered and changed and many plain and precious truths deleted because someone didn't like it so on and so forth. There was never a time in history when any one man, group of men, religious organization had control over all of the manuscripts of the Bible. If all we had was, say, the originals in control of a powerful religious group today, we would have no way of knowing whether 1,000 years ago, 500 years ago, they decided to change the theology and delete the deity of Christ or insert this doctrine or insert that doctrine. We would have no confidence of that. So because they are spread out all over the world, that is an impossibility. It is an impossibility. In fact, if someone does come along and try to make some radical change in a manuscript, when you compare that one manuscript against the other 5,000 that we have, it sticks out like a sore thumb. So that was never a possibility for anyone to do. When we talk about the preservation of scripture, I believe this is how God has preserved it in that way. But there's a second result of that. And that is, if you and I were to take the Gospel of John and sit right here in a well-lit place and we're both to hand write a copy of the Gospel of John, I will let you say that yours would be the most accurate but ours would not be word for word identical. We would make errors. We would skip lines. We would misspell words. There are all sorts of common errors that human beings make when they do that type of activity. I do it in front of a word processor with word processing equipment that checks and corrects my spelling as I type. I still make errors. That is what happens when in the history of the New Testament you have Christians simply making copies and sending them out all over the place, you have what we know as textual variance. That is, places where the Greek manuscripts will differ from one another. There are no two Greek manuscripts in the world that read word for word identical with any other. Now, most of them are exceptionally close. 85% of the text in the New Testament exhibits no variation at all. Of that remaining 15%, at least 90% of that is easily resolved. So we are looking at about 1-1.5% of the text in the New Testament where we have to do serious textual examination to be able to determine the original reading. One of the illustrations I like in your book is where you say, OK, let's say we had an original and 10 people sat down in a room and copied that original. You'd end up with 10 different copies. And if you lost the original, you would be able to get back to it with those 10 copies that are different. In fact it is really interesting, Dan Wallace at Dallas Seminary has his students do a little thing every year, every semester actually, where he takes an apocryphal story and he tells one person that you be sloppy while you copy it and you be the smart one, you be real careful and you just try to hurry through it. And then they just get rid of the original, copy those, and then destroy them. And then their project is, can we get back to the original? And I think he said he's done this 32 times. And in every instance, they have been able to get back to the original within one word. And that word was either to or also. And the reason is because you don't all make the same mistakes at the same place. Exactly, the smarter students are going to make the lesser mistakes. They are not going to make mistakes in the same places by comparing against other manuscripts. You are going to see real obvious errors and so on and so forth. So we are able, modern Christian scholars truly believe that not only do we have the original readings in the manuscripts that we have. What I mean by that is that no original readings have simply fallen out. They haven't simply just disappeared. We have the original readings but we are able to determine with an extremely high level of accuracy what those original readings are and when we don't know, when we are uncertain, that is why your NASB and your NKJV and your NIV have those little notes down at the bottom of the page. And the King James Version did it as well. The King James did it originally. There were a number of notes like that but most of the modern King James translations do not have that in their margins but many of them did for many, many years. Well, take us to the time of Desiderius Erasmus. Okay, now you're around 1516 and you have the first printed published version of the Greek. Manuscripts that's really where the modern history of the Bible begins in the sense that now we're getting to the foundations of the King James Version of course printing and is invented in the middle of the 15th century the first thing to come off the press is a Latin text of the Bible and of course he sat down with 5,000 manuscripts No, Desiderius Erasmus was a Roman Catholic scholar, he was a Roman Catholic priest, he was known as the prince of the humanist and at that time the term humanist simply meant a person who wanted to go to the original sources, an individual who wanted to not just simply hear what everybody else had said about a subject, he wanted to read about it for himself. So when you call him a Catholic humanist you are not saying that in a pejorative way. In a pejorative sense at all. In fact he was a pain in the side of the established church in many ways for many of the things that he wrote. He wanted to put out the first printed and published edition of the Greek New Testament. He also provided a new Latin translation along with. He originally started work in England, then he went to Basel, Switzerland, and he thought he might find some more manuscripts there. His first edition was based on about six manuscripts. We have, of various portions of the New Testament, 5,366. Today he had six. They all came from the same family of manuscripts. None of them were more than 1,000 years old. In fact, the older they were, the less he trusted them. So in other words, he didn't trust even some of the better manuscripts that he had available to him. But what he had to do is he had to sit down, he had to compare the manuscripts, and he had to determine when they differed what reading to put into his text. Now why is that important? Well, Erasmus put out five editions during his lifetime. The third edition became the most popular. His editions along with some other editions were available to the King James translators and were utilized by the King James translators as the basis of the King James New Testament. Why do I emphasize this? King James only advocates need to deal with the fact that human beings, frail sinful human beings like Desiderius Erasmus, were involved in making the textual choices that make up their King James New Testament, just like in the NIV or the NASB. And in point of fact, they had less information available to them. than we have available to us today. And so the King James didn't just simply fall down out of the sky. There was a human process that was involved in its translation just as there is a human process involved with the NIV, NASB, or any other modern translation. Let's talk about James I who actually commissioned the project in around 1604. The project was done in seven years which must mean it is the perfect project. There are those that would say look, James the first was morally bankrupt. He was a homosexual therefore We can't trust the King James version on the other hand there are those who say look we can't trust the NIV because Virginia Mullencott who is an English stylist who worked for a small period of time on the NIV? Stylistic changes she wasn't on the translation committee was a lesbian and that came out later on therefore We can't trust the NIV let's talk about the absurdity of using those kinds of arguments Unfortunately, King James-onlyism can be defined as the argument that uses double standards and circular arguments more often than anything else I think I've ever encountered. And here's a good example of this. Otto Scott, for example, has written a book that details a lot of the problems that King James had on a personal level as far as his personal life was concerned and his behavior. But that does not have any impact upon the accuracy of the King James as a translation. And yet modern King James only advocates will attempt to say that everyone from Westcott and Hort to all the modern translators who are involved in modern translations were somehow infected with some type of either sinfulness in regards to their personal lives or theological problems and this automatically results in corrupted translations or corrupted Greek or Hebrew texts. The problem with that is that modern Greek text, for example the Nestle All in 27th edition that I hold in my hand right here, you will notice at the bottom of the page there are extensive notes that are provided to you and what you have down here is information given to you about all the different readings the manuscripts have. Now if you are trying actually because you are a sinful person to hide something in the scriptures, you are not going to provide extensive footnoting at the bottom of the page that says by the way all these other manuscripts read like this. You are just going to go ahead and delete what is there and get on with it. That is not what modern scholars are doing and that is not what modern translations are doing either and again Everyone needs to examine the arguments that are presented by anyone, myself included, and see if they involve double standards. And in the King James only controversy, do those who support the King James as the only infallible Bible on the planet utilize the same standards in examining the King James and where it came from as they do modern translations? In my research, that's an unambiguous answer to that, and it's no. On page 22 of your book, The King James Only Controversy, you talk about translational disputes, disagreements over how to translate what was originally written by the prophets and the apostles. You talk about two different kinds of translational disputes. The one is a textual dispute. You give John 6.47 as an example. The second is a translational dispute. You give John 3.36 as an example. Talk about that for a moment. Well, most of the differences between the King James and the modern translations are based upon one of two types of things. In the first instance, what we would call a translational dispute. You have the exact same Greek and Hebrew terms in the manuscripts that we're utilizing. The manuscripts evidence that the King James translators utilized is the exact same in a verse, for example, of what we utilize today. And yet, the modern translations will translate it differently. For example, We're all familiar with Paul's words to Timothy, study to show thyself approved. Most modern translations say be diligent. Now both are translating the exact same Greek term, they are just translating them in different ways and some people feel that the King James really defines how everything should be translated. They start with the King James and sort of argue in circles from there but they say well you are trying to insert things because of the way you translate things. The other type of difference is textual and that is where the Greek or Hebrew manuscripts that we are utilizing differ from the Greek or Hebrew manuscripts of the King James. and so at that point you are translating a different original into English and obviously that is going to result in a different reading in your English translation. By the way there is so much that could be said about that and when we talk about translational disputes people might think that is boring but if you pick up this book and you start to read about it The first thing it will do is make you understand how we got the Bible we have today and the second thing it will do is it will give you such incredibly interesting information on even how languages are translated. from one culture to another. I think that's something we ought to just touch on for a moment, James, and that is the difference between dynamic equivalency and formal equivalency. Big words, perhaps, but the concept is pretty easy, especially if you're bilingual. Most definitely. So unfortunately, a lot of Americans aren't bilingual, but if you're familiar with another language, even if you just took a semester of Spanish in high school or something like that, you're aware of what these issues are. you can translate from other languages into English in more than one accurate way. Most of us, when we start studying other languages, we start translating as formally as we possibly can. That is, literally, we are simply taking, well, this word means this, and this word means this. And frequently, our translation isn't very good. It doesn't make really good sense, but at least we have some idea. Formal translations are those translations that attempt to maintain as close a possible connection to the wording of the original language text. NASB is very close, the King James is a very formal translation but there is no perfectly formal translation. It cannot be done. Greek word order for example defies English word order. And you cannot just simply assign a meaning to a word and stick with that all the way through because you and I don't use words with the exact same meaning in every single context. We change our meaning as we change context. So do the biblical writers. So the more formal translations will be a little bit more difficult to read. They won't flow. Now you have other types of translations, dynamic equivalency translations. And these individuals, we are not talking about paraphrases here. There are some paraphrases out there, some that are very nice but basically a person is just saying well I think the writer was saying such and such. A dynamic translation is attempting to maintain as close a contact as possible with the original text but They recognize that there are places where if you give a literal translation, English speaking people are not going to understand what you are saying. And actually you are missing the point. You are missing the point and you are not translating meaning and so a dynamic translation will sacrifice the literal words if it can help with the meaning. The example that I use in the book is Luke 9.44. In Luke 9.44 in the King James and the NASB Jesus says let these words or these sayings sink down into your ears. Now, you and I don't speak that way. The NIV says, listen carefully to what I am about to tell you. That is the dynamic equivalence. That is what it means. The literal Greek words are, let these words sink into your ears. But what does that mean? That is what the dynamic translation is trying to get at. Give me two examples from languages that we are familiar with today, German or French. Well, the one I've used for years, all my students are sick and tired of hearing about it. The Germans have a phrase, which literally means the morning hours have gold in their mouths, which doesn't mean anything to you and I. However, that is their way of saying our saying, the French say, which literally means I have the cockroach. What that means in their language is I am depressed, I have the blues. When we translate things how are we going to translate them? If we want to translate meaning then we are going to have to and in fact when we read a translation of a foreign language text we are awfully appreciative when they help us. So if you do a formal equivalency and the text comes out I have a cockroach translating from the French basically I am not going to understand what you are talking about but if you say I have the blues you have given me a dynamic equivalent of what the person was trying to communicate in the idiom of the French language. And the argument, of course, that most people make is, look, if you are giving a dynamic translation, this is the people who, for example, would oppose the NIV, they would say, if you're giving me a dynamic translation, you're interpreting one step that I want to do for myself. It's a lot safer to provide a merely formal translation. You are really hanging yourself out for some shots. if you give a dynamic translation and yet you've probably spoken with people who upon encountering like the NIV or a translation that communicates with them much better, their entire understanding of faith has increased dramatically because they just couldn't understand before and so God has a place for both. I suggest that people do not limit themselves to any single one but that they compare back and forth. It's kind of interesting I speak Dutch and there are certain things I'm trying to communicate to my wife and I have no English word to communicate it so I can only say it in Dutch and so this whole issue becomes clear if you understand other languages. We are going to be coming back in just a few moments with your questions right here on the Bible Answer Man broadcast. Any questions that have to do with the King James Version only controversy today, and you can get in by dialing 800-821-4490. Again, to ask questions of my in-studio guest, James White, the number 800-821-4490. We'll be back in just a few moments with more. Welcome back to the second half of the Bible Answer Man broadcast. I'm your host Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute. I'm in the studio today with James White, the author of the book, The King James Only Controversy and kind of interesting that I had actually begun Writing this book I developed the acronym KJV only and I was about a month into the project when I heard that you were doing it knowing of your Background I knew that I had better wait and see what you came up with you came up with this book sent me the manuscript I quickly read wrote an endorsement for this manuscript and aborted my plan. So thank you for saving me all that work. This is an excellent piece of work. Well I appreciate that and I am very appreciative of the fact that there have been many, many people. The mail has been 25 to 1 positive. People who have been very, very thankful for the fact that They now have a reason to trust the Bible that they have been utilizing. They don't feel like they are constricted. We have to realize that some of the folks who take the King James only position can be extremely, extremely strong in their denunciation of modern translations and things like that. and it can cause a real problem in people's lives. So I have been very thankful for the reception the book has received. And I understand well why Miss Riplinger does not respond to your ridiculous assertions. Why dignify the lying claims of a servant of Satan? kind of strong words there. I saw the book that you brought in today where Gail Ripplinger who wrote New Age Versions quotes Samuel talking about how the mighty have fallen referring to me. The fact that I broke my shoulders, I only broke my shoulder and have had people assail my character therefore the mighty have fallen. These people really take this issue seriously and one of the things you do in your book is you divide The King James only people into categories, so you don't paint with a broad brush There are people who are very strongly committed to King James Version only But they're not going to assail the character of those who have an NIV in their hands That's exactly right, and that's a real important distinction to make. I'm frequently accused, I'm sure you've experienced the same thing. Individuals like that will contact me, and you've painted with a broad brush when I ask for specifics. Well, I can't give you specifics, but there are those who go way beyond the call and engage in rather nasty callumniation shall we say of anyone who disagrees. There are those who hold the King James but not with the type of anger toward others and they do utilize different arguments and in fact we should distinguish between the two major King James only groups. You have those individuals who are really King James only in the sense that the King James translation itself is something special about it. It is either inspired or inerrant. It is advanced revelation as Peter Ruckman says. It is a re-inspiration of the Bible and then you have what I call TR only individuals. TR standing for the Textus Receptus. The Greek text is utilized as the basis of the King James and their arguments will be a little bit different though I have to admit. In every conversation I've had, I've debated D.A. Waite, I recently debated Thomas Strauss, and in every conversation I've had with individuals who defended just the Greek text, it eventually worked around to having the same impact and the same effect. In other words, even when I could present clear and obvious errors in the TR, the answer was, well, it's a matter of faith. I think it should be pointed out that the TR, or the Textus Receptus, the received text, is a term that, as I recall, was coined by the Elsevier brothers, or Brudern, as you would say in Dutch, who wrote in Leiden. They were publishers, basically, and that was a publisher's blurb. It was an advertisement. And it was in 1633 long after the King James Version, the first edition had been completed. They said this is the text that has been received by all, therefore textus receptus means received text. The problem is the TR, first of all there are over 100 different editions of it and most people aren't aware of that. But the TR that a lot of King James only advocates have today did not exist until 1894 when Scrivener created it. And in fact, that text did not exist until 1611 when the King James translators created it. There is no one manuscript in the world that reads word for word like the TR. Not at all. by my in-studio guest James White, a suggested donation of just $10. I want to go to our first caller up today, Don, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, listening on WORD. Don, welcome. Hi, how you doing? I'm really honored to be on your program, Hank. Glad to have you. Hey, this book, if anybody's listening and they've ever been through this, if they have a friend in this, it's worth every penny. This book is worth its weight in gold, especially for me. I went through this, I have some guys that work, and yeah we went through this but one of the problems i had was how do you it's almost like you have to witness these people how do you How do you try to communicate with these people? That's a good question. How do you communicate without creating heat? Well the heat unfortunately is already there and in fact that is one of the main problems is that this whole movement splits churches and destroys ministries. It is a very difficult thing on that level. The heat is already there and unfortunately with a committed King James only advocate who is already thinking and arguing in circles. All the facts in the world are impervious to logical argumentation. There is nothing that you can do at that point. You can simply present the facts and say now Christians who are followers of he who called himself truth should not utilize bad argumentation and illogic. We as Christians should have a very high standard of truth and a very high standard in what we accept to be true. You can call them to accept those standards but you can't force them. And I think it's important to realize, I believe that the King James only movement is a tradition. And a lot of people who hold this, you know what happens when you start questioning somebody's traditions. Boy, I'll tell you, the sparks can fly. And a lot of these folks, really the major group that believes this are independent Baptists. And Baptists, I grew up very very conservative Baptists, I'm a Reformed Baptist, but the point is we Baptists don't think we have any traditions. And those people who don't think they have traditions are the most blind to their traditions. If I may sir, one thing that I really found the most helpful of all was I have a 1611 translation, a reprint. From Thomas Nelson. No, it's like from, it's a 1911 reprint, and when I found those verses that were different from what is printed now compared to what was originally printed, they're wholesale changes that were made errors, which throws the entire inspired argument out. Yeah, that's a really good point. In other words, King James Version is not King James Version. Well, exactly, and what you are carrying today, what most of the King James Only advocates have today, is the 1769 Blaney Revision, which differs in a number of places from the 1611, but I'd like to ask the caller, have you ever shown a King James Only advocate page 80, where I talk about Jeremiah chapter 34, verse 16? I showed him nine different verses, and at that point, it's like he shut down, this was a pastor of an independent Baptist church, and he was like, you know basically like what you said before was you just have to take it on faith right right and it's that they're not once confronted it's like they're gonna retreat into their shell yeah but you know the good thing is and the answer ultimately to your question is to prepare yourself as though your life depended on it and if God opens their heart then you can give them answers and use those answers as springboards or opportunities for sharing how we really got our Bible. Good talking to you Don. I want to go to Russ Austin Texas listening on KIXL. Russ welcome. Hi Hank and James it is a privilege to get to talk to you all this afternoon. I attend the Calvary Chapel here in Austin. You were here not too long ago. Yeah I remember. Yeah I got to meet you all here and that was a great blessing. I'd just also like to say that I've been a Christian now for nearly, I guess, four years, and I've been a listener of the program for about the last three and a half years, and it's been a great blessing to my life. Thank y'all for what y'all are doing. This is really a good thing that I got to call you today, because I had This is a subject that I've been kind of studying some lately, and I've listened to some tapes of Chuck Smith, and in these tapes he was not really advocating so much that the King James Version was the only Bible that Christians should use, but he was saying that he believed that the manuscripts that the King James Version was based on are more reliable then I guess the older, like, Alexanian manuscript. And he had suggested some books, and I've picked those up, and I've been reading through them, and I kind of wanted to see if I could get James just to comment on these, if he was familiar with them. One book was by Edward F. Hills. It's called the King James Version Defended. Yes, I address Hills in the book. Okay, and then there was three other books written by a a man named David Otis Fuller. I guess also too, the question that seems to me, another one that I wanted to ask was when there are different readings and different families of manuscripts, which ones do you feel are more reliable or which readings should you accept? Well, first of all, the books that you referenced are King James books. Edward F. Hills is addressed briefly in chapter 5 of my book. He takes a rather unique perspective, but I think it is a very circular perspective. It starts with its own conclusion. The problem with the perspective that is taken by most of these individuals is it does start where it ends up. It is a circular argumentation. When you examine the Texas Receptus, I have invited a number of individuals who defend it as being the best to interact with some of the most glaring problems in it. I could give you a whole list that wouldn't mean anything to you. I talk about them in the book. and they are not really willing to put the TR in the same position of examination of something else and that's a real problem. When you say, when you ask the question well when you have variant readings from different families which one do you take? Modern Greek texts do not simply say well you always take the reading found in this family. You see the practice of textual criticism today involves you in examining every single manuscript in its own context. And so there are times when a modern Greek text like the Nestle All in 27th just came out will take a Byzantine manuscript reading and I should explain that the major families are the Alexandrian, the Western, the Caesarean, and the Byzantine. The Byzantine is primarily what the textus receptus is. There are times when it will take a Byzantine reading over against an Alexandrian reading because in the context that is what is suggested. A modern textual scholar is going to look both at the external evidence and the internal evidence. And so it's not just simply a matter of modern textual scholars throwing the Byzantine text out the door. That just simply isn't the way that it is. Even though that's normally how it is represented in King James-only materials, that is not how it actually works out in practice. I do want to mention that, without putting words in Chuck Smith's mouth, I go to Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, and I know that Chuck likes the KJV best, but he has never kicked me out of the church because I'm carrying an NIV, and there are many Calvary Chapel pastors that will preach out of NIV. or memorize an IV so again he really reverences the King James Version but he is not insisting that everybody agree with him on this particular point and that is really I think the point that we want to get people to. We are not saying that there is anything wrong with the King James Version. The thing that we are trying to say through all of this is that we should have real confidence in the manner through which God has preserved his word to this very day. In point of fact our problem comes to us because we of all the language groups on earth today are the richest in the blessing of God and having the most number of excellent translations available to us. There are entire language groups that don't have any. So they obviously aren't going to have an argument about which one is best in that situation but we have so many that we have arguments about it. When I first started studying the King James only issue back in the 80's I was sent tapes by Chuck Smith and I wrote to Calvary Chaplain. I got a letter back that said those were older tapes. Chuck is not quite as convinced of that position now as he was then, so on and so forth. So I've encountered it a lot, but I would hope maybe you would pick up the book, because I do address those issues that you're talking about in the book fairly in-depth. Good. I want to go to Jeff, Memphis, Tennessee, listening on WCRV. Jeff, welcome. Yes, sir. How are you fellas doing? Doing okay? I'd like to ask Mr. White a question, and I'd like to ask you this. If I am searching for absolute, inherent, infallible truth, I know you probably already told me or whatever but if I am searching for that, which Bible do I go to? Well there are a number of Bibles you can go to. That is the whole issue. We need to be very careful that we do not sacrifice truth for certainty. You see up until there was a printed edition of the Bible, whenever Christians gathered for over 1400 years in a church, if you had a manuscript and the person next to you had a manuscript, those two manuscripts were not identical to one another. Does that mean they did not have God's truth? No it doesn't. In point of fact when individuals for example would use the Greek Septuagint there were many differences The Septuagint, yes, the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. I didn't know there was one that existed. There certainly was, and in fact the New Testament writers quote from it the vast majority of the time. Okay, get away from all those $5 words, where is absolute truth at? The absolute truth is in the word of God, sir. It's not a matter of which one, sir. We're not talking about multiple Bibles. The Bible was written... And there's over 250 different translations out there. The Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew, sir. That is what God revealed his word in. We have translations thereof. And as the King James translators themselves said, even the meanest translation, as long as it is faithful to the original, is worthy of the phrase, the Word of God. And I agree with them. Okay. Let me ask you this. Once again, by the way, let me ask you a question before you ask a question. Do you think that there are any two Greek manuscripts that agree perfectly? Sir? Do I think there are any two Greek manuscripts that agree perfectly? Yeah. I hold the Texas Receptus. I don't care whether it agrees. Which one, sir? There are over a hundred of them. Well which original do you hold to? No we are asking you which one do you hold to? Just so you can be specific. See the problem is when we ask which manuscript, which one are you wanting to invest this absolute perfection in? As I explained before when God preserved his word for us he did so in such a way that it could not be altered in any fundamental way but he did so in such a way that allowed for textual variation and so I don't believe that there is any one Greek manuscript that is perfect so you can't ask me that question. You are the one who said that you do believe that the textus receptus is perfect. Is that the 1516 edition of Erasmus? One of the other four that came after him? Was it Stephanus' text? Was it Baze's text? do you choose? I choose the AB 1611. I've got my hand right now on the one that God saved me with. Okay, so actually the TR is irrelevant if you're saying that you're actually holding the King James. The TR doesn't really matter. I'm a TR man, I'm a King James man. Okay, you're not a TR man so the TR doesn't matter then, right? The TR, which TR doesn't matter. What matters to me is that God said he's not the author of confusion, and you've got these people in these churches and the preacher stands up, he can't no longer say, let's turn and reference. But the problem is, if God is not the author of confusion, how come you are so confused about what you're saying right now? I'm not confused, brother. I know God said... You don't even know what you've got ahold of right now. ...in the furnace of the earth, tried seven times, thou shalt keep the whole Lord. Jeff, have you ever even noticed that Psalm 1267, which you were just citing there, is not in reference to God's words? It is in reference to his people? It is not what anybody holds to, it is just a plain reading of the text. It is just a matter of looking at the text. I recognize your desire to have absolute certainty but what I'm suggesting to you is that you may have sacrificed truth to have absolute certainty. Are you aware of the fact, for example, that the reading of your King James Version of the Bible, Revelation chapter 16 verse 5, did not exist prior to the end of the 16th century anywhere in the world? I don't believe that. Well, let me explain what I'm saying. You're trying to destroy my faith. No, I'm not. No, sir. No, sir. Let me ask you something. If your faith is placed in falsehoods, then that's a faith I do want to destroy and have it replace the faith in truth. because God's truth can examine. Hey Jeff, you know what you need to try to do for just a few moments is listen. Just open your heart and your ears and just listen. Even if you disagree, just listen and that way you can argue with what is said on the basis of what is said rather than what you think he is going to say or what he didn't say. Just listen for a moment. Revelation chapter 16 verse 5 in the King James Version of the Bible, we all know it has been turned into hymns and everything. I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous O Lord which art and was and shalt be because thou hast judged thus. The reading and shalt be did not come into existence until Theodore Beza, John Calvin's successor in Geneva, when working on the Greek New Testament, looked at it and said, that doesn't make any sense. I could go into the forms of the words but he made what is called a conjectural emendation. In other words, he didn't have any manuscripts to back him up but he changed it anyways. He changed the word and if you look at all of the translations, you look at all of the manuscripts that existed for 1500 years of church history. All of them say, which art and was O Holy One. Now he changed that. He didn't have any warrant to do it but it ended up in the King James Version of the Bible. I would suggest to you that if you are unwilling to recognize that the King James Version is what its translators themselves said it was, a translation done by human beings that is liable to revision, that the faith you are talking about has been misplaced. And I'd like to suggest to you, God saved you by his grace, not by a translation. Don't put your faith in a human translation. Place it in the Savior, whose blood avails for your sins. agree with what you do with the charismatic faith healers i think that's a bunch of junk i deal with them down here in tennessee myself but let me say this fellas god if god hadn't got a perfect bible then i mean what is it all about I mean can't you understand that? If God hadn't got a perfect book, the God that floated the ark... Now by the way we do believe, Jeff, in the infallibility of Scripture and the inerrancy of Scripture. In the originals. Have you ever met anybody to Jesus with a Greek text? I preach from it all the time but that isn't the issue. I think people need to understand when you say if you don't have a perfect Bible what you are saying is if you do not have a single inspired perfect English translation of the Bible. We need to keep these issues clear and we need to make sure that we recognize the apostles didn't think they needed one. The apostles used the Septuagint and there are all sorts of variations in the Septuagint and sometimes they quote the variation. Were they wrong? I don't know all about that stuff there. Would you be willing to look into it? Have you read my book? My preacher did and he didn't speak too highly of it. Well I understand how that might be. I mean I study, I read Otis Ford's book, I stay on my side of the fence, I need to stay on. Well, that's just it. If you're only on one side of the fence, you can only get one side of the story. There is a reason, Jeff, why the vast majority of Bible-believing, actively sharing their faith Christian scholars, like myself, don't agree with your position. See, I don't believe you're a Bible believer. Because I don't believe that the King James is something that its own translators didn't design it to be? That's not the issue. I think it is. Do you trust what God said in Hebrew and in Greek to get to you today what he said and is it perfect Well hang on one second Jeff because I want to ask you a question here that I think will perhaps help us. Let's talk for a moment about the comma Johannium, 1 John 5 7. This is an argument that is brought up by King James Version only advocates over and over again. Let's talk about that for just a moment I think it will help clarify things for you Jeff. Hang on. Jeff are you familiar with the passage referring to 1 John 5 7 3? Yes it is. the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. So you are familiar with what is called the Communion or the Three Witnesses? I am not familiar with the great big words but I am familiar with the text. This is a passage of scripture that even scholars like Dean Burgon who is frequently cited by David O. Fuller, by Edward F. Hills, recognized was a much later insertion into the text. In fact there are no Greek manuscripts prior to the 16th century that contain this reading. Let me ask you a question. This passage was not utilized by for example the early Christians who were fighting against the heretics that denied the Trinity or the heretics who denied the deity of Christ. They didn't use it because they didn't have it. Were they somehow missing something from your perspective? See, this is the difference between me and you. I believe that God knows when to give and what to give. Apocrypha was in the middle, but that was just because the King James translators said it don't belong here. middle of the text. The Apocrypha aside, let's get back to what I was just saying. There are a number of places I can show you. 1 John 5, 7 is one of them. Luke 2, 22 is another one, where there are readings in the Greek manuscripts from which the King James is translated, hence in the King James, that Christians for 1,600 years had never seen. Are you saying that the church did not have God's truth until 1611? Yes, sir. I'm saying the door of Revelation closed in 1611. Can you recognize that that is a belief that is completely extra-biblical, it has no biblical foundation at all, and in fact becomes an object of faith for you, and why that might be dangerous? The Bible says that the word of God works in you, effectually, that believe. That's true, but that doesn't have anything to do with the King James Translation. I mean, we could argue all day, but see, I'm dealing with these teenagers down here, the rock music don't do it for them, the drugs don't do it for them, and then they come in, and am I supposed to give them 16 different versions? No sir, you give them the word of God, and if they understand the NIV better than they do the King James, don't you dare limit them to a translation they can't understand. We don't give them a Bible that takes the blood out of Colossians 1.14. There's another example. Okay, let's talk about that for just a second. We only have about 30 seconds to talk about it, and then I'm going to wrap up the broadcast. Blosch's 114 is an excellent example of a reading that is based on a very small percentage of very late manuscripts. Again it is something the church did not have and I would like to point out it is also found over in Ephesians 1-7 in all the manuscripts. Why take it out of just some if you are alleging a conspiracy here? In other words the point is the blood is not taken out. I am out of time. Jeff thanks for being a gentleman with your differences. I am out of time for this edition of the Bible Answer Man broadcast. only controversy the title James White the author a suggested nation at $10 we're making it cheaper than you can buy it in the bookstores for one reason we want to put it in your hands is a welcome addition to the library of every Christian this is something that will establish your confidence in the Word of God I like what you say here on page 13 Over the 1100 years following Jerome's publication of his Latin translation of the Bible, which was known as the Vulgate, His work became the most popular translation in Europe. By the early 16th century, the Vulgate was everybody's Bible. It held the position in the minds of Christians that the subjugant had held a millennium before, and just as Jerome himself had ruffled feathers with his new translation, so along came a great scholar who again upset the apple cart. This man's name was Desiderius Erasmus, the Prince of the Humanists. Now, interestingly enough, You point out that he dedicated his book to Pope Leo X, the same pope who, by the way, excommunicated Martin Luther. You go on to say the beat goes on. It would be funny if it were not so serious. Jerome takes the heat for translating the Vulgate, which eventually becomes the standard, and then Erasmus comes along and takes the heat for challenging Jerome and for publishing the Greek New Testament. Then, 400 years later, It is Erasmus' work itself, in the form of the Texas Receptus, which has become enshrined as tradition by the advocates of the authorized version. He who once resisted tradition has become tradition itself. The cycle continues. Will there someday be an NIV-only movement? We can only hope not. Now your point, there is nothing wrong with tradition as long as we don't confuse tradition with truth. Exactly and unfortunately all that came from being a church history professor. I love talking about history and if we look back at history we see that Christians like their traditions and once you get used to hearing the Word of God in a certain form, in fact what you didn't get a chance to look at there is there was a riot a long time ago in Carthage because Jerome's translation comes out and it doesn't quite read the same in Jonah. Instead of saying a gourd grew over his head he came up with a castor oil plant and they had a riot. Now we Christians have sometimes done some silly things and I think that was fairly silly. The fact of the matter is a lot of us grew up on the King James translation and we hear God speaking to us in that language and so when new translations come along it's real easy. for us to become very defensive. Maybe not thinking through it, but it's an emotional thing. Because God said, for God so loved the world. He didn't just say God loved the world. You don't want to change anything because you've heard God speaking to you in this certain type of cadence and it's beautiful. It's rhythmic, it's beautiful, it's poetic. But we like our traditions, and unfortunately when we have our traditions challenged, we tend to become rather emotional really quickly. Now, you believe in full plenary, or full... Inspiration of the text. of the text. You believe in inerrancy. So how is it that you can say, holding to inerrancy, holding to the full inspiration of scripture, how is it that you can say that there are not two Greek manuscripts that agree exactly? Well and that's an excellent question because of the fact that for a lot of King James only advocates it's an oxymoron. They really question the fidelity that I have to the authority of scripture. The problem is the term inspiration and the term inerrancy refers to what God did a long time ago in inspiring the scriptures. So we are talking about the autographs, the originals. The original writings when Paul sat down and he wrote to the Thessalonians he wrote a letter to them and what he wrote to them was Theonoustos, God breathed. Now, there is no promise anywhere in Scripture, and I have read the King James only materials from stem to stern, but no one has ever shown me a promise in Scripture that says, Scripture is inspired and all copyists thereof shall be inspired for the rest of the transmission of the text of the Bible. I can't find that anywhere. And the historical fact of the matter is, is that God did not deem it proper to keep every single manuscript in the New Testament from textual variation. He didn't do it. So if he didn't do it historically, if our theology forces us to come up with some other concept, we're making history and God's truth clash against one another. And that's a dangerous thing to do. The simple fact of the matter is, God did promise to preserve his text. It's how he did it. Does he do it by re-inspiring the Bible in 1611? Does he do it by overriding copious so there is one manuscript somewhere out there that is absolutely perfect or did he preserve his text in another way and the way we described in the previous program we talked about the multiplicity of manuscripts that immediately went out into the world so that the fundamental doctrines of the gospel could not be changed, could not be altered, you couldn't take the resurrection out, you couldn't insert some other concept into it somewhere, since within a matter of years of the writing of the New Testament, manuscripts are buried in the sands of Egypt, outside the control of anyone. God did it that way which I think is far more important than really classical scholars look at us like we just landed from another planet because in comparison to what they have to work with to reconstruct the writings of Plato or someone like that we are so rich it's unbelievable. I mean, the purity of the text in the New Testament is incredible. Example, Hebrews 7.24, I deal with it all the time, 7.24-25, I deal with it with Mormons, where it talks about Christ's priesthood. He holds it, aparabaton, without successors. There are no textual variants on that term. The Greek manuscripts all say the same thing and with 85% of the text that is exactly the way that it is. The point is you are not trying to rid people of their confidence in Scripture rather you are through this book you are saying to people we can have the greatest confidence that God has indeed preserved his word. And the reason that I wrote the book is I had to take away a false confidence that is just simply placed in a human translation and replace it with the truth that God has preserved his word. He has given us more evidence of the truthfulness of that word, more evidence of the transmission of that word than any other ancient text whatsoever. He has preserved his word. He just hasn't done it the way the King James only advocates would like us to believe. And if he had, it would actually have worked or militated against preserving the truth of the text. In point of fact, for those who take the strongest King James only position, The entire issue of the preservation of scripture becomes irrelevant because the King James is a re-inspiration of scripture in 1611. Who cares what happened up to then? We had a caller in yesterday's program who said they didn't have God's word up until the King James came along. That I think undermines the most fundamental assertions that the church has always made. about the veracity of the scriptures. In a sense, the gates of hell would have prevailed against the church. Very much so. We want to go to our first caller up today, Lorraine, San Diego, California, listening on KPRZ. You're on with James White. Hi, thank you for taking my call. I really appreciate the subject matter. I've been going back and forth on this lately with a pastor of mine. I have a couple of questions. One is about the question of deity, the deity of Jesus In Carson's book, the King James Version, the whole chart there about how different versions indicate the deity and others don't. Right. In fact, I expanded greatly on that chart on page 197 of my own book. Okay. It's obvious you answered a lot of questions. I'm going to have to get that book. Also, I have another question. Well before we leave that I think it is important to point out just so that people don't think we just bypassed that one. When you are talking about the deity of Christ one of the main objections that is raised by King James only advocates is the allegation that modern translations somehow downplay or attack the deity of Christ. And that's why I included an entire chapter. Chapter 8 is solely on passages relevant to the deity of Christ and the virgin birth. Because I have dealt with Jehovah's Witnesses for years. And I have studied these passages in depth. and I think that it's really terribly unfair. The King James only advocates will play upon a doctrine that all of us Christians believe in deeply and would immediately identify with but in point of fact it is simply a false accusation to its core and any semi unbiased examination of the facts demonstrates that to be the case that the modern translations like the NIV or the NASV are attempting to hide the deity of Christ. In point of fact Dr. Kenneth Barker who is the head of the NIV Translation Center, the general editor of the NIV Study Bible, has said that one of the most consistent criticisms he's received of the NIV has been how strongly it proclaims the deity of Christ. which it really does. I have dealt with Jehovah's Witnesses for many years and most people who do that recognize that the single English translation that is strongest on the classical passages that teach the deity of Christ is the NIV. You know what is really interesting about this chart and the book for this chart alone. This chart points out where the NIV and the NASB are very clear on the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and where it's actually absent from the King James Version. For example, John 1.18. John 1.18 is a passage where in the modern translations Jesus is described as the unique God and in the King James that is the only begotten son. But the chart also addresses another passage like 1 Timothy 3.16 where the King James has God who is manifest in the flesh whereas the modern translations have he who is manifest in the flesh. So I think it is very fair, it goes very in-depth on that because the deity of Christ is extremely precious to me. I'm going to be writing a book for Bethany House on the Trinity. It's something that's very, very important to me. It's obviously vital to apologetics. And so, I want to make sure that people realize we deal with the deity of Christ very deeply in regards to your question, because it's very important. Did I understand you correctly in saying that the missing passages just couldn't be written in Greek? Some of the different, like NIV apparently is accused of missing certain passages and other scriptures. Well, when we use the term missing, realize when you use terms like deleted, removed, missing, and this is what King James only advocates like to do, that sets the King James up as the standard. The question that we always have to ask is what did Paul write, what did John write, what did the original writers have? and the King James Version comes from a family of manuscripts that I describe as a fuller family. That is, they came about at a later period of time and they are longer. For example, the titles of the Lord Jesus, if the earlier manuscripts have the Lord Jesus, the later manuscripts will have the Lord Jesus Christ. They will expand titles. And this is very, very common. In the Gospels, the scribes that copied the manuscripts very much wanted Matthew, Mark, and Luke to say the exact same thing in the exact same way. This last Sunday I preached from Luke chapter 18 and I used a Greek text that has the various Gospel writers in columns next to each other. And it was fascinating to notice how the later copyists would try to harmonize the Gospel writers to make them say the exact same thing with the exact same words. And we understand that type of bent when we're copying, especially if we're used to, let's say the way Matthew does it, and we're copying Luke. It would be very easy for us to unconsciously make that type of a change. And so the point is, not is something been taken out, but was something there originally in the first place. And we've got to give the modern translations credit when they don't have a particular passage. For example, Matthew chapter 18 verse 11 is not in the NIV. because it's not in the best manuscripts. So John chapter 5 verse 4, they will always provide you with those verses in translation, in the footnotes, in the translation itself. Like that stoning of the woman, the adulterous woman, they say some translations that's removed, and when I read it, you know, I feel like it's inspired and I never know what to think about it, because they say that, you know, this is only in some you know, translation. Well, the fascinating thing about that particular story, and again I do address that in the book as well, toward the end of the book I give you the textual evidence for that, but that story itself appears at different places in the Gospel of John and in some manuscripts it appears in Luke. The point is that's the only text of Scripture we have like that that is actually even found in some manuscripts in another book. It seems very obvious because of that, because of its absence from the earliest manuscripts and because of the fact that it is found in different places that it was probably a fragment of oral teaching on the part of the Lord Jesus Christ that very early was distributed amongst Christians and people wanted to record it in the text and they tried to find a place to record it and eventually it ended up in John but the fact that it is found in Luke is very, very indicative of the fact that John didn't originally write it there at 753-3811. Luke certainly didn't have it in his. It is a later addition, and I think we need to be just as concerned about additions as subtractions. But notice again, your modern translations do translate the passage for you and provide it for you in footnotes. Right. Mexico has this new Bible out, and I've seen it out in other settings. It's the New Century Bible. Are you familiar with that? Well, actually, he's using the New Century text, and then he has his notes along with that. Okay. The only thing that I can say about the New Century version, and I'm going to try to keep this as general as possible, is I've looked at it some, and I do have a problem personally with translations that attempt to make the scriptures simpler than they originally were. In other words, if you're trying to translate at a level lower than the Holy Spirit inspired it, you're going to have to lose something along the way. And when you attempt to artificially limit the vocabulary that you're utilizing, you're eventually going to be losing something. Now again, I think it's important for everyone to recognize, if we would simply use all the resources that are available to us and have multiple versions, If we don't learn the biblical languages, and I'm going to avoid my normal sermon about the fact that we waste our time doing a lot of other things that we could use. I don't think there's anything wrong with learning the biblical languages personally, but I'm going to avoid that sermon for now. Even if we don't learn the biblical languages, we have such a wonderful plethora of excellent translations available to us that even if you have the New Century version, and you also have the NIV and the NASB and the New King James Version and you're studying and you're comparing and contrasting, then you're not going to be led astray by any oversimplification that one particular translation might have. And so that's why I really strongly encourage people to utilize the resources, have multiple translations. I know we all like to have our one favorite, really soft, dog-eared Bible that we carry with us all over the place, and I understand that. But if we're serious students of the word, then we need to utilize multiple translations while we're doing it. Lorraine, thanks for your call. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. God bless you. A related question. Lorraine brings up such great questions. Mark 16. So often we have the question about the long ending to Mark 16 and the short ending. It seems to me that the short ending just doesn't make any sense. It just stops too fast and you know you've just illustrated for me without even discussing it exactly why there is not only a long ending but a medium ending. There are a multitude of endings for Mark. Why would there be multiple endings for Mark? The only reason there would be multiple endings for Mark is that a lot of other people have agreed with you in the past. Again, I address this issue in the book, but one thing is for certain. This is a passage where majority text advocates, that is individuals who believe that the majority of Greek manuscripts should be trusted to give us the accurate rendering. They say, here is a classic example of where most of modern scholarship has jumped off the edge of the earth. It's important to differentiate between majority text advocates and King James only. There's a big difference between the two. People like Zane Hodges and Art Farrstad would be appreciative if we'd recognize that they are not running around and holding hands with Gail Rippling or individuals like that. In fact, they're attacked just as specifically as anybody else. But the point is, they say, look, there's only two manuscripts that miss this. And there are all these other thousands of manuscripts that have it. Obviously, here's an instance where you've got a problem. Well, I agree with B.B. Warfield that the very existence of multiple endings can only be explained with recognizing that the earliest Gospel of Mark didn't have any of them, and people felt there needed to be one, so they borrowed from the other Gospels or whatever else it might be. But that gets us right into the very practice of textual criticism itself. My saying that I don't believe that Mark 16, 9 through 20 is original with Mark doesn't come from some terrible, horrible liberal theology that I have or something like that. It comes from examining the facts and having certain standards as to why we should believe something was original or not, looking at the manuscripts, looking at the internal evidence, so on and so forth, as I explain in the book. Well, you would still consider it like a conflation. In other words, most of what you find there, you can find somewhere else. Exactly, most of what you can, some of which you can't, though. In fact, I wouldn't make a whole lot of points in some of these. There's only about one thing that I know you're going to point to. It's got something to do with serpents. I was going to say, my book doesn't sell too well in the hills of North Carolina because of my viewpoint on that. And that is a place where textual criticism does impact theology at that point. But I do think it is incredible to hold up the notion that, since Mark is arguably the oldest of the Gospels, that it would end without the appearance of the resurrected Christ and without the Great Commission. It's definitely understandable why people feel that there needs to be something more than that. But we have to, before we say, well, it's incredible that Mark would write it that way, could there not have been some reasons why they ended it the way they did? Give me some good reasons. Well, read the book. It's in there. I discussed the whole thing. And that's exactly what I want each one of you to do. I want you to get into the books or we're going to leave you with that cliffhanger. The book we're talking about, of course, is James White's new book called The King James Only Controversy. Welcome back to the second half of the Bible Answer Man broadcast. If you just tuned in, my in-studio guest today, James White, the author of the King James Only Controversy. It's our radio offer all this week. It is a tremendous book that you don't want to miss reading because it will inspire your confidence in Scripture. We're going right back to our telephone calls. Tim, Newark, California, listening on KFAX. Tim, welcome. How are you brothers doing today? Doing good. I have a comment and then a question. One of my comments is that I never hear too many people talk about J.P. Green's versions of the Bible that he translated, the modern King James and the literal King James version, which are really excellent versions if I've gone through them. And his modern King James that he first did in 1962. In fact, they read that on Family Bible Reading Fellowship on Family Radio. And I think it's an excellent translation. But I get a little confused with the Westcott and Hort, you know, their manuscript and then the Texas Receptus. And I know there's so many thousands of manuscripts and stuff. And I've been listening to this conversation. I do have his book, but I haven't got to read it yet. Although I prefer the King James myself and many of my brothers. use the New King James, but I used to be hard on the NIV because sometimes didn't just have the thing of conviction in some of the verses, you know. You know, I know only the Holy Spirit could teach you what the Bible really says, but I really appreciate the book. I've just thumbed through it, but I've learned a lot about this recently through Christian Answers and Pilgrim Complications. those ministries have a lot of things, you know, debate on videotapes and cassettes, and I've learned a lot, and it's really amazing how Gil Ripplinger and, you know, where she used that G.A. Ripplinger is supposed to be God and Ripplinger, and those kind of things tend to fizzle out, you know, they're, you know, the people that would... Doesn't help their credibility, does it? Yeah. What about... But yeah, I was wondering if you could comment on those other versions I just mentioned. Yeah, well, you know, Jay Green's stuff, as far as translations go, are real fine for what he's working with. I have a problem with his... I'm sorry? I have a problem with his books where he attacks modern translations and accuses them of being Gnostic and so on and so forth. I think that his material as far as that goes is rather poor but the translations are real good. I appreciate a lot of the things that he has done and a lot of the books that he has made available. As far as Westcott and Hort go these are the men that King James only advocates love to hate and they are primarily vilified because of the fact that their text dethroned shall we say the Textus Receptus, their 1881 edition of the Greek New Testament and normally what is alleged is well they were closet heretics or this, that or the other thing, they hated the King James and they were just trying to get rid of God's truth and so on. that they were occultists and so on and so forth. The problem with all that is, let's say all that was true, which it isn't, the fact remains that Christian scholars who are not being accused of occultists have the opportunity of examining their work critically every day. Could someone please explain to me why generations of Bible-believing Christian scholars would look at their theories and look at their texts and agree with their conclusions if, in point of fact, their conclusions come from occultism or heresy or something like that? It just doesn't make any sense. People just don't think these things through. But as I said, those accusations are false to begin with primarily. They weren't Fundamentalist Baptists. They were Anglicans, of course, so were all the King James translators. They were either Anglicans or Puritans, so I'm not sure, again, if we can't raise the flag of double standards at that point. But the modern translations are not simply warmed over versions of Westcott and Hort. It's very common for Gail Riplinger and others to say, you know, here's the Westcott and Hort text and here's something bad with it and therefore all modern translations are bad. Modern textual scholars have recognized that Westcott and Hort were over-dependent upon two primary unsealed manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. We still think they are extremely important manuscripts today, but not only have we discovered the papyri since then that they didn't have, but we've also recognized that in some places they gave too much weight to those particular manuscripts. So there has been correction. Now if there was some great conspiracy out there. You wouldn't find modern translations correcting Westcott and Hort's excesses in regards to any of those readings, would you? And yet, that is what you find. What does that mean? It means that modern textual scholars are concerned about determining what John or Paul wrote, and not pressing some worldwide conspiracy or New Age infiltration. Am I still on here? Yes, you are. Good, I've got one more question. You know, like, in fact, I was on the Monday show that you did earlier this week, and I asked, you know, the Psalms 110 verse 3, where in the Kings James it says, Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power. And all the Puritans and men of old have always used that, you know, for election as a Calvinist view, because that's Messianic prophecy, you know, those seven verses in that Psalm. And all these other ones talk about be willing in the day of battle. and I was just kind of concerned with that. I guess maybe overly concerned but just thinking of it practically. Do you, James, as an individual. You must be listening to KFX then because I had done a program up there earlier this week. Again, when you are translating Hebrew, the Hebrew terms, the Hebrew language is a very concrete language. It is not nearly as complex as far as its vocabulary goes. And so the point is that the term that is translated as battle or power, you see how they're related to one another? Yeah, to some degree, yeah. Yeah, and see that's really where the issue is coming from. The NIV is not trying to, again, translators shouldn't be sitting around trying to determine how they can best insert their theology into a translation. In fact, that's one of the reasons, Hank, that I suggest to people when they're looking at translations, one thing that's a positive is if it's done by a committee. Now I'm not saying that every single translation done by an individual is bad, but you and I both know if you're working with a committee, you've got checks and balances that are going to help you avoid putting in maybe a little bit too much of your own pet ideas. Yeah, and not one individual can be an authority on every single book in the Bible. then it should be able to be derived from all good translations of Scripture not just one or our theology isn't really good. Before we go to our next caller I want to make the point that you can't take all Greek manuscripts and lump them together. In fact I kind of use the acronym lump to give people sort of a handle on the different manuscripts. You have the lectionaries or the church readings containing selected portions of scripture. Then you have the unsulls which are capital letters rather than the running script. Then you have the minuscules which are in cursive and the papyri. Talk about that for a while. I would never have been able to come up with that acronym. You are far better than that. That is the only way I can remember this stuff on the radio. I really like that. The papyri were the earliest. The papyri is a type of material that does not last for long periods of time and that is why we found them pretty much only in the dry sands of Egypt. but they were probably what the originals were written on themselves. It is very fragile. In fact I had an opportunity when the Pope visited Denver to see a page of P66 and I will have to admit my good friend Rich Pierce who was with me had to keep dragging me away because the security people kept looking. Who is that guy drooling over that one display over there? I was saying they are translating this thousands of year old manuscript. I loved it. But we have the papyri manuscripts They are all written in unsealed text, that is, in capital letters where there is no real punctuation, there is no space between words, and so on and so forth. And this particular one I saw in Denver was obviously written by someone who didn't do too well in penmanship in synagogue school or wherever else they went. It just really isn't the fanciest manuscript. But they are the earliest ones. And we have some fragments and there are some arguments, but without argument, Papyri 52 is a little teeny scrap about, everyone in the audience can see me holding up my fingers, that's from John chapter 18, which is probably from about 125 AD. Very, very, very, very early. In fact, it threw a whole bunch of problems into a lot of the liberal theologies that had John way down about the 3rd or 4th century. When you find sections of his book written a couple centuries earlier, it really messes your theories up. But anyways, from the papyri you came to unsealed texts which were written primarily on vellum, sheepskin-type materials, animal hides. And obviously this is when professional scribes start getting involved, this is what they would utilize because not a lot of us have a bunch of animals in our backyard we can kill for their skins for our books. And these have lasted a great deal of time, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, which Desiderius Erasmus actually wanted to make reference to, even though these texts are vilified by modern King James Advocates. He wrote to his friend Bombasius to find out if the Comma Johannium was in the Vaticanus. So he didn't have any problem with it at that point. But anyways, between the 7th and 9th century there was a transition in the type of script to the minuscules and by far the vast majority of the manuscripts we have are minuscules but they also all come from the same family of texts because Greek was no longer being spoken or used any place else they all come from primarily the Byzantine family and we literally have thousands of them dating all the way up to the 16th century which of course a minuscule that's dated in the 16th century that's probably a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy doesn't have, in my opinion, nearly the weight of P52 or P75 or the other early papyri manuscripts that we have that are much closer to the original. fascinating study. We want to get into how we got our Bible. I've always enjoyed Norman Geisler's general introduction to the Bible. It gives us really helpful and interesting information. I use them because it just makes it easier for me to catalog the information in my mind so I can come up with it when I need to, because we're doing live radio. I want to go to our next caller, Kurt, in California, listening on KKMC. Kurt, welcome. Thank you, Hank. I love your ministry and your program, and the journal I just devoured. You're kind. And thanks for the call. I've talked to a few people. I'm not King James only. I've been reading the Bible pretty seriously for about 50 years. And I've used most of them, you know, starting with King James. When I started, that's all it was. And most of the modern translations. And I really like the NIV. I'll never forget the first time I read the New Testament, NIV New Testament. And there were various passages that I had been reading, you know, for years and years and years. And never really, they just sort of laid there. But the first time I read them in the NIV, I went, aha. And I think it really, I think it probably comes closer to being, you know, in our heart language, modern American English. My question, I've dealt with several King James only people, and I just, I've just about given up. You know, I think it's beyond rationality, you know, there's just no way to, to uh... to communicate well you you got it again is james does in the book distinguish between king james version only people because some of them do not want to be confused with the facts there are two renters gil rippling vertex mars people like that but there are others who are willing to listen to the evidence and also we're not denouncing uh... people who carry an n i d s heretics or what they have found that useful i've i've compiled a list of some of the uh... you know, more obscure words from the King James. Oh, you have a list like that, too, huh? I like to ask them, you know, what are fridges, you know, and what are patches? We're fetching a compass. Actually, my real question, I'd like to know what your opinion is. Dr. White, I haven't read your book yet, but I want to get it and read it. I'd like to know your opinion on the majority text. Okay, well we need to be careful. It's not doctor, it's professor, because I'm sure we have some folks listening who will write long newsletters about my fake degrees. I just did a program with Art Farrstad sitting right next to me debating against King James only advocates, and so you're probably familiar with Dr. Farrstad, Dr. Hodges, they have majority textile, Dr. Maurice Robinson. Right, Dr. Maurice Robinson has the majority text out. These are individuals, first of all I would like to say have always been Christian scholars in their contacts with me. They have always been very helpful. They have never condemned me for disagreeing with them. They have been gentlemen and they should be distinguished very strongly from those individuals that or not, and I won't go any farther than that. But I disagree with their perspective, and I guess I should define the perspective, and that is that functionally the majority texts are determined by looking at what the majority of the Greek manuscripts say. If you have a reading that is found in 2000 manuscripts and a reading that is found in only 100 manuscripts, the 2000 manuscripts is the one that you are going to take. I understand a lot of the arguments. Pickering has produced stuff on this and I am familiar with what the arguments are but I do not believe, for example, that Pickering's complex mathematics can be applied to the real world of what scribes did when they copied manuscripts. And furthermore, I really believe that it's sort of self-evident, I think, that a manuscript that is much closer to the original carries more weight than the 10th generation copy of a manuscript farther down the road. And I really believe that as you look at the history of the world, you see the Muslims taking over North Africa, all the way into Spain, Palestine. The only place where Greek is left being a valid language is in the Byzantine area. And so the manuscript tradition that developed there, which I believe you can demonstrate, is a secondary manuscript tradition in many ways, not in all places, but in many ways is a secondary manuscript tradition. That of course becomes the majority text in the minuscule text we were just discussing. I don't think, though, that counting noses is going to determine what the original text was. I have a problem with that, but one thing that we do need to emphasize. If you sit down with a TR, if you sit down with the majority text, if you sit down with my Nestle Arlen 27th UBS 4th edition, If you use solid rules of exegesis, if you pay attention to context, if you allow all of Scripture to say what it says, you will not derive a different message from any one of them. That is vitally important to emphasize. You are not going to get a different gospel and a different belief whether you use the majority text, TR, or the modern Greek text. And with that, I'm going to move along. I do want to mention before we go to our next caller that our board is just jammed. We're going to stay in, if you agree, in studio for an extra hour. I'll take you out to dinner. How's that? Sounds good to me. We'll stay here and we'll continue taking your calls. I'll try to give every one of you an opportunity to talk to my in-studio guest, James White. He, of course, wrote the book, The King James Only Controversy. It's available through the Christian Research Institute, a suggested donation of $10, which is very cheap. for a book that is clear, compelling. It really deals with the issue. It's well done and available through the Christian Research Institute. I want to go to our next caller, Ken Orlando, Florida, listening on WTLN. Welcome. Hey, thanks for having me on the show. A delight. I'm glad I got through. I have two questions for the professor there. One of the questions is, I have a friend and I was visiting him on vacation. He got into saying that the Septuagint was corrupt. You apparently read a book or read from an author that said the Septuagint is corrupt. What does Professor White have to say about that? What about the Septuagint? Well the Septuagint I think is a vital translation of the Bible for one very obvious reason and that is that the apostles quoted from it all the time. In fact I just was noticing as I was working on Romans chapter 3 that that long passage where Paul concludes and talks about poison under their lips and so on and so forth. Guess where that comes from? It comes directly from the Septuagint. It is not in the Hebrew and yet Paul cited it. And so I think again if we are going to use biblical standards we are going to have to ask the question, well what are the apostles doing here? Now just for other people, explain what the Septuagint actually is. It is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament that started to be translated around 250 years before Christ. The Pentateuch, the first five books are done very, very well. They are obviously done very professionally. Other books in the Septuagint differ from one another in the quality. Jeremiah is very bad, Isaiah is very good. So it sort of depends on where you are. But the simple fact of the matter is it was the Bible used by non-Hebrew speaking Christians outside of Palestine for a very, very, very long time and the Apostles utilized it as well. And so when someone says something is corrupt What do they mean by that? Do they mean that it has been purposely altered or do they mean that it has textual difficulties? The Septuagint has textual difficulties. No one denies that but does that mean that the Septuagint has been purposefully corrupted? That is the big difference between the two and the King James translators themselves. I hope everyone will take the time to read. In fact I quote from it in the book but if you ever get a chance to read the Introduction to Readers that the King James originally carried you'll discover that they talk about the fact that they utilize the Septuagint, they compare the Septuagint. If the King James translators did it, certainly I think we have a warrant to do so as well. Okay, so my response to the person would be, what does he mean by it being corrupt? Yeah, because what he was saying was that Septuagint was supposed to have been written by 70 scribes, but it was 72 scribes And that's where he was, I guess, where it's him or the author, one, is trying to draw a conclusion. Then if there's 72, then how can... we trust the Septuagint. Especially because the letter that they are referring to there that gives the number of scribes that are allegedly involved is a later embellishment and scholars don't believe that is the actual story about how it happened. The Septuagint that we have today developed over time. But there is one thing I would like to address. Peter Ruckman and Samuel Gipp actually teach their people, their very extreme King James only advocates, that there was no Septuagint at the time of Christ, that origin made it up, despite the fact that we have fragments of the Septuagint that exist before origin, but there was no Septuagint and why does it read the same as many of the passages in the New Testament? Pure coincidence according to them. quickly. He passed this one to Matthew chapter 5 verse 22, I think it is. Sermon on the Mount? Yeah, he says, and the King James is angry with a brother for without cause. Yeah, in the same passage in the NSAV, NIV, he was saying, well, why is the without cause omitted from those two versions? Okay, thank you very much. The question, and let me lay it out, the King James Version, Matthew 5, 22, but I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. the NIV at the same place, but I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. The phrase without cause is not found and again notice how it is always presented. It is deleted. What does that do? That makes the King James the standard. The issue is, is the Greek reading the best Greek reading? And when scholars look at things like that they not only look at the manuscript evidence but they also ask the question, would this passage have caused a problem to a scribe? And the simple blanket condemnation, whoever is angry with his brother is subject to the judgment, is a very very strong statement. Especially in light of the fact that the Lord Jesus was angry, was he not? And so the tendency on the part of later scribes is always toward orthodoxy. It is trying to smooth things out. Trying to take care of alleged contradictions. When most of the time the scribe just simply isn't really understanding what's going on. In context we understand what Jesus is talking about. We understand that this does not contradict Jesus being angry with a righteous indignation. But what later scribes are trying to do is to try to sort of help us out with that. And so it's not a matter of their deleting something and trying to make Jesus a liar or something like that. The question is what did Matthew write? What reading best explains the others? That's the question. And that is why it is very important for us to understand the concept of conflation. Now that is sort of a technical term. Explain it for our listeners. Conflation is where, and we have many examples of this, the fuller text where the scribes, if for example they had two manuscripts in front of them and one had one thing and one had the other, their natural tendency was to keep both of them. and so the text would become larger because they are afraid to lose either one and frequently you couldn't go back and ask the guy who had copied this manuscript before, what do you mean by this? Why did you put this here? Why did you put this in the margin for example? Maybe the guy made a note in the margin and you would stick it in your text because you would want to maintain everything that was there. Another reason why the Byzantine text is longer is because of the fact that we like to use longer terms when we are pious. I remember doing a radio program and we were talking about Mormonism and this lady called in and said, you all are wonderful. I like what you are doing. You hear that all the time. Whenever anyone calls in and says I love what you are doing, get ready to duck. They are coming after you. But she says you keep saying Jesus said this and Jesus said that. What you need to say is the Lord Jesus Christ said this and she was a nice Christian lady. She meant it quite seriously. But that type of piety is very much at play in the later manuscripts of the New Testament and what the scribes were doing as well in the expansion of titles. Actually in some places it gets absurd. I noticed across the way there Metzger's work on the New Testament. He has some examples in there where the book of Revelation, for example, the title given to John and descriptions of John end up taking about a paragraph and some later ones, the beloved theologian, apostle, disciple, and it just gets longer and longer and longer. We have a lot of examples of that happening. For everybody hanging on right now, I want you to be patient. I am going to get to you. We are going to stay here as long as it takes. This is a fascinating subject and again I highly recommend that everybody get a hold of the book King James Only Controversy by James White. Now we talk about the word controversy and Walter Martin was famous for saying controversy for the sake of controversy is sin, controversy for the sake of the truth is a divine command. I think that this is controversy for the sake of the truth. There are people on the other side of the coin, however, who have really taken shots, not only at you, but also at me, Gil Ripplinger, Tex Mars, and others, who have basically branded us children of the devil. most definitely and that is really the motivation. If anyone wants to ask a question, James White why did you write this book? I wrote this book because the King James only controversy splits churches, it damages ministries, and it disrupts the peace of the church of Christ and it does so on the basis of falsehoods and ignorance and that is why I wrote the book. because I know of churches that have been damaged severely. I get letters all the time from people who have read the book that relate to me what happened to them and their churches and when something touches a local church that really is of a concern to me and that is why I wrote the book. I appreciate that and of course the local church is the God-ordained means for evangelism. That is where we worship God in spirit and in truth. That is where we have fellowship with one another and that is where we are equipped to go out and reach a lost and searching world. This is one of the tools that I want to put in your hand so that you will become an equipped Christian, always ready to give an answer, a reason for the hope that lies within you with gentleness and with respect. I want you to equip yourself. The time will come where someone's going to ask you a question whereby you're going to have to demonstrate that the Bible's divine rather than human in origin. Let me say that this book will really help you in that process. From Southern California, welcome to the Bible Answer Man broadcast. I'm your host, Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute, with a special broadcast in store for you today. We got so many calls on the King James Only controversy. The switchboards lit up all the time that we asked James White to continue on with us, and he's in studio today as we continue talking about the King James Only controversy. You want to join us on the broadcast, remember you can do it in the U.S. and Canada by simply dialing toll-free, 800-821-4490. Our address, the Christian Research Institute, Box 500, San Juan, Capistrano, California, zip code 92693. And remember, our telephone number, 714-855-9926. If you're ordering materials or making a donation using Visa MasterCard or the DiscoverCard, we have a toll-free number available to you. That number, 800-443-9797. Remember, if you're contacting our Canadian office, you can do that by dialing 403-571-6363. And if you're calling toll-free, we have a number for you to dial, 800-665-6363. fifty-eight fifty-one that's in british columbia and alberta only in canada delighted that you've joined us for the broadcast as always delighted to have james or white in studio with us he is a scholar he is also a great author and i really appreciate the work that you have done with this superb book which doctor j i'd packer calls sober scholarly courageous convincing and courteous delighted to have you it's gonna be with you a great book and again as you know the studio has been lit up since you've been here this is a book which is contour controversial no doubt you have taken a lot of hits and i noticed that not only gil rippling girl who went after you uh... in new age of bible versions but also has gone after me In her new book, King James Version Ditches Blind Guides, and I guess you and I are blind guides that are leading people into the ditch, she talks about the fact that since I took on her book on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, all kinds of things have befallen me, broken shoulders and varied tribulations. And she says, quoting 2 Samuel chapter 1, how the mighty are fallen in the midst of battle. But I only have a page devoted to me. You have 20 whole pages or more devoted to you. And I've even got cartoons of people sitting at desks with a knife, hacking up Bibles with pictures of Wescott and Horton in the background with halos. So it's really amazing to me, and it's very unfortunate. The amazing thing to me about that particular publication is that whenever someone is cited, There is no reference given. You can't check anything out. You can't go and look and see if there's anything been taken in context or anything like that. And it's a true shame, and I hope that people will see this type of thing and realize, my goodness, what type of venom is causing a person to do this type of thing? Can't we deal with this in a Christian attitude? And I really tried to do that in the King James Only controversy. To whip my question, why is there this kind of vitriolic language? Well, amongst those who are followers of people like Dr. Peter Ruckman, they consider it to be almost an example of prophetic activity, sort of like Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal or something like that. And so they just consider themselves to be speaking honestly. I can say they just don't have any manners, but they really view it that way. And I think some of the folks who take a leadership position I mean, Gil Ripplinger said that to her, to her, G.A. Ripplinger meant God and Ripplinger. And I really think that she does believe that God has revealed to her some tremendous conspiracy. And anyone who would question her, even a man like David Cloud, who is a strong King James Only advocate, comes in for the nastiest attacks by Gil Ripplinger. Why? What can explain that? Well, if you really think that God has given you a position of leadership in exposing the controversy, Then anyone who questions you is automatically a part of that conspiracy as well. It's almost a cultic mentality. She sort of holds her book out to be as being an inspired version itself. Well, you know, when she says God and Ripplinger, she would of course not say that, well, it's not inspired like the Bible, but if you question anything, I have never found her to be willing to admit any error. In fact, when I have documented her errors, she has always responded by just simply covering them over and not admitting that she made any mistakes whatsoever. And so it's a shame. But what really bothers me, Hank, is, okay, I can understand how some people will be taken in by conspiratorial books like that, but I know solid individuals who have been in good churches, have good backgrounds, that have been thrown off base by this book. I've heard of entire churches that have had NIV burning parties after sermons based upon things like this book. That concerns me. How can anybody, though that is rational and sentient, take this book seriously? For example, she's got a section called Acrostic Algebra. Page 148, yeah, I know. Well, the problem is These types of writings feed upon the often complete ignorance that Christians have about the history and the transmission of the Bible. When was the last time, and maybe in your church this is the exception, but when was the last time you heard any real serious discussion about why there are differences in translations, where the Bible came from, the process, American Christianity doesn't talk about things like that. There's a lot more exciting things to talk about, aren't there? You know, that's a great point, because I think, due to the fact that we are not only biblically illiterate, but historically illiterate, this kind of rhetoric can be circulated without any opposition. Well, almost no opposition. There's a few of us out here bravely waving the flag going, no this is untrue but you are exactly right. Most modern American Christians are ahistorical. Church history for them ended about 25 years ago. It ended with my mom or my dad or something like that. And so the whole background of how these things came to us is just not something that we're overly concerned about and it leaves us open on many fronts for this type of deception, this type of false information. And most people would not even know where to go to look up the references to find out if they're being accurately given. And a lot of us, as long as a person says Jesus three times, we'll just trust they're giving the information right the first time anyways, right? And so you end up starting buying into these things. And if we role-played and I sat here and I could selectively choose the verses that I wanted to look at and compare your NIV or NASB with my King James, I can make it look really bad. If I was selective and if I wanted to just give one perspective. That's why we need to be people, as you know in all of apologetics, people who listen closely to arguments, who reason closely, We need to be people with a sober mind, as the scripture says. Yeah, this is one of the things that we're trying to do at the Christian Research Institute. I kind of define it in three words. Top, pop, and slop apologetics. I think it's very important for you to do top apologetics so that you really get the good information. Then you popularize it. In other words, you try to communicate it to people in such a way that they can grasp the concepts. You're not playing keep away over their heads. If you don't have top apologetics, eventually what you're going to have is slop apologetics, and that's what we don't need. We have too much within the church today of what's called slop apologetics, where people have just enough information to be dangerous. Yes, and they very, very frequently utilize arguments against others. that have turned upon their own position, but refute them as well. The double standards does not advance the cause of Christ. We're going to go right to our phone callers. There's a couple of things that I want to say though before we do. The first is that it is true that many King James Version only advocates believe that there were autographers in Greek and we have now the 1611 autographer in the English language. people who are followers of probably the most vociferous leader in the King James only movement, that is Dr. Peter Ruckman, who will say over and over again that the originals are irrelevant, that you correct the Greek and the Hebrew on the basis of the English. And when you've done that, you have really completed the circle. I mean, there is no way to assail that in any logical or rational way, because you have made the King James something that the Bible doesn't promise is ever going to be. You make it the standard. You make it the standard of all things, and you cannot discuss advances in our understanding of what Greek terms mean. You can't talk about manuscripts. That's all irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. One thing that I think that many King James Version advocates, only advocates I should say, don't recognize is that there are many King James Versions out there. So you have to ask the question, which King James Version are you talking about? And we're not only talking about the very many revisions that have gone around. because there's one that's primary today, the 1769 edition, but in an earlier program I was starting to ask a person about Jeremiah 3416, which I talked about in the book, where you will be able to find, if we right now just went around the offices here and pulled the King James's down off the shelves, half of them would have one reading there and half of them would have the other and you'd find some from the same publisher that would have both readings. Now once you've made the King James, the standard, what do you do now? I have asked King James only advocates, which is the proper word? The difference is simply between he and ye. It's not a big deal. But if you've made the King James a standard, you can't go back and look at the Hebrew. The Hebrew is plain. It's not like we don't know what the original said. But you can't go back to that without betraying your own position. And it is a passage you can utilize if you need to utilize it to demonstrate to an individual, you have no way of answering that question. because you have made something a standard that was never meant to be a standard in the first place. Very well said. I want to go to Jason in Jefferson City, Tennessee, listening on WRJZ. Jason, welcome. Hi. I want to thank you for letting me on your show, Stanley, and taking time out of your own personal life to answer these questions. My question is this. I had a little discussion with my roommate the other day. I've kind of fallen away, and I have a lot of questions. And my question was, you guys were talking earlier about dictated dynamic views and how you have to have kind of a...mix those together. And I was wondering, if dictated dynamic view, you know, holds true, then also, what about, like, at the beginning of the Bible, how dictated dynamic view relates to the oral tradition, and the reliability of, like, the oral tradition to the writing, and then to, like, the split canons of the Bible, the Hebrew canon, Alexandria canon. Okay, now before you answer, do a little bit of defining here. Yeah, there's got to be a lot of definition there. First of all, when you're talking about dictated dynamic, are you talking about the difference between the formal equivalency translation, which is very literal, and the dynamic? Is that really where you're going there, or is your question a little bit different than that? Because when you start getting into canon issues, that's a whole other area there. more of like a progressive thing, because like, the dictated domain view, that's two, the way I was taught, that's two different ways of looking at the Bible, whether it was man-written or God-written through man. Okay, I had a feeling that's what you're referring to, and I think we need to step back and define some terms. You're talking now, not about methods of translation of the NIV or the NASB, you're talking about aspects of inspiration. That is, where you're talking about dictated, the idea that the words themselves were dictated to the writers, or dynamic, where there are thoughts or concepts that are presented to them which they express in their own terms. And that's a very, very different thing from the issue of how we translate the Scriptures. Now, I don't believe in either one of the two that you gave me. because believing in plenary verbal inspiration does not mean that God turned people into automatons and overrode their natural stylistic expressions. Paul's grammar, anyone who has for example translated Ephesians knows that the writer of Ephesians didn't write 1 John on the level of grammar. God used Paul and his talents, God used John and his talents, so on and so forth. And so the idea of dictation, like a stenographer or something like that, is not what we mean when we talk about plenary verbal inspiration. But neither do we mean dynamic in the sense that just simply thoughts and concepts are impressed upon the mind of a person, and he's left to express them in his own frail and human terms. And so we're talking about very different things there at that particular point. So if it's not Either one of those, what is it? Well, when we talk about plenary verbal inspiration, we believe that God is big enough to know you and I, and to, from eternity past, have chosen to utilize us and our situations in our life situation, which is under His control. to be the conduit through which he gave his revelation. When we look at the Psalms, for example, and we hear the heart cries of the people of God as they are going through persecution and difficulty, we recognize that obviously God uses people in their life where they are when he was giving his word. I certainly have been very thankful for that because I was able to then enter into those prayers when I too was going through those things. If it was just simply a something like a dictionary or something like that that just laid out truth one, truth two, truth three, it certainly would not minister to me the way that the Word of God actually does. What you're really saying is that the Bible is dynamic rather than static. It's dynamic in the sense that, and we're using the same term though in three different ways now, which we need to be careful about, it is not simply a list of rules for us. God decided to reveal himself in a written form out of people's lives, because we all have to live His Word, not just simply study a book of rules and attempt to apply those. Now, in regards to the early part of Genesis, I guess if you recognize where I'm coming from there, then I wouldn't have a problem, I wouldn't believe that there's a problem in regards to God's preserving His Word as it is actually written with oral traditions, so on and so forth. And in regards to the issue of canon, it is very common, and Geisler and Nix do a wonderful job on this subject in the General Introduction to the Bible, they frequently cite from another work, the Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church by Beckwith, it's a different Beckwith, but anyways, that pretty well debunks the Alexandrian versus Palestinian canon concepts of the Old Testament. and uh... this is a much earlier that's really about a hundred-year-old scholarship there were talking about some difference there you need to get uh... get those books and take a look at it and see where we are now jason thanks for your call before we go too far over people's heads let's go to david in virginia listening and w a v a david welcome yes thanks hank uh... first of all let me start by saying i really appreciate your show i mean that the bottom of my heart I've had many questions over these several months that I've been listening to your show, and it seems like you always get around to them sooner or later. And this particular topic is one that is very close to me. I attend an independent Baptist church, and they are primarily King James-only advocates, and I've been exposed to quite a bit of literature upholding that position. I wanted to ask some questions, two questions actually. First of all, on Robert Tyndall, the Tyndall Bible, I understand that 80% of the King James Bible is compromised from the Tyndall Bible. It's comprised, you mean? Comprised, yes. Yes, Tyndale had the greatest single impact upon the New Testament portion, especially of the King James. You also have the other great Bibles that existed at that time. That would be the Bishop's Bible and the Geneva Bible, which were also very, very important. And as the King James translators themselves said, we're taking a good translation and making it better. Okay. My second question would be with the Dead Sea Scrolls. With the newer translations, how much impact has the Dead Sea Scrolls had on the newer translations, and how valid are the Dead Sea Scrolls? Well, it depends on which Dead Sea Scrolls you're looking at, what the textual characteristics of them are. They have been taken into consideration by, for example, the NIV, especially when they join with the Targums or the Septuagint and having a reading that is different from the Hebrew, or especially when the Hebrew reading itself is very difficult or obviously corrupt. And so, I think it's Again, it's to be assumed that Christian scholars will use all the best material that is available to them to do the best job that they possibly can do. And in this situation, if the Dead Sea Scrolls can provide to us an earlier glimpse, either at the Hebrew text or at some variant reading or something like that, that is helpful to us in shedding more light upon the text, then by all means utilize them. James, isn't this another classic example? We find the Dead Sea Scrolls predate the early extant text, the Masoretic text, by about a thousand years. Isn't this another great example of how we ought to have confidence in the Word of God because we see that there are no substantial differences? The Dead Sea Scrolls provide us with a tremendous amount of insight into how the text was transmitted during that period of time. I think it's important to note that, for example, the Book of Isaiah, you have an almost exact correspondence. The Book of Jeremiah is very, very, very different in the Septuagint, for example, from the Hebrew texts. We need to look at everything all at once, and Christian people don't have anything to fear from the facts and the truth. I don't know why there are so many people that are afraid of it, but every time we have dug into it, certainly there have been times when it seemed like there was something that was contradictory to our beliefs, contradictory to our faith. But the more and more we've delved into it, the more we've discovered how true God's Word really is. Now, is it uncomfortable sometimes? Yes, it's uncomfortable sometimes. But who are we, really, when you think about it, to sit back and think we've got it all figured out right now and no one can ever improve upon what you and I understand? There's a tremendous amount of modernistic arrogance in a lot of us today. No one's ever known as much as we know. Well, there's still things we've got to learn, too. True. Well, thank you very much for taking my call, guys. I appreciate that. Thanks for your call, your kind comments. I want to go to Pete in Winnipeg, Manitoba, listening on K or CKJS. Welcome, Pete. Yes. How are you doing? Good. How are you? Oh, fine. Fine. First time caller, by the way. Thank you so much. I've been listening to your program. Oh, I guess for about a half a year now. Well, great to have you with us. And I appreciate it. I have a few questions here. I've been doing a little bit of work on this, not an awful lot, like from the King James Version to the NIV, there's verses missing. Can you explain to a layman why there are verses missing? Yes, I can. In fact, if you can track down the book sometime, there's an entire section on that beginning on page 156. There's a chart on 157 that goes through a number of the passages that are quote-unquote missing. And again, I just want to make sure we all understand, you've probably heard me say this a number of times already, but when we use the term missing, we're setting up the King James as a standard there. and the issue from the vast majority of the passages that we have reference to, for example, Matthew 18, 11 is a passage that is frequently utilized. There are a number of others where you have, in fact, just if anyone is concerned, Matthew 17, 21, 18, 11, 23, 14, Mark 11, 26, Mark 15, 28, Luke 17, 36, and Luke 23, 17 are the specific single verses that will not be found in the main text of the modern translations and that particular listing is found on page 155 of my book. What is the reason? Well, in almost every single one of those situations those are verses that appear in another one of the Gospels and what we have happening over and over again is the tendency on the part of scribes when you are say relating the story of the rich young ruler You want Matthew, Mark, and Luke to all say the same thing. Now I mentioned I was preaching from this passage from a parallel Greek translation. Only Matthew tells us he was young and only Luke tells us that he was a ruler and Mark doesn't tell us either one. But guess what? you will find later scribes making amendations to all of them to try to bring them into consistency with one another. It is simply a part of the standard practice of scribes to try to make everything harmonized. And so what you have is the Lord's Prayer, for example, big-time example. Luke's version is much shorter than Matthew's. Why do we assume that Matthew and Luke had to write the exact same thing? Why do we assume Jesus only said this once? These are assumptions that we operate on, that scribes operate on, that are bad assumptions. And so, many of these passages, it's not a matter of deleting them. The issue is there's a clear effort of harmonization on the part of later scribes that inserted them in later manuscripts to make everything look the same. Pete, with that, I'm coming up to a station break. If you want to hang up, or hang on, I should say, we'll pick you up in the second half of the broadcast. And welcome back to the second half of the Bible Interman broadcast. I'm your host, Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute. I'm in studio today with James R. White. He is a scholar in residence at Grand Canyon University. He's the author of The King James Only Controversy, a book that's a must-read. Norman Geisler says this is the best book in print on a topic too often riddled with emotion and ignorance. When I endorsed this book on the back cover, I said a clear, compelling, and conclusive case. I had to alliterate this, of course. Contradicting the claims of the King James Version-only advocates, your confidence in God's preservation of Scripture through credible translations, such as the NIV and the NASB, will indeed be solidified. I was going to say, you won the award for the most single confidence in God. I can't help myself. You know, when we left the first half of the broadcast, we were talking to Pete. I think you're still hanging, Pete. Are you there? Yep. Your follow-up. Go ahead. Okay. Another quick question. I caught part of the show there. This is way in the beginning. I have caught the tail end of something about one of the translators of the NIV was a lesbian. Well, here's the point that I made. I made the point that we err on two ends of the spectrum if we get into rhetoric rather than dealing with reason. I pointed out that there are those who want to say something negative about the King James Version, and so they point out that James I, who commissioned the project in 1604, actually was morally bankrupt, he was a homosexual, and there are many people that use that to try to impugn the King James Version. I said that's not fair. On the other side of the spectrum you've got people like Gail Riplinger who point to Virginia Mullencott and give them a title they never had and a function that they never fulfilled. She was an English stylist for the NIV for a short period of time after the fact it was discovered or she divulged the information that she was a lesbian and so people say oh look at here we have lesbians working on the NIV therefore the NIV is corrupt. I'm saying both ends of the spectrum are adding heat not adding light. And it's interesting to me that Dr. Kenneth Barker, who is the head of the NIV Translation Center, has admitted that if they had known Mullencott's propensities, if she had been open about it at that time, obviously they never would have referred to her. And there are some people out there that would think that would be a terrible, horrible thing to do. So you can't win one way or the other, unfortunately. The point is, let's not use double standards. James's particular sexual proclivities did not impact the teaching of the King James Version that homosexuality is a sin and the NIV is just as strong and condemning. An amazing thing is people will focus in upon the fact that the NIV does not use the term sodomy. Well, a lot of people don't exactly know what that's supposed to be referring to. It uses the term homosexuality and yet the King James never uses the term homosexual. Does that mean something? Obviously not. We need to be clear in our argumentation. Okay, what do you think of the new King James Version? The New King James is a fine translation. It is an excellent English translation. It is based upon the exact same manuscripts as the King James was and so I have some problems that that is not as accurate as it could be but the New King James provides wonderful, excellent textual notes when there are variations and so it is an excellent translation at that point. Very formal. A little bit too formal for my taste but it is a good translation. I frequently teach from it. Yeah, it is one of my favorite translations as well. Pete, thank you for your call. I want to go to Manuel. Lakewood, California, listening on KKLA. Hello. Hi. Yeah, thanks for taking my call. You're welcome. I had a quick question for James there. I've heard on ministries, on the radio, of the verse regarding Matthew 28, 19, where it says, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and I've heard that that scripture portion, there's not the original that was added on. I wanted to know what was your opinion, if you had information about that. Right. No, there's absolutely no historical evidence whatsoever that Matthew chapter 28 and 19 is not originally with Matthew. It is known from the very earliest parts of the church. The Didache, of course, contains it. All the manuscripts have it. Anyone who attempts to say this is a later edition is obviously doing so for theological reasons that they're trying to impose upon the scripture, not from theological reasons they derive from the scripture. So this is available in most of the manuscripts? It's in all the manuscripts. There's no question about it. Okay, so where would you think they would get it from? Do you think they would just make it up? Because I've heard of more than one Bible teacher that said that there's a copy or a manuscript that has a different thing to that portion of scripture there? No, the Nestle All in 27th edition does not provide any citation of that whatsoever, and any support from that. Unfortunately, I think I know what group of individuals from which these teachers would be coming. They have a problem with the theology of baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They're oneness people. It's oneness advocacies, and that's That, again, is deriving theology from some source outside the Bible and forcing it then onto the Bible. That's there, and we need to deal with it, and it contradicts their theology. Thank you for your call. I want to go to Jeff in California, listening on KFAX. Jeff, welcome. Hi, Jeff. How are you? Good. Good. I just wanted to say that I have read James' book, and I appreciate it very much. He's done a great job. His work is very scholarly. And for myself, I am a new Christian. And so for me, I've been a Christian since about last June. And it was very, for me it was really foundational simply because of the fact that I had done nothing in regards to religion for a good 20 years. I had grown up probably for about six years with Jehovah's Witness theology. So with, you know, you understand with the New World Translation, there's a lot of information that I had and it was so foundational for me that When I became a Christian, I just was hungry for everything. So I started digging into a lot of things, and one of the people you mention in the book, which is D.A. Wake, now I've actually had conversation with him, which has been interesting, to say the least. And I think he finds a way, if you begin to question, you know, which I was asking a lot of questions, because I was trying to get as much information as possible to get to the point. Now, My question to you is, do you find, because you do outline a number of people in the book, do you find that a lot of them cling to, and I do understand, their background in terms of being fundamentalists? you find that a lot of them, you know, Ruckman and some of the others that you quote in there, are they kind of along that same line of thought and theology? Very much so. The vast majority of King James Only advocates are dispensational, fundamentalistic. That doesn't mean that if you're a fundamentalist and a dispensationalist that you're necessarily a King James Only advocate, but that is the primary place that it is found. Now, Edward F. Hills was a Presbyterian, and there are some of those individuals who are now Moving that direction, Theodore Elitist, for example, is a Lutheran scholar who is promoting a TR-only perspective. But the vast majority, and certainly the most vocal, King James-only advocates are generally dispensational fundamentalists. That's very true. I did want to mention that D. A. Waite has certainly been gracious in my correspondence with him and my talking with him. We did a debate on a radio station last year, and I think you would find that Most of the time, when I ask specific questions, the answer I got back was, well, it's a matter of faith. You simply need to believe. And that's what you encounter in a lot of this. Yeah, I got that very much, too. Now, when I got to the point where I was really examining the issue, and I have to say, because of your book, you made me go out and spend some money, so I've got about four other editions for the version now in my library. Well, that's good. Which is a great thing, yeah. You could have spent that money on a lot less worthy things. Oh, trust me, my library has grown tremendously in the last year. You know, it's all worthy investment. In fact, my investment is going to take another step here probably within about a year. I really strongly feel called seminary. Wow. Yeah, that's the direction I'm going. In fact, a lot of the teaching through KFX I've been able to pick up on a lot of people and send away, and I think God has really helped to guide me and listen to people who, you know, are in that mode, and John MacArthur and some of the other people that take an approach of really examining and thoroughly taking all the information. Only one quick word of advice. Make sure you know what you believe before you get there. Right. Well, you know what? That's the one thing I appreciate your advice on that, because My foundation has been created, and I've been doing a lot of it. It never takes away, I understand, from my Bible reading, but it really enhances what I'm doing in terms of illuminating all the facts in and around it. Jeff, thank you. I want to go to Forrest in Santa Monica, California, listening to KKLA. Forrest, welcome. I love you, Hank, and James, I'm so glad that you took my call. I'm wanting to know one thing. I'm a King James advocate only because of my big study Bible is the King James. I have the two other, in fact, I also have the New English Bible that I like to read. But the King James, all of my dictionaries and comprehensive other things are geared to it, so I study it. But I find that there's one thing in it that perhaps you can help me understand. The 16th chapter of Mark, the 8th verse on King James, it's a hotel put out in the 1956, 57, 58. It plainly states that that was not added to that. But that was like, that's the 8th verse. And what I wanted to know, really what I wanted to ask was, do you have any Any knowledge or information as to how the King James Version was put together? Well, in regards to the specific passage you mentioned, there's a couple of pages beginning on page 255 in my book that deals with Mark 16, 9-20, and the endings of Mark. and there's a whole lot of information on that particular subject. But when you say, how is it put together? The reason the King James contains the passage is because the Greek text from which it was translated contained the passage. And in fact, 99.9% of all Greek manuscripts in the world contain some ending for Mark, the vast majority, the ending that you find in the King James Version of the Bible. And so the translators were simply translating the text that they had in front of them and that text contained the passage and so they did so. Now if you mean was it translated dynamically or formally, it is primarily a formal translation but sometimes it surprises you. I give you an example in the book where I believe it is Amos 4.4. The King James and the NIV give the dynamic translation. The NASB and the New King James give the literal formal translation. And so you find the King James and the NIV joining up and the others provide more formal. So there are places. There is a real good example in Matthew in the crucifixion story. What does the King James say when the thieves are reviling Jesus? It says they cast the same in his teeth. There is no word cast, there is no word same, there is no word his, and there is no word teeth anywhere in the Greek. The word simply means they reviled him. But the King James translators chose to express that in a more dynamic meaning way of saying they cast the same in his teeth. And so the King James is not free of dynamic translation. The amazing thing is people like Dr. D. A. Waite just attack any type of use of dynamic translation at all as being diabolical and devilish. And yet you find it in the King James itself. But in the fullness of the King James Version, how was it started out as to become a translation? Well, the initial idea was placed before King James by John Reynolds in 1604, and the king was rather amenable to the idea because of the fact that the king really detested the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible had notes that undercut his ideas of what a king should be and so he was amenable to the idea of coming up with a new translation. I think the irony of ironies is a few years later someone took the King James and put the Geneva study notes with it which I think is a wonderful thing of history but anyway. That's where the impetus originally came from was from John Reynolds suggesting it at a famous meeting with the king in 1604. i've understood that uh... he had uh... requested forty of the uh... could describe and and most of the men in the people of america and also in the greek to be put into uh... is forty of them to put into a full bodies of ten going into different parts of the country and taking the byzantine and one of the uh... one of the western one of the others and uh... Yes, I know what you are referring to and I didn't understand what you were asking. Yes, there were the greatest scholars in England knew, 48 or more, it is hard to know exactly who was involved in everything. They met at Cambridge and other places to work on the translation over that period of time. We don't know a lot about how they did it, specifically their committee meetings and stuff like that. The few notes that were taken were taken in Latin. In fact, most of them were better with Latin than they were with Greek or Hebrew. In fact, the King James has a number of places that come from the Latin and not from the Greek text itself. Erasmus did the same thing. Acts 8.37 is a good example of that. It comes from the Latin rather than the Greek. Their translation was very heavily influenced by the Latin as well. But yes, they were great scholars. It remains today a monument to Bible scholarship. There are no two ways about it. would say, if you haven't learned something more after 360 some odd years, you guys are really slow. There's a problem here. You know, they would be right behind us in providing translations. Forrest, I appreciate your call again today. I want to go to Tony in San Jose, California. Tony's listening on KFAX. Welcome to the broadcast. Hi. First question I have is, Dr. D.A. Waite, is he the one who said that if he went to Russia, that he would require the people to first learn English before the government? No, that was Dr. Samuel Gipp in a recent debate that I did was asked if I today lived in Russia and I wanted to have the perfect and fallible word of God would I have to learn English and his response was yes you would. That is a perspective of the Ruckman-Gipp viewpoint. Dr. D.A. Waite would say that you need to use the TR but as long as you provide a faithful translation in Russian of the TR then you are providing the word of God. position that you need to, uh, I mean, so far you've been, well, okay, let me, uh, the Johannian comma. Okay. Most of the evidence for that, uh, the old Syriac, the old Latin Vulgate, the Italic, uh, most all of those before the fifth century, uh, there's many, many Latin citations of that verse being there. And, uh, it's conspicuously absent from the Greek, but why is no attention paid to the Latin? Uh, Didn't the word of God spread out? Well but again you're dealing there with a secondary source, a secondary translation from the original and the problem with going with the Latin is that there are all sorts of readings that have far more textual basis behind them than the Kama Yohanim has that are rejected by the King James. I mean we would have to be inserting a tremendous number of variant readings that have a better textual basis that the King James said no way. The Kamiohonium simply is not found in any Greek manuscript and no one has ever been able to explain to me why that would be. Now what you have in some of these early versions, first of all you have some question about exactly how early they are. Secondly, some people actually go so far as to say that early fathers cited the Kamiohonium when that is a little bit of a stretch. What you have in that statement is simply, it's really a conclusion statement. It is a summary statement that there is one God who exists in three persons. Basically the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one God. This is a summary statement and it is not a matter of early fathers citing this. They are simply alluding to a general truth. There is a difference between alluding to a general truth and actually citing a specific passage where they say John said such and so. You don't find the specific citation where it says John said such and so. One of the important points brought up by Tony is the point that if you are not English and you can't speak the English language, you just don't have a Bible. From the perspective of Dr. Samuel Gip, yes that is the case and he would say well English has become the universal language, it is the language of commerce, trade, so on and so forth. I don't think any of those arguments wash but it certainly to me, I don't know what the Wycliffe Bible translators are doing out there from that perspective. They are certainly not getting any support from those churches that is for sure and it is really outside of English speaking areas. A lot of Christians and non-Christians look at this whole thing and just roll their eyes like oh my goodness, look at what these Christians have gotten themselves into now. I want to go to Paul, San Antonio, Texas, listening to KSLR. You're on with James White. Hey Hank, how you doing? Doing good. I listen to you every day. I commute from San Antonio to Austin, and I pretty much catch your whole show. You have my condolences. I want to thank you for letting me on the air. You're welcome. On this particular issue, unfortunately, I would disagree with you, and I just wanted to voice a few reasons why, and I'll be brief. God's given me the ability to Just to be brief, and I'll run through it. Hopefully I won't sound argumentative or anything. Quickly, to preface what I want to say, is how I got into this. It wasn't through tradition, even though I do attend an independent fundamental Baptist church. I was overseas, I was saved overseas in the military, I was in an Assembly of God church, I got saved, that's what type of Bible I should get. Most of the young Christians are recommended in NIV. So I got an NIV, of course, being an assembly of God, I believed in tongues and things of that nature. And I was reading one day at the end of Mark 6 through 20 that this whole chapter, or these particular verses, weren't in the oldest and best manuscripts. So I sort of fell apart on that point and really had some problems with the Bible and the accuracy of the Bible. And I sort of got out of it, though. I don't remember exactly how. And then later, my pastor asked me and another brother to go to sort of stand up for the Christians when a Muslim was coming on base to present a seminar called, Jesus, the Prophet of Islam. And so we were standing up one-on-one debating with him, and so he asked us for one clear verse on the Trinity. And so I gave him, no, I asked my friend who had a New American Standard to give him one John 5-7. He couldn't do it because He didn't really feel that that was a good verse, that it might not be there and all that. Of course, the Muslim fellow knew what we were up to, and he said, well, if you guys want to be honest, you'll admit that your Bible has it and yours doesn't. And at the time, there wasn't a real verse in it, so that sparked me even more. And then we went to 1 Timothy 3, 16, on the deity later, and of course, it says he and the New American Standard, it says God, and then the faith, I believe, the lines out, and they translate it, and the New Bibles, and so from that point is how I got into it. So I don't really believe that it's always going to be a case of tradition, and then I read both sides. I read D.A. Carson's book, also read Ruckman and Hills, and I'm an engineer by profession, so I don't...well, my degree at least is, and so I'm not real quick to jump to conclusions, but I came out believing King James, and eventually even came to believe that God moved a little differently with those men because of the time, their qualifications, and their sincerity and evidence they had that this translation came out a little bit different than other ones. Okay, let's let James deal with the issues you've raised. Okay. That was just a preface. I just want to... Well, quickly, because I don't want to run out of time on you. Okay, great. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, the primary thing that I would say is, first of all, when you have troubles because you've utilized verses that are not necessarily the best verses to use, that in and of itself is not an argument against the originality of the readings that are found in the modern translations. ideal of 1 Timothy 3.16 rather extensively in the book and as you recognize it is not a matter of conspiracies, it is a matter of a Hoth versus the nominus sacra Theos, the abbreviation of the word God, so on and so forth. The problem that I have, in fact I personally prefer the reading God at that point by the way, I make that clear in my book. The problem I have though is it seems like you've read a lot of information presenting the other perspective but the only one that you mentioned was Carson's book, I don't know if you've even seen mine yet or dealt with that yet but the simple fact of the matter is there isn't a whole lot out that has responded to the King James only position and I would hope that maybe you might suspend total and final judgment until you have an opportunity of really examining interaction, for example. That's one of the reasons I like doing call-in radio. I've challenged these individuals to debate. I've invited Mrs. Ripplinger, Peter Ruckman, and that's a whole other story about what happened there. D.A. Wade and I have debated. I have been attempting to get him to do more of that. He won't even respond to me anymore. When you hear both sides... By the way, let's say right now before you go on that I'd be willing to give the Bible Answer Man broadcast as a platform for you to debate some of these guys, so let them know that. I will most certainly do so. James, I'm going to go into the ministry eventually and I'm presently working on a Master's in Biblical Languages and I'm hoping to take this issue up when I do graduate down the years, it's probably going to take me another two more years, could I possibly debate you on this issue once I'm qualified completely? Well my hope is by then you won't want to, but certainly we could discuss that at that point, but one thing I want to say, if you're going into the ministry and you're going to use the King James, the most important thing is just this. Preach it. Teach it. Believe it. Live it. That's the most important thing. It's not a matter of all these other translations and so on and so forth. The Word of God has found the King James. Justice has found the new King James and the NIV. And as long as people don't go off the deep end and start making the translation the issue, that's the important thing from my perspective. Let's see if we can slide in one more quick call. Jeremy in Kansas City, Missouri, listening on KCCV. You're on with James White. Thank you for taking my call. A delight. I'm just confused on the matter. Most of the time, my church is relatively informed about things, and I'm just trying to figure it all out, but from what I understood, Origen was one of the translators of the The Alexandrian text? No, that's not true. No, that's not true. No, it's not. That's a common claim of the King James Only Advocates. It has absolutely positively not a bit of patristic or linguistic support behind it. Origen utilized the Alexandrian text, but there are people who utilized it before him, and in fact, as I point out in my book, we have papyri manuscripts that give us the Alexandrian text that were written before Origen was born. So therefore, that's a common false claim of King James Only Advocates. And we'll take one more call. Tim in Memphis, Tennessee, listening on WCRV. Tim, welcome. Yeah, thank you very much. It's got to be really quick. I've only got about 30 seconds. Okay, your thoughts on maybe Dr. Stuart Custer up in Greenville, South Carolina. He really seems to be the brunt of a lot of criticism by Dr. Rugman and a lot of the King James only people. Well, and that's because he's had the temerity to stand up against them and say they're wrong. And the other thing is, of course, being at Bob Jones University, Dr. Ruckman really, really, really, really, since he graduated from there, seems to like to shoot the people that are closest to him as far as his background goes. But Peter Ruckman likes to shoot at everybody, so he's just one of the folks that has taken a few hits, too. If you thought James White was fascinating on radio, you're going to want to get the King James Only Controversy book. This was a book that I wanted to write I was a month into the process myself until I found out that James was writing this book. I aborted the process. I got his book. I wrote an endorsement for his book, and I want you to take this book and make it a part of your library. You can do this by writing me at the Christian Research Institute and ordering radio offer number 337, a suggested donation of $10 or more to the ongoing work of the Christian Research Institute. Our address box, 500 San Juan Capistrano, California. Zip code 92693. You can order by calling 714-855-9926. And remember, if you're ordering using Visa, MasterCard, or the Discover card, we have a special toll-free number available to you. That number, 800-443-9797. We are delighted to be able to present you with James White. He is a Apologist that's making a difference, not only for time, but also for eternity. Pray for him and his ministry. He's taken a lot of heat for writing this book. It's a book that needed to be written. It is a book that will inspire you and give you confidence in the Word of God. James, a delight. It has been the best. Thank you. And we will have him back in the near future. Thanks for being willing to do for the truth what the cults do for a lie so long for now. See you tomorrow.