We have a Biblical text that is faithful to the original
A scroll from The Dead Sea Scrolls archives. Scholarly consensus dates the scrolls from the last three centuries BC and the first century AD. The Dead Sea Scrolls are astonishingly similar to the standard Masoretic Hebrew texts 1,000 years later, proving that Jewish scribes were accurate in preserving and transmitting the text of the Old Testament.
by Tom Hobson Introduction Mormonism is fueled by faith-promoting stories. No one said this better than Mormon Apostle, Bruce R. McConkie, “We have in the Church an untapped, almost unknown, treasury of inspiring and faith-promoting stories. They are the best of their kind and there are thousands of them.” (“The How and Why of Faith-promoting Stories”, New Era magazine, July 1978). Unfortunately, some of them, as another Mormon Apostle said well, only provide “…a kind of theological Twinkie—spiritually empty calories?” (Jeffrey R. Holland, “A Teacher Come from God”, Spring General Conference 1998). This series exposes the following ten “Twinkies”…
10 Myths That Mormonism Tells About Biblical Christianity
Biblical Christianity apostatized.
The Bible has been corrupted.
Biblical Christians believe in cheap grace.
Biblical Christians believe Christ prayed to Himself.
The Biblical Christian God is a monster who sends good people to hell just because they never had a chance to hear the gospel.
Biblical Christians worship the cross and the Bible.
Biblical Christians have no priesthood.
Biblical Christian Pastors and Apologists practice Priestcraft – they’re only in it for the money.
Biblical Christians hate Mormons.
Biblical Christianity is divided into 10,000+ sects, all believing in different paths to salvation.
… and replaces them with nourishing truth. Let’s talk about the one that’s bolded, shall we?
The Myth One need go no further than the Book of Mormon to find the myth that the Bible has been corrupted:
“Wherefore, thou seest that after the book hath gone forth through the hands of the great and abominable church, that there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God.” (1 Nephi:28-29)
So, given that, how do we know that our copies of the Bible are reliable? How do we know that no plain or precious parts have been taken out of the copies that we have, or changed irretrievably? What about Bart Ehrman’s claim that there are 400,000 variations in the Biblical text? Doesn’t that leave us hopelessly confused as to what God actually said?
Why It’s a Myth The claim that the Bible has been “corrupted” is a lie if it claims that so much has been altered, added, or removed that it is no longer reliable as the authoritative source of God’s word to us. The hard evidence shows, however, that God has given us a wealth of manuscript evidence for the reliability of today’s text of God’s word. The vast majority of supposed corruptions are actually variations of spelling and word order that do not affect the meaning of passages. A large portion of the others are harmless additions of words or entire sentences from elsewhere within the Bible itself. But God has given us so much evidence for the Biblical text that wherever such variations happen, we can easily trace the original, and nowhere is what we need to know from God’s word jeopardized.
A portion of the Great Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is the oldest complete copy of the Book of Isaiah. It is also notable in being the only scroll from the Qumran Caves to be preserved almost in its entirety. The variants between this scroll and the Masoretic text that followed about a millennia later were minor with most due to scribal error.
How It’s a Myth
Let’s start with the Hebrew Bible. Our oldest complete copies of the Hebrew text date to around 900-1000 AD. I call these the “Temple-quality” texts. They were preserved for us by scribes known as the Masoretes. They are the ones who invented vowel markers for the Hebrew text (which was originally written without vowels). These scribes counted every letter of the text to make sure it was accurate. They preserved the best quality copies that were handed down to them from the time God’s word was stored in the Jerusalem temple. That’s the standard Hebrew text we have.
God has also given us the Dead Sea Scrolls to prove how accurate our standard Hebrew text was. The Dead Sea Scrolls date from about 150 BC to 100 AD. There are around 230 pieces from every Old Testament book except Esther, including 104 pieces of the Pentateuch, and one very good copy of Isaiah. How well did our scribes do in over 1000 years of copying? Take a look at Isaiah 53. Compare the Dead Sea Scroll version with our standard text. Other than differences in spelling, there is only 1 word in question (out of 166 words) in over 1000 years of recopying (verse 11 says either “he shall see” or “he shall see light”). The rest of the Dead Sea Scroll material backs up the amazing accuracy of our standard Hebrew Bibles from 1000 years later.
God has also given us the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint. Scholars in Egypt started by translating the Law of Moses about 280 BC and then did the prophets and other books over the next 150 years or so. The Greek Old Testament gives us a snapshot of what the Hebrew text they had looked like at the time. Sometimes the Greek version gives us a different reading that agrees with the Dead Sea Scrolls; when the Greek version and the Dead Sea Scrolls agree, they may have preserved a better reading than the standard Hebrew text.
For the Law of Moses, God has also given us the Samaritan Pentateuch, which also dates from more than a century before Christ. We also have the Latin version, the Vulgate, which dates from 400 AD and gives us a snapshot of what the Hebrew text looked like in Jerome’s day. Finally, we have loose translations of the Old Testament into Aramaic, which are called targumīm; again, they date to around the time of Christ. God has given us a lot of textual evidence to work with for the Hebrew Bible!
For the New Testament, we start with pieces of the Greek text (we call them the papyri). The very oldest is about 2 verses of John that date to 125 AD, barely 30 years after John was written. The rest of our papyri date to 200-300 AD, including almost complete copies of the Gospels and the letters of Paul. Parts of almost every book in the New Testament can be found at this time.
Next, God has given us complete copies of the entire New Testament on sheepskin starting in 300 AD. We have almost 300 New Testaments or portions thereof from over the next 5 centuries. After this, there are hundreds of mass-produced copies in Greek from 800-1500 AD, on which our KJV is based. We also not only have the Latin Vulgate (400 AD), but several Latin translations that are earlier than the Vulgate. We also have early translations into Syriac and Coptic. Finally, the vast majority of the New Testament can be reconstructed just from quotes from early church writers.
God has given us so much evidence for the original text of the Bible, that very few words are left in question. The chances of us changing the original text in any given place without being found out are so great, that it would be like dumping a pillow full of feathers out the window of a speeding car, and then trying to get every feather back.
When variations take place in the text of the Bible, they normally leave behind evidence, and the burden of proof lies on those who would claim that such changes happened without leaving a trace. Nobody was ever in a position of being able to change all of the copies of a Biblical passage, without the original reading being preserved somewhere.
A good example of how tracing the original reading works where there are variations in a Biblical text can be found in Deuteronomy 9:24. In the earliest complete copies of our standard Hebrew text, we read that Moses says to the Israelites, “You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.” But both the Greek translation and the Samaritan Pentateuch (both of which are very early) read, “from the day that he knew you” (meaning God). (Fragments of Deuteronomy in the Dead Sea Scrolls do not contain this verse.)
Which reading is more likely to have been changed to which? “From the day I knew you,” or “from the day he knew you?” It’s about a 50/50 tossup, both in terms of logic and of evidence from the copies we have. The case for both readings is strong. Whether it is God or Moses who has always known Israel to be rebellious does not make much difference to our faith (probably both are true). But notice how such an early change was caught and preserved in the manuscript evidence we have. Such changes do not go undetected.
The heretic Marcion (150 AD) is proof that no one could have pulled off a major chop-job revision of the Bible, without being detected. Marcion believed that there were two gods: the evil creator god of the Hebrew Bible, and the sweetness-and-light God of Jesus Christ. So Marcion throws away the entire Old Testament, and accepts only a mutilated Gospel of Luke and seven mutilated letters of Paul, with everything Jewish removed. His attempt to remove these plain and precious teachings, however, was a colossal failure. There were too many unaltered copies floating around to correct his version.
The Codex Sinaiticus or “Sinai Bible”, is one of the four great uncial codices, ancient, handwritten copies of a Christian Bible in Greek. It is the oldest complete copy of the New Testament dating to the 4th Century AD.
So the chance that huge changes were made in the Bible undetected without leaving behind telltale evidence, is virtually zero. If someone claims there was originally a prediction of a famous prophet in Genesis 50 that is no longer in our Bibles, we can ask: why is there no evidence for it in our oldest complete Hebrew scrolls, nor in the Greek translation, nor in the Dead Sea Scrolls, nor in the Samaritan Pentateuch or the Vulgate? If such a prophecy had been “plain and precious,” the evidence that it was ever part of the original text is non-existent.
God has sometimes given us evidence in the text of the Bible that makes us wonder. The Greek version of Jeremiah is 16% shorter than our Hebrew version, and the chapters about foreign nations from the end of the book have been moved to the middle. At some points, some of the fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls back up the short version. My theory is that Jeremiah wrote both a standard version and a “director’s cut,” and God made sure that neither one of those versions got lost. (There is nothing new in the long version, just repetition.)
In Genesis 4, the words that Cain says to his brother Abel, “Let us go to the field,” are missing from some of our earliest Hebrew manuscripts, but they are found in the Greek version, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Vulgate, and the other Hebrew copies we have. So one of the questions we always have to ask is: Which is more likely? Which version best explains how the other one came about? One general rule is that words are far more likely to be added to the holy text than taken out. When Paul says in Galatians 6, “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus,” that easily grew from “Jesus” to become “our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Sometimes words do drop out. But the shorter reading is usually the best. So in famous cases such as the ending of Mark, or the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8, both of which are missing from the earliest and best copies of Mark and John, we have to ask: Is it more likely that somebody took out a whole section that was originally there, or is it more likely that somebody added that section?
The last 12 verses of Mark are missing from our 2 earliest Greek manuscripts, and from our earliest Syriac and Latin manuscripts. They have some details that don’t seem to fit with the rest of what we know from the Gospels. They say that Jesus appeared to 2 men on the road (which sounds like the Emmaus Road), but when the men report back, it says the rest “did not believe.” They also tell us that Jesus appears to the apostles and chews them out for their lack of faith, which doesn’t sound like any scene we know from the Gospels. So was this section edited out of our earliest manuscripts? Or was it added because, otherwise, if Mark ends at verse 8, it sounds like Mark leaves us hanging there? Either way, God gave us both versions, to make sure we have enough information for what we need to believe and do.
The same is true of the passage where Jesus forgives the woman caught in adultery. The evidence indicates that this passage was not an original part of the Gospel of John. It is missing from our two oldest texts of John (200 AD). It is missing from Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and at least 8 other major Greek manuscripts. These verses are missing from four Old Latin manuscripts, as well as from the early Syriac version and half of our Coptic manuscripts. No Greek commentary on John mentions the passage until 1100 AD, and even copies that contain this passage mark it off to show doubt that it belongs in the original text. The earliest Greek text where we find this story is from 400 AD, along with four other major Greek manuscripts, the rest of our Latin manuscripts (including the Vulgate), half of our Coptic manuscripts, and the large number of Greek texts on which the KJV is based.
While the copies we have seem to show that the account of Jesus forgiving the woman caught in adultery was not part of John’s original, what we read here fits all of the historical criteria of authenticity except for multiple independent witnesses. So this appears to be a genuine incident from the life of Jesus that almost fell through the cracks. It was too good to lose. Think how much less we would know about Jesus if we had lost it! God made sure it found its way into God’s word. If we had found it on papyrus scraps in some Egyptian garbage dump, we would have added it to our Bibles.
Jesus’ words as he is being nailed to the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” are only found in Luke 23:34, and even there, they are missing from a large portion of the earliest manuscripts. They are missing from our oldest manuscript of Luke, from 200 AD. They are missing from Codex Vaticanus (300’s AD), and from the original text of manuscript D (they are added into the margin by a later scribe). They are also missing from two of the oldest Latin manuscripts, from the earliest Syriac version, and from most Coptic manuscripts. However, they can be found in the earliest text of Codex Sinaiticus (300’s AD), in the vast majority of Latin manuscripts, in manuscript 33 (a late copy of a very early Greek manuscript), and in the majority of Greek copies mass-produced after the fourth century AD, plus they are quoted by Hippolytus, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus in the second century AD, which is evidence that early writers knew this passage.
In cases like this, we must weigh the evidence rather than count the manuscripts. The fact that these words of Jesus were included in the Majority Text on which the KJV is based proves nothing; 100 copies can be based on a late and unreliable original. We must also ask why copyists might have added or tried to remove these words. It is probable that some in the early church rejected this saying due to their own animosity toward Jesus’ killers. It is rare for words in an early Bible manuscript to be deleted by a copyist; usually, the tendency is to add words. But in this case, we can see why strong conviction could have led some copyists to leave this saying out as they recopied this text. But God made sure that this all-important sound bite did not get lost from God’s word, and God preserved the evidence that someone tried to remove it.
What about books the Bible quotes that we no longer have, such as the Book of the Wars of the Lord, or the book of Jasher, or the many sources quoted in Kings and Chronicles? Are we missing out on some lost volumes of inspired Scripture? I would say, God has already given us the gold nuggets we needed from those books. If we needed more, God would have given us more. The Bible gives us quotes from Enoch and Epimenides (the guy who said “Cretans are always liars”). We have those books. See for yourself: they are not inspired.
The same is true for so-called lost words of Jesus (floating sayings outside the canonical Bible).1 None of these left-out sayings gives us anything we really needed to know about Jesus that we don’t already have in the canonical Gospels.
The Bodmer Papyri contains segments from the Old and New Testaments, early Christian literature, Homer, and Menander. The oldest, P66 dates to c. 200 AD.
Why It Matters If the Bible is really God’s word, then why did God allow so many variations to happen? If God’s word is without error, how can we explain this? Why didn’t God keep the text perfect? The short answer is that God didn’t need a perfect text. God gave us a text that was accurate enough to do the job it was intended to do. Besides, if every copy read exactly the same, we’d smell a rat – we’d wonder whether somebody had monkeyed with the text, and then cleaned up the scene of the crime and got rid of all copies that didn’t read exactly the same. The rough edges we find in the copies of God’s word that God has given us are proof that they were copied independently.
How reliable are the copies we have of God’s word? Based on the Bibles we use in our everyday reading, minor problems in the text are far less than one per page, and most of them are easy to tell what the correct reading is. Major issues in the text amount to only a few dozen for the entire Bible, and we have examined here many of the most famous ones. Wherever we find a variation, God gives us enough evidence to catch the change and to figure out what the original reading is. And nowhere are any of our essential beliefs or moral teachings jeopardized by the accuracy of the Biblical text that God has given us. No challenge to Biblical teaching, from the Deity of Christ to sexuality, hangs on a textual variation where the Bible’s teaching is not made abundantly clear elsewhere.
Summary and Conclusion There is zero evidence that any plain or precious parts have been taken out of God’s word. God has given us too much evidence that backs up the text we have, for us to fear that the Bible God has given us has been altered, added to, or subtracted from.2 We have a Biblical text that is faithful to the original, a Bible we can rely on for teaching, correction, reproof, and training in righteousness.
The Codex Vaticanus is one of the oldest copies of the Bible, one of the four great uncial codices. The Codex is named after its place of conservation in the Vatican Library, where it has been kept since at least the 15th century. It is written on 759 leaves of vellum in uncial letters and has been dated paleographically to the 4th century.
2 Bart Ehrman himself solidly backs up this conclusion:
“Essential Christian beliefs are not affected by any textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.” (Dr. Bart D. Ehrman, “Misquoting Jesus”, Appendix to first paperback, second edition)
About the Author Tom Hobson is a retired Presbyterian pastor and host of the radio program “Biblical Words and World” on radio station KUTR in Salt Lake. He is currently the Moderator of ECO’s Presbytery of Mid America.* He holds degrees from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and Concordia Seminary St Louis (Ph.D.). He attends local ECO and Methodist congregations, plus he preaches monthly at a UCC church. He also served 4 years as Professor and Chair of Biblical Languages and Literature at non-denominational Morthland College. He is the author of “What’s on God’s Sin List for Today?” and “The Historical Jesus and the Historical Joseph Smith”, plus numerous other articles and blog posts packaged together on his website www.biblicalethic.org.
*for those unfamiliar with “ECO”, its official name is ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. It is a conservative Christian denomination that has split off from the mainline PCUSA church, like the EPC and the PCA. You can read more about ECO by clicking here.
An appeal to the translation shamers of Eugene Peterson’s “The Message”
by Fred W. Anson
For years I’ve watched as well-meaning but largely uninformed Christians have torn into Eugene Peterson’s highly vernacular translation of the Bible, “The Message”. I’m old enough to have been around when he was just beginning his work on this unique translation and loved it from the first time I saw his very first translations of the Psalms published in Christianity Today back in the day (I even clipped the very first article and tucked it away in one of my many Bibles, I liked it that much). So from before even the very first imprints rolled off the presses and hit the shelves at Christian bookstores I “got” what Peterson was trying to do – after all, he never made it any secret.
However, a whole lotta folks never seem to have bothered to try to understand, let alone listen to what Mr. Peterson himself said about the translation. The term that he frequently used to describe it is that it’s a “Pastoral Translation” of the Bible that’s intended to speak to the reader in a way that more literal, formal translations can’t and don’t. Thus, it was intended to be more a devotional Bible than anything else.
And nowhere did he express his intentions, translation philosophy, or goals better than in the Preface – you know, the one that no one ever bothers to actually read because they’re either too busy blissfully loving and benefiting from The Message or misunderstanding and publicly shaming and bashing it – typically, out of uninformed ignorance.
To use an imperfect analogy, one need only read that preface to will see that what the latter group is doing is condemning The Message for not being a Mercedes Benz when it was never intended or meant to be one. Rather, it was meant to be a Volkswagen – that is, steadfast, simple, direct, approachable, readily available, and uncomplicated. And like a Volkswagen, it was never intended to replace or compete with a Mercedes Benz, it’s only meant to complement them and fill a niche that they can’t or won’t.
Thus, whenever someone compares The Message to the many excellent tighter more formal word-for-word translations of the Bible it’s very much the same. But however you slice it, both a Mercedes Benz and a Volkswagen will get you to your destination even though the ride may be very different. Both serve a function and a niche in the market. They are designed to serve their particular audience well, and they do. And, to stretch this analogy even further, if you’re older, more mature, and more established in life (like this author is) while your current car might be a Mercedes, is it really a problem if your first car was a Volkswagen? Your Mercedes meets you where you are today, just as the Volkwagen did back in the day.
So then, tell me, given all this why is it that well-meaning but misguided, more mature and established Christians so often translation shame fragile new Christians – like those coming out of controlling Churches, like the former members of the LdS Church that this author specializes in – for using the Message? Why do they use insensitive language like, “You really should be using a good translation, you know!” Friend, can you feel the condescension and arrogance just dripping like acid in those words? Well, guess what, so can these often struggling baby Christians who just trying to find an English translation of the Bible that speaks to them and meets them where they’re at! They’re trying to figure out this new Christian thing that they’ve gotten themselves into and instead, they’re being Bible translation shamed by their elder siblings. No one likes being “should” on, and given where they’re at and given where they came from these folks are particularly sensitive to it. I see it all the time – and it makes me cringe all the time.
So older, more mature, and more established in the Christian faith friends, I appeal to you – no, I plead with you in Jesus’ Name – if The Message connects with someone and helps them in their walk with Jesus, please, please, please just let them be. Please!
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t recommend that they also get a more literal, word-for-word translation for meetings and Bible Studies (since The Message isn’t designed for or a good choice for those functions) but if they like the Message for devotional and other personal reading (which is specifically what it was designed for an how it was intended to be used); if they find that it meets them where they; and if they find that they’re growing in the faith through The Message in private outside of meetings, then why oh, why can’t you just let them be? Can you find it in your heart to have a little empathy for these dear new ones in Christ, please? Be the older, wiser, more compassionate brother or sister in Christ, not the shaming, judgmental, intolerant Church Lady.
So with that introduction, it’s my hope by republishing the Preface to “The Message” in its entirety (and sharing it whenever I encounter a “The Message” basher – of which there are many these days) perhaps I can do my own small part in bringing some peace and understanding to this increasingly ridiculous situation. Friends, if you’re going to criticize something don’t you think that you should first make at least some attempt at understanding it first? And when it comes to “The Message” all you have to do to gain that understanding is simply read the preface – it’s all right there.
“The Daily Message” is the one year devotional Bible that Eugene Peterson produced using The Message as a basis. (click to zoom images)
Preface
TO THE READER
If there is anything distinctive about The Message, perhaps it is because the text is shaped by the hand of a working pastor. For most adult life I have been given a primary responsibility for getting the message of the Bible into the lives of the men and women with whom I worked. I did it from pulpit and lectern, in home Bible studies and at mountain retreats, through conversations in hospitals and nursing homes, over coffee in kitchens and while strolling on an ocean beach. The Message grew from the soil of forty years of pastoral work.
As I worked at this task, this Word of God, which forms and transforms human lives, did form and transform human lives. Planted in the soil of my congregation and community the seed words of the Bible germinated and grew and matured. When it came time to do the work that is now The Message, I often felt that I was walking through an orchard at harvest time, plucking fully formed apples and peaches and plums from laden branches. There’s hardly a page in the Bible I did not see lived in some way or other by the men and women, saints and sinners, to whom I was pastor — and then verified in my nation and culture.
I didn’t start out as a pastor. I began my vocational life as a teacher and for several years taught the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek in a theological seminary. I expected to live the rest of my life as a professor and scholar, teaching and writing and studying. But then my life took a sudden vocational turn to pastoring in a congregation.
I was now plunged into quite a different world. The first noticeable difference was that nobody seemed to care much about the Bible, which so recently people had been paying me to teach them. Many of the people I worked with now knew virtually nothing about it, had never read it, and weren’t interested in learning. Many others had spent years reading it but for them it had gone flat through familiarity, reduced to clichés. Bored, they dropped it. And there weren’t many people in between. Very few were interested in what I considered my primary work, getting the words of the Bible into their heads and hearts, getting the message lived. They found newspapers and magazines, videos and pulp fiction more to their taste.
Meanwhile I had taken on as my life work the responsibility of getting these very people to listen, really listen, to the message in this book. I knew I had my work cut out for me.I lived in two language worlds, the world of the Bible and the world of Today. I had always assumed they were the same world. But these people didn’t see it that way. So out of necessity I became a “translator” (although I wouldn’t have called it that then), daily standing on the border between two worlds, getting the language of the Bible that God uses to create and save us, heal and bless us, judge and rule over us, into the language of Today that we use to gossip and tell stories, give directions and do business, sing songs and talk to our children.
And all the time those old biblical languages, those powerful and vivid Hebrew and Greek originals, kept working their way underground in my speech, giving energy and sharpness to words and phrases, expanding the imagination of the people with whom I was working to hear the language of the Bible in the language of Today and the language of Today in the language of the Bible.
I did that for thirty years in one congregation. And then one day (it was April 30, 1990) I got a letter from an editor asking me to work on a new version of the Bible along the lines of what I had been doing as a pastor. I agreed. The next ten years was harvest time. The Message is the result.
The Message is a reading Bible. It is not intended to replace the excellent study Bibles that are available. My intent here (as it was earlier in my congregation and community) is simply to get people reading it who don’t know that the Bible is read-able at all, at least by them, and to get people who long ago lost interest in the Bible to read it again. But I haven’t tried to make it easy — there is much in the Bible that is hard to understand. So at some point along the way, soon or late, it will be important to get a standard study Bible to facilitate further study. Meanwhile, read in order to live, praying as you read, “God, let it be with me just as you say.” (Eugene Peterson, “The Daily Message”, Preface, Navpress. Kindle Edition)
In the foreword to “The Message Devotional Bible” Peterson continued that same Pastoral approach to scripture:
Our conversations with each other are sacred. Those that take place in the parking lot after Sunday worship are as much a part of the formation of Christian character as the preaching from the sanctuary pulpit. The small talk that happens around the ritual of putting children to sleep for the night is as sacred as the most solemn of Eucharistic liturgies.
But conversation, as such, though honored by our ancestors, is much neglected today as a form of Christian discourse. If we’re to be in touch with all the parts of our lives and all the dimensions of the gospel, conversation requires equal billing (although not equal authority) with preaching and teaching.
The conversations I would like to have with you are more casual than formal—the kinds of conversations we would have if we walked through the mountains together, stopping here and there to catch our breath. We’ll travel a lot of terrain together, some of it breathtakingly scenic, some of it ploddingly plain, and some of it precariously uncertain. Here and there along the way I’ll point out details in the biblical landscape, drawing attention to a particular word, pointing out a pertinent piece of historical background, pausing a moment to talk with you and to lead you in prayer.
With that in mind, it’s my personal joy to come alongside you in the wondrous and perilous journey that is your life and my pastoral privilege to walk with you through the Scriptures. I come as a guide as well as a fellow traveler.
And this is the reason why I love The Message, why I use it, and why I will continue to include it in my devotions – period. My “default setting” is to analyze and study scripture rather than enter into a conversation with God through scripture in my devotions. My natural tendency is to go deep into the text rather than just let God speak through the text.
So, I was challenged by a good, discerning Pastor to stop doing this during my daily devotions and simply start reading scripture experientially rather than intellectually – after all, goodness knows, that I do enough of the latter in my Religious Studies work. Reading a more literal, formal translation (such as the New American Standard Bible, the English Standard Bible, or my beloved New King James) tends to keep in that “default setting”. However, reading a high vernacular translation like J.B. Phillip’s New Testament, The New Living Translation, or The Message tends to push me out of my default setting and approach the biblical text like a conversation rather than a textbook – it skews me into a more visceral mode that for guys like me that like to live in their head can be very balancing. It works, try it.
Oh, and by the way, my Pastor was 100% right, treating my daily devotions strictly like my daily devotions, and nothing more has changed my life for the better. We all need both bible study and daily devotions and my spiritual life was suffering from a full experience of the latter. I cycle through all good translations as I read the Bible each time through in my devotions – that means both formal and vernacular translations, and that includes The Message.
The bottom line to all this is this: The Message, though not a tight, formal translation of the Bible serves a purpose: personal devotional Bible reading. Just like a Volkswagen if it’s used within its role, limits, and purpose it’s a great resource. Yes, outside of those boundaries, it’s no longer an appropriate resource – and like a Volkswagen, The Message can and will be abused from time to time – we have all seen that. Regardless, Bible Translation shaming someone for using The Message and hating on it because it’s a Volkswagen rather than a Mercedes Benz not only makes no sense, it’s rude, insensitive, and inappropriate behavior. The very antithesis of what Jesus would do.
Perhaps no version of The Message captures the purpose, intention, and role of The Message like the Devotional Bible edition. It’s here where Eugene Peterson’s vision of the translation as “Pastoral” and “devotional” come together. (click images to zoom)
The first page of the eleven page Translators Preface to the 1611 KJV Bible.
An ongoing series of articles on some common and recurring weak arguments that Christians make against Mormonism.
by Fred W. Anson The Argument:
“Well at least you use the King James Bible – it’s the only true and inspired translation. It alone is God’s Word!”
Why It’s Weak:
This stance is from the “The King James Only Movement” (or “KJV Onlyism” as it will hereby be referred) which, in a nutshell, holds to the stance that the King James Version of the Bible is superior to all other English translations of the Bible and, therefore, the only version that should be used by individual Christians or Christian congregations. KVJ Onlyism also teaches that all other English translations are corrupt, hence the KJV is the only the English Bible that can be trusted. Some KJV Onlyists even go so far at to teach that the King James Bible is without error and was divinely inspired. Some even teach that if there’s a conflict between what the original language manuscripts say and the KJV says you should choose the latter.
KJV Onlyism is fraught with a multiplicity of problems[1] that get exacerbated and amplified within a Mormon Studies context. And while I will make every attempt to show charity to my KJV Only brothers and sisters in Christ throughout my critique of their stance, I’m still going to be direct and honest about those problems throughout this article.
That said, let me be crystal clear: I love the King James Bible! The KJV was the Bible translation that I grew up with. It’s the Bible that I memorize from. It’s the Bible that I first fell deeply and passionately in love with, and it’s the one that I first read from cover-to-cover (and then read cover-to-cover several more times). To this day the KJV is still the first translation that I turn to first whenever I’m doing research. I also honor and respect it’s unique position and profound influence in the history of the English speaking world. In my opinion, the elegant English of the King James Bible has yet to be matched by any other translation of the Bible.
But objectively speaking, The King James Bible isn’treally God’s Word. Neither is the New International Version of the Bible, the English Standard Version, the New American Standard, the New Living Translation, the New King James Version, the Common English Bible, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, or even the Reina Valera (which is the topping selling Spanish Bible in the world).
The title page of a 1611 KJV Bible (click to zoom)
These are all translations of God’s Word. Therein lies a difference – a big difference!
If one holds to Biblical inerrancy (as the author does) then God’s pure and unadulterated written revelation to mankind is only found in the original handwritten manuscripts that were produced by either the biblical author or their scribes.
These are known as the “autograph” manuscripts (or “autographa”) and none of them have survived. What’s left are imperfect copies (or, more likely, fragments of copies) that, thankfully, we have in such an abundance that we have been able to reconstruct the autographa with a high degree of certainty.[2] Those reconstructed manuscripts are the closest thing we have to “God’s divinely inspired Word”. Therefore, a translation is only as authoritative as it accurately reflects those original language reconstructions and they are only as authoritative as they reflect the autographa.
Further, translation is always an interpretative process since no two languages translate precisely word-for-word the same. For example, take a simple Spanish phrase like “¿Qué pasa?” The most common English translation is “What’s happening?” but if you transliterate it word-for-word it would be: “What passing?” So does that mean that the ONLY 100% accurate, true, or correct translation is “What passing?” Clearly, that’s nonsense.
“¿Qué pasa?” can also be translated: “What’s up?”, “How’s it going?”, “What’s goin’ down?”, or even “Wazzup?” While all these translations are correct Spanish to English translations some are more accurate, some more elegant, others more vernacular, but all are valid translations appropriate to different English speaking contexts and dialects. So if it’s this complex for just a simple two word translation between two living contemporary languages consider how much more so it is going from complete sentences and paragraphs from ancient languages into modern English.
All that to simply say, getting fanatically dogmatic about a translation – any translation – of the Bible is bound to get you in trouble.
1) King James Onlyism is a non-essential of the Christian faith
As previously mentioned in article #4 of this series, focusing on non-essentials weakens our arguments when engaging Mormons:
Mormon Researcher Bill McKeever has a a great saying, “The gospel is offensive enough – let’s make sure we offend Mormons with what really matters!” Arguing from dogma, preferences, and non-essential doctrine dilutes the message to Mormons that really matters.
… strong arguments against Mormonism are always rooted and grounded firmly in the essentials of the Christian faith. Specifically, strong arguments will always be some variation on the themes we introduced earlier in this article:
1) Mormonism teaches another Jesus. 2) Mormonism teaches another salvation. 3) Mormonism gets Christ’s resurrection mostly right but is still wrong.
4) Mormonism teaches another gospel. 5) Mormonism teaches polytheism. 6) Mormonism follows a false prophet.
Like the notes in a musical theme these six points can be woven into a seemingly endless array of strong, persuasive arguments. Use them skillfully and creatively and your arguments against Mormonism will be as moving as a Mozart symphony. But if you deviate too far from them, we’re talking Spike Jones.[3]
So, if scholarship is not the ultimate basis for the present TR-KJV [Textus Receptus-King James Version] movement, what is? What kind of non-scholastic methodology is thought to allow God to be the final authority on what constitutes the Bible instead of men? Their answer is FAITH! The same kind of faith that God demands when one believes in Jesus as his Lord and Savior — so they claim. By this method, one can be independent of other men and come to a final conclusion by himself concerning what constitutes the Word of God.
Dutch humanist and Roman Catholic Priest, Desiderius Erasmus in 1523 as depicted by Hans Holbein the Younger. Erasmus was responsible for the Textus Receptus.
An example of this kind of faith is seen in the following case. When confronted with a difference between the KJV and (say) the NASB [New American Standard Bible], how does one tell which reading is genuine? By the method of scholarship, one would have to study the manuscripts and their history. By the method of “faith,” however, one only has to pray and ask God to reveal to him in some way (without scholarship) which reading is correct. If one has been saved under preaching from the KJV, it is very easy to appeal to one’s personal experience as God’s revealed “proof.” They would say, “I can see the changes that have taken place in my life since I believed what was taught in the KJV. These changes are evidence that God is really working in my life. Therefore, I know that the KJV is the best text without any manuscript evidence.” This methodology, of course, is then later used to defend every word in the KJV text. In our discussions with pro-KJV people, it is not uncommon for them to claim that even the TR [Textus Receptus, the manuscript the KJV New Testament was translated from] can be wrong, but the KJV cannot.
However, is this the kind of “faith” the Bible talks about? Blind faith based on personal experience and independent of other evidence such as manuscripts and history? In I Corinthians 15:14, the Apostle Paul wrote, “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” How does one determine whether Christ has actually risen from the dead? Are not historical and archaeological evidence (using scholarship) for the reliability of Scripture involved? Did not Paul give historical evidence when he told the Corinthians to ask the other Apostles and the five hundred brethren who saw saw the risen Christ (I Co.15:4-7)? Would this not involve some scholarship in determining whether a person actually saw Christ or was lying? Should not every Bible believer be ready to renounce his faith if a grave in Palestine were ever identified unmistakably to contain the remains of Jesus Christ? If not, what would be the difference between that person and a liberal who says that it does not really matter what happened, only what a person believes happened is important?
We fundamentalists sometimes claim that some of the hymns we sing are doctrinally unsound. Is this not the case for that line in the hymn “He Lives” which says “You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!”? There is more to Biblical faith than belief without objective evidence. If not, then how does one witness to a Mormon?
Present day Mormons claim that scholarship can never prove or disprove that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God or that the Book of Mormon is also the Word of God. That would make other men the final authority on Mormonism, not God. If one should point out some of the abundant evidences against Mormonism, Mormons will usually respond that these problems will eventually be resolved in favor of Mormonism given enough time. The primary evidence for the truth of Mormonism comes from the Holy Spirit working in one’s life, so their claim goes.
A KJV-Onlyist’s car sign leaves little doubt where he stands.
Prospective converts are first given a presentation of Mormonism. Then they are asked to pray to God and sincerely ask Him to show them by divine revelation whether or not Mormonism is true. By this methodology, many people do indeed become Mormons while others do not. With the passing of time, many converts will be able to give glowing testimonies of the changes God has supposedly wrought in their lives. If one asks why certain people who prayed decided not to become Mormons, Mormons will typically answer that such people must have prayed (at least subconsciously) with an insincere heart. Otherwise, they would have become Mormons! Indeed if the growth of a church is the evidence of God’s blessing the use of a particular text, the Book of Mormon would do well. Mormonism is one of the fastest growing religions in America.
Does the methodology of faith without scholarship produce any more certainty than faith based on scholarship? Has not every person once thought he was certainly right on some issue only to later change his mind and believe he was totally wrong? Is God really the final authority in this methodology? If He is, then why do people become Mormons and claim to have peace and assurance in their times of need? Has not God really been replaced by “leading by feelings” concerning their experiences using the KJV in this methodology of faith without scholarship? Nowhere in the Bible are we taught that the feelings about our experiences, even after sincere prayer, are the voice of God.[4]
Whenever I’ve had discussions with KJV Onlyists I’ve encountered exactly the same type of evidence denial, thought stopping and information control tactics, ad-homineming, testimony bearing, subjectivity, apologetic spin doctoring, and feelings based irrationality that I see in my engagements with Mormons. Making non-essentials essential is a very Mormon thing to do – and KJV Onlyists in this regard are very Mormon.
3) KJV Onlyism reinforces Mormon Article of Faith Eight dogma. Joseph Smith’s Article Eight of the canonized Articles of Faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is as follows:
We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.[5]
Taken at face value, I agree with the first part of Article Eight – the Bible is the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. However, what Joseph Smith’s words actually say and how they’re understood and applied by Mormons are often two different things. As Robert N. Hullinger observed in his award winning book, “Mormon Answer to Skepticism: Why Joseph Smith Wrote the Book of Mormon”, Joseph Smith’s real agenda from the beginning was to undermine the absolute authority of the Bible and replace it with his own:
“In defense of God, Joseph Smith assailed the natural revelation of deism, which excluded the supernatural, and the static revelation of traditional Christianity contained in a closed canon. But to enable revealed religion to overcome natural religion, Smith supported the deistic attack on the Bible’s being complete and errorless. Rejection of the traditional view left him free to pursue special revelation specific to his own cause.”[6]
Article eight reflects this subtle deviation and Mormon orthopraxy confirms it. So while KJV Onlyists may feel like they’ve had a major break through when they see their Mormon friends smiling and nodding in agreement at their attacks on non-King James translations of the Bible, they’re really just helping to dig the grave that those very same Latter-day Saint will later throw both them and the Bible (including their KJV Bible) into down the road.
The Codex Sinaiticus was handwritten well over 1600 years ago. This manuscript contains the entire Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament.
4) KJV Onlyism takes the focus off source manuscripts – and in Mormon Studies source manuscripts are a critical issue. Whenever we’re talking about translated text the source manuscripts are vitally important. In the case of the Bible they’re important for the all reasons outlined above. In the case of the Book of Mormon they’re important because: a) Not only do we not have the original autographs (that is, the Golden Plates) we have no evidence that they existed at all, and; b) In the case of the extant Book of Mormon manuscripts we have exactly the same type of text variants that Latter-day Saints use to create doubt about the integrity of the Bible.[7] In the case of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible (which we’ll discuss later) there is no manuscript support for his revisions to the KJV text. Further, in the case of the Book of Moses, we have no manuscripts to support Joseph Smith’s “translation” – period. Finally, in the case of the Book of Abraham the autograph manuscripts actually discredit Joseph Smith’s “translation”. When it comes to Mormon Studies, manuscripts are a constant topic of conversation – it never seems to end.
Taking the focus off of the source manuscripts puts the Bible, which has strong manuscript support, on the same level as Mormon scripture which doesn’t.
5) KJV Onlyism eliminates a powerful tool: The appeal to better translations. By today’s standards the King James bible is a good translation but not a great one.The King James bible translators didn’t have benefit of the earliest manuscripts nor did they have the overwhelming volume of source manuscripts that we have today.[8] Further, the Textus Receptus Greek manuscript that they used was rife with problems. Many examples could be cited here but I’ll just point to one that’s rather telling:
Perhaps the most ironic part of the pro-TR-KJV [Textus Receptus-King James Verse] position is their use of Revelation 22:18-19:
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
The point usually made in connection with these verses is that it is a very serious thing for a manuscript to have even one word added, missing, or altered from what God originally inspired. However, the phrase “book of life” in verse 19 is found in no Greek manuscript. Every Greek manuscript has “tree of life.” The phrase “book of life” appears to be an uninspired change imported by Erasmus from the Roman Catholic Latin Vulgate.[9]
From a Mormon Studies perspective, since the King James is the only officially endorsed version of the Bible it’s membership may benefit from it’s strengths but it also gets dragged down by it’s weaknesses. Without the ability to appeal to better, alternate translations of the original languages and manuscripts it’s hard to overcome this.
Consider, for example, how Mormons use the King James mistranslation of the Hebrew words for “copper” or “bronze” (nechushah or nechosheth, see 2 Samuel 22:35, Job 20:24, Psalm 18:34, Jeremiah 15:12) to justify the anachronistic usage of steel in the Book of Mormon (see 1 Nephi 16:18, 1 Nephi 4:9, 2 Nephi 5:15, Ether 7:9, Jarom 1:8). If you hold to the stance that the translation of the KJV Bible was divinely inspired then translations of the Hebrew words as “copper” or “bronze” in modern translations are actually corruptions – right? However, the exact opposite is true – making the KJV Onlyist stance for KJV “steel” just as fallacious as the Mormon Apologist rationalization for steel in the Book of Mormon is.
6) The archaic English of the King James Bible can be hard to understand and lead to misinterpretation. Has this article left you astonied? Do you suffer from blains? Are you afraid of cockatrices? Do you do a lot of downsitting? How do you feel about evilfavouredness? Can you help me with a little furbishing? Does all this Jacobean English leave you vexed? If so, you’re not alone, most of us find this archaic 17th century dialect confusing. KJV Bible aside, do your remember your first Shakespeare read? How many trips to the glossary or annotations did that “adventure” take? Well, that too is Jacobean English – I rest my case.
All languages change and fragment over time, this is nothing new. As Theologian and educator D.A. Carson explains:
Clearly, what is reverent and respectful to one group is stuffy and artificial to another; what is irreverent and disrespectful to one group is a sign of personal relationship and boldness of access to another.
In the first century, books written for the literati were still written in Attic Greek [aka, “Ancient Greek” the posh, formal, scholarly dialect of the time]. Is there something to be learned from the fact that the New Testament documents were written by men who, moved by the Holy Spirit, chose rather the colloquial Hellenistic Greek?
Moreover, there is a decreasing number of people today who can read Elizabethan English and readily understand it. The person brought up on the KJV knows that “deny” in Matthew 26:34 really means “disown”; that “Suffer little children …” really means to permit them to come; that “prevent” in I Thessalonians 4:15 really means “precede.” But not many others do.[10]
Further, the use of archaic language can also lead to gross misinterpretation:
Genesis 1 in a 1611 KJV Bible. (click to zoom)
Another problem we need to be aware of in using the King James Version is that the English language has changed. For example, what does the following verse mean?
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.'” – Genesis 1:28
The word I’m focusing on is “replenish”. We understand this word to mean to replace, or fill, or build up again. In other words, if we replenish the water in a bucket, we are replacing water that used to be there but no longer is.
This makes this verse seem to be saying that the earth was once populated, and Adam & Eve are to fill the earth with people again.
However, at the time the King James Version was translated, the word “replenish” meant to “fill to capacity.” It did not mean to refill. So it had a totally different meaning. Thus in Genesis 1:28 God is telling Adam & Eve to fill the earth to its capacity.[11]
In this author’s opinion that any English Bible that requires a glossary of English words in order to be properly understood by common, modern, native English speakers is best approached with caution.
7) KJV Onlyism reinforces Mormon Great Apostasy dogma. Most Mormons think, and the LdS Church teaches, that all Christian churches other than theirs are nothing but a big ball of confusion. Watching Christians do their “in house” debating over non-essentials on Mormon discussion boards is what some (but thankfully not all) Mormons live for. I’m an administrator on several Mormon themed discussion boards and I have seen more than one Mormon deliberately bait the King James Onlyists to get them arguing with those who don’t hold to that stance (or vice versa) simply so they can sit back and watch the Christian fur flying and get the heat off of the errors of Mormonism. They love it because the spatting, hair pulling, caterwauling cat fight the Christians are having in front of a worldwide audience is something that they can point to and (incorrectly) say, “See what I mean? Mormons never bicker like this! We have a living prophet to guide us! We have unity, peace, and serenity in our church! We don’t bicker over silly little things like Bible translations – our leaders have settled the matter for us. We’re homogenized and boring – and we love it that way!”
Yes, this is really how most Mormons see us!
Overall Theologian and Apologist James White summed things up well when he said:
The KJV Only controversy is, in reality, a non-issue when compared with the serious challenges that face the Christian Church today. That so much time and effort has to be put into debunking the wild allegations of such individuals as Gail Riplinger [a writer and speaker known for her support of the King James Only movement] is more of an indication of how easily American Christianity is distracted from its true purpose than anything else.[12]
The Stronger Arguments:
As stated repeatedly in this series, strong arguments against Mormonism are always rooted and grounded firmly in the essentials of the Christian faith. Arguing over a non-essential like which Bible translation that all Christians should be using isn’t even an argument, it’s at the very least a pointless distraction and at the very most it’s a public embarrassment. That said, here are some basic guidelines and suggestions for when you’re discussing those essentials of the faith with Mormons:
When engaging Mormons use the King James Bible but don’t be limited by it:
The KJV Bible is the only translation of the Bible that Latter-day Saint are authorized to use. As explained in the 2010 Church Handbook of Instruction:
English-speaking members should use the Latter-day Saint edition of the King James Version of the Bible. This edition includes the Topical Guide; footnotes; excerpts from the Joseph Smith Translation; cross-references to other passages in the Bible and to the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price; and other study aids. Although other versions of the Bible may be easier to read, in doctrinal matters, latter-day revelation supports the King James Version in preference to other English translations.[13]
This is further explained in a 1987 Ensign magazine article:
When the Church was organized in 1830, the King James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version, was the translation predominantly used in the English-speaking world. Latter-day Saints relied on it in their meetings, and the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price were written in a style of language similar to that in the KJV.
Joseph Smith also used an 1828 edition of the KJV to prepare an inspired version of the Bible. President J. Reuben Clark lists the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) as one reason the Church uses the KJV:
“For our Church membership, the Authorized Version is to be followed in preference to others because the Inspired Version by the Prophet Joseph Smith [that is, The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible] agrees with the Authorized Version in those essential particulars where other versions vary.” (Why the King James Version? Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1956, pp. 60–61.)[14]
2 Thessalonians from a 1611 KJV Bible. Can you read this? (click to zoom)
So if you want to be heard by Latter-day Saints you must at least start with the King James Bible. However, as the same Ensign article explains:
Is there any value then for the Latter-day Saint in using modern English translations? Although the Church prefers to continue with the KJV for its English-speaking members, we should not assume that the many other translations are not useful. They oftentimes explain passages that are difficult to understand. In cases of confusing phrases and archaic words, readers can quickly compare the verses with those in other translations. In addition, comparing many different translations will often expand one’s understanding of a particular verse.[15]
So even the LdS Church recognizes the limitations of the KJV and supports considering alternate English translations of the Biblical text. If one is unencumbered by KJV Onlyism this can be a powerful tool in leading Mormons to the true meaning of the biblical text that they or their church have abused or twisted. That’s the good news! Now for the bad news, The Church Handbook of Instructions also states:
The most reliable way to measure the accuracy of any biblical translation is not by comparing different text, but by comparison with the Book of Mormon and modern-day revelations.[16]
So, the question is, “How do you overcome that?” The answer can be found in the next section.
Better yet, when engaging Mormons use the Joseph Smith Translation (aka “Inspired Version”): You may have noticed the passing references to the Joseph Smith Translation (also known as “The Inspired Version”) in the LdS Church sources above. As Mormon Researchers Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson explain:
The LDS Church officially sanctions the King James Version Bible, although church manuals and publications have been increasingly giving more attention to Joseph Smith’s Inspired Version, it “translation” of the Bible he claimed to have “finished” in 1833 (History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–day Saints Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1973, 1:368: Deseret News 1999-2000 Church Almanac [Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1981, 483). In the June 1999 edition of the LDS magazine Ensign, Andrew Skinner, department chair of ancient scripture at BYU, apparently agreed with its importance: “In the words of Elder Bruce R. McConkie (1915-85) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, ‘The Joseph Smith Translation, or Inspired Version, is a thousand times over the best Bible now existing on earth.”‘ Skinner went on to say, “The JST is a special gift given of the Lord. It is one of the great evidences of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s divine calling.” Despite such accolades, the LDS Church does not give away copies of the Joseph Smith Translation.[17]
And as LdS Church manuals explain, the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) is considered to be more accurate than the KJV since it was “translated”[18] under the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit:
While translating the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith learned that over the years many “plain and most precious” parts of the Bible had been taken away or lost (see 1 Nephi 13:26). The Bible is a sacred book that contains the word of God, but mistakes were made as it was copied and translated into different languages. Words were left out, changed, or added, changing the meaning of some of the scriptures. During the apostasy following Jesus Christ’s death, there were no prophets or apostles to make sure the scriptures were copied and translated correctly. Joseph Smith was instructed to prepare a new translation of the Bible that would restore and correct these plain and precious parts…
Detail of Joseph Smith Translation Old Testament Manuscript 1, page 19, lines 40–50. The dictated text is in the handwriting of Sidney Rigdon. The subsequent corrections are in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery. (click to zoom)
In 1830 Joseph Smith began working on a correct translation of the Bible. Sidney Rigdon was his scribe. In preparing this translation of the Bible, Joseph was not translating from an ancient language, as he did with the Book of Mormon, but was restoring the Bible to its original meaning. As Joseph studied and pondered the Bible, he was inspired through the power of the Holy Ghost to correct errors in it.
As Joseph Smith worked on his inspired translation of the Bible, his knowledge of the gospel grew, and he was blessed by the Holy Ghost. Many revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants are answers to questions about statements in the Bible that Joseph did not understand.[19]
Therefore, when dialoguing with Latter-day Saints it’s actually better to cite from the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible than the King James because it takes the Articles of Faith, Article 8 “as far as it is translated correctly” weapon out of the Mormon’s hand – the Latter-day Saint presumption is that the Joseph Smith Translation is translated correctly and no other Bible is.
I would also point out to my fellow Evangelicals that Joseph Smith left about 90% of the original KJV text that he was working from intact. For the remaining 10% that he corrupted I simply switch back to the KJV and use it instead.[20] So while it’s a bit more work to use the JST, I certainly don’t hear the “that’s not translated correctly!” objection as much as I did back when I was exclusively using the KJV with Mormons.
Oh, and by the way, you can get a copy of the Joseph Smith Translation/Inspired Version right here, right now for free:
Full text of the 1867 edition, from archive.org (downloadable edition, from BYU – Harold B. Lee Collection archives)
Full text of the 1867 edition, from archive.org (downloadable edition, from Trinity College – University of Toronto archives)
Even better yet, take them all the way them back to the Biblical manuscripts:
Charles Larson, in his 2009 ExMormon Foundation address, told the story of how he overcame one Mormon’s Article Eight bias by taking him directly to the source manuscripts and then comparing them to the KJV, the JST, and several modern English translations. The Mormon could see for himself that Article 8 was nonsense – the English Bibles, old and new, were translated correctly relative to their sources. However, in the case of the JST, he saw that Article Eight was true – there was a huge disconnect between the manuscripts and Smith’s “translation.” Thus, it became readily apparent from the body of evidence who was telling the truth and who wasn’t. So I thought I would try it, and sure enough, it works.
This is actually easier that you might think, just use an Interlinear. I prefer this one since it also includes the English transliteration of the original language:
This final approach is a lot of heavy lifting so I use it sparingly – typically only for the really hard cases. However, it works really well. Of course, all too often when painted into this corner many Mormons will play the, “well Article 8 actually means that the Bible wasn’t transmitted correctly!” and start quoting Bart Ehrman in a, “Bart said it! I believe it! That settles it!” fashion in a last ditch effort in order to find an escape hatch – but that’s yet another article (and a long a complex one to boot) for another day.[21]
Summary and Conclusion: The KJV Only stance opens up can of worms, after can of worms, after can of worms. In the end, and after the body of evidence has been examined, KJV Only truth claims don’t hold up to scrutiny any better than Mormon truth claims do. Both belief systems are ultimately irrational and feeling, not fact, based.
So I suppose it should come as no surprise that I have heard more than one Atheist ExMormon state it was extreme “escape from reason” type stances like King James Onlyism on the Christian side of the divide that convinced them that there was no difference between it and Mormonism. In their words, they’re both just two sides to the same fanatical coin. And, frankly, if Mormonism and King Onlyism were the only two things that I’d ever known I might be inclined to agree! In fact, and to open the kimono a bit here, it was the legalistic “escape from reason” Christianity that I experienced as a child that caused me to go atheist in my younger days.
Thankfully, the infinite, personal God revealed in the Bible is bigger than that. The God that I worship delights in His children’s ability to think, reason, question, seek and grow. This is the God who in response to a skeptic’s, “Unless I see the wounds from the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the wounds from the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will never believe it!” bares those wounds and says, “Put your finger here, and examine my hands. Extend your hand and put it into my side. Do not continue in your unbelief, but believe.” (see John 20:24-29, NET Bible). This is the God who says, “Come now, let us reason together.” (Isaiah 1:18, KJV) not “Shut up, believe and obey!” The God that I worship doesn’t require new believers to get lobotomies immediately following their baptism. Rather, through the Apostle Paul, He instructs us to, “Test all things; hold fast what is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21, NKJV)
The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio.
In my opinion, at the core of both the Mormon “follow the prophet” and King James Only dogmas is a self deceptive denial that the world isn’t as simple, easy, or straightforward as we would like it to be. Thus the deniers try to turn this incredibly complex, often overwhelming life passage into something it’s not: A simplistic melodrama in which everyone is either the faultless and righteous Eliza or the purely evil Simon Legree. A world in which the ne’er do wrong good guys always wear white hats and never miss when they shoot. And, of course, the ne’er do right scheming bad guys in the black hats are out to get ’em one way or another! The orderly world of the deniers is one in which, unless the black hats get in their way, there’s a place for everything and everything is in it’s place.
Rather, we live in a messy, fallen, broken world in which the Biblical New Testament autographa was preserved by massive, unsupervised, dissemination by all God’s people – commoner, priest, and king – who, with the best of intentions and motives; and with as much skill as they could muster, still managed to create a massive jigsaw puzzle for those who followed in their wake to reassemble. It’s both a blessing and a curse that there are multiple pieces for any given part of the original picture on the box – which oh by the way is long gone. But the good news is that we have so many pieces and clues between pieces that we can reconstruct the original picture with a high degree of certainty – thank God for that! Oh, and, by the way, we’re still finding new pieces so the reconstruction of the original just keeps getting better and better and better.[22]
In the end, the best we can do is produce the best translations from what we’ve got. And, according to the original 1611 preface that was all the was the only thing the King James Bible translators claimed to do – and nothing more (click here for text, here for photographs, and here for a good summation by a seminarian).
Further, no so-called prophet can sort all this messy complexity out it by simply uttering a “Thus saith the Lord!” waving his hand and then offering up some contrived clarifying set of revelations, divine inspired interpretations, or even a new Bible. The history of Christian cults shows the utter failure of such a proposition. Rather, the sloppy business of daily dependence on God continues for us all until our pilgrimage ends. We must daily love and trust Him heart, mind, soul and strength if we are to live and finish well – and that’s just as God intended isn’t it? At least that’s what the Bible says. (see Matthew 22:35-40 in any translation)
Now that’s not simple and it’s certainly not easy but it’s what we’ve got – it’s reality, and we should be grateful for it. And when it comes to God’s Word I think that John Ankerberg and John Weldon expressed it well when they said:
Both KJO [King James Only] promoters and those who use modern translations have been more than blessed by God as far as His Word is concerned. They are privileged to have the Word of God more complete than the vast majority of God’s people throughout history.
Abraham and his family did not have the Word of God at all. Moses and the early Israelites had only the first few books of the Bible (the Pentateuch). King David had less than half the Old Testament. Even the apostle Paul had only the Old Testament. Early Christians to the fourth century had only the relatively few copies that were made and circulated in their particular locale. Christians from the fourth through sixteenth centuries had to be content with those few versions that existed prior to the King James—which were usually not even produced in their own language. Christians from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries had only the King James Version and a few others. And, until the use of the printing press became widespread the vast majority of believers couldn’t even own a Bible. Copies were simply too expensive—even if they were available. Christians had to rely upon what was heard at church services.
By comparison, Christians of today are immeasurably richer—not only to have the King James translation, but to also have reliable modern versions. All believers should give thanks for the great wealth they do have rather than bickering over relatively minor differences among translations.
If you are a Christian who uses the King James Version—if you understand what you read and are comfortable with it—then by all means continue to use it. If you are a Christian who uses a good modern translation, you should also feel free to continue to use it. Don’t be deterred or intimidated by those who would tell you that you do not have the true Word of God in your hands.[23]
A final note:
Finally, and in closing, I encourage every reader to learn the history of the English Bible. That said, and to that end, I can’t recommend the following series of lectures from Dr. Daniel B. Wallace highly enough, it is superb:
And for those who interesting in hearing both sides of the of the KJV Only issue I recommend the following debate:
NOTES [1] It’s outside the scope of this article to articulate and deal with all the problems of The King James Only Movement. Suffice to say, the problems are immense and deep as I found out as I researched this article. For a good overview I would refer the reader to the Wikipedia article (click here) on the movement – which contains links should the reader wish to take a “deeper dive” into the controversy. Dr. Daniel Wallace’s article, “Why I Do Not Think the King James Bible Is the Best Translation Available Today” is also an excellent primer as is the GotQuestions? article on the subject, “What is the KJV Only movement?”
For those looking for even greater depth, I would recommend the following books: John Ankerberg; John Weldon, “Facts on King James Only Debate” Short (54-pages), concise, and direct – an excellent primer.
Finally, I would refer the reader to the Preface of the 1611 edition of the King James Version – go directly to the source.
(click here for text, here for photographs, and here for a good summation by a seminarian).
In the 1611 KJV preface the translators explicitly state that they don’t consider their translation perfect, just an incremental improvement over past translations. They also state that a translation can never be infallible since it’s not exactly like the original manuscripts. They even state that they fully expect better translations to follow theirs since this had been the pattern in English Bible translation since the Reformation. In other words, the KJV translators considered their work to merely be a link in a long chain of good translations, not the final end-all, be-all translation that the KJV Only Movement claims that it is.
[2] As Michael J. Kruger of The Gospel Coalition notes:
“Historically, Christian affirmations of biblical authority are often expressly restricted to the “autographs.” And there are obvious reasons for this view. Biblical authority does not apply to whatever a later scribe might happen to write down—it applies to what the biblical authors actually wrote.
But does the lack of autographs mean such affirmations of biblical authority are meaningless? No, because the authority does not reside in a physical object, but in the original text. And the original text has been preserved in another way, namely through the multiplicity of manuscripts.” (Michael J. Kruger, “The Difference Between Original Autographs and Original Text”)
[7] Royal Skousen is the leading expert on on the extant Book of Mormon manuscripts. In regard to Mr. Skousen’s work on the text variants between the original BoM manuscripts and the published 1830 Book of Mormon, the fly leaf of his book, “The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text” summarizes nicely:
Over the past twenty-one years, editor Royal Skousen has pored over Joseph Smith’s original manuscripts and identified more than 2,000 textual errors in the 1830 edition. Although most of these discrepancies stem from inadvertent errors in copying and typesetting the text, the Yale edition contains about 600 corrections that have never appeared in any standard edition of the Book of Mormon, and about 250 of them affect the text’s meaning.
In other words, the Book of Mormon has exactly the same kind of manuscript text variants that source Biblical manuscripts do – the same variants that Mormons point to regarding our so-called “compromised” Bible. And proportionally there are more of them relative to the size and scope of the manuscript record.
[8] The KJV New Testament was translated from Desiderius Erasmus‘ Textus Receptus which was the best Greek manuscript reconstruction available at the time. To compare and contrast, Desiderius Erasmus but had only six Greek manuscripts to work from and they all dated from the 12th Century or later – over 1,000 years after the autographs were authored. Erasmus also lacked a complete copy of the book of Revelation and was forced to translate the last six verses back into Greek from the Latin Vulgate. Further, Erasmus adjusted the text in many places to correspond with readings found in the Vulgate rather than adhering tightly to his source Greek manuscripts.
By comparison, today translators have over 5,800 Greek manuscripts to work from ranging from fragments to complete editions of the New Testament. And the oldest manuscripts date back to the 2nd Century.
[9] Op Cit, Robert C. Newman; Douglas S. Chinn. (Kindle Locations 414-422)
[18] The word “translation” is a misnomer since Smith was “translating” from the same language (English to English) rather than from one language to another. Further, in many cases new words were inserted into the text of the Bible based on no source manuscript support at all. As Rob Bowman of the Institute for Religious Research notes:
If there was a “problem” with the New Testament of Joseph’s day it was that it had just a bit more material than was original to those New Testament books. (Scribes almost never deleted anything from the manuscripts they copied, but they sometimes added words or phrases, often in the margins as explanations that later scribes copied as if they were part of the book.) The additional material is insignificant except in two places: the ending of Mark (16:9-20) and the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). The consensus of New Testament scholars is that these two passages of a dozen verses each were later additions to the Gospels. And here is something worth noting: in his revisions to the Bible, Joseph did not indicate that either of these two passages should be omitted. In fact, Joseph added some words to the passage about the adulterous woman (in John 8:6).
The LDS view of the “corruption” of the text of the Bible, then, has things exactly backwards. The original text of the books of the Bible has survived with no significant omissions. “Many plain and precious things” were not lost. Instead, scribes added words here or there, and in a couple of places short passages, that were not part of the original text. Joseph Smith’s revision to the Bible consists almost entirely of additions, several of them lengthy, that we can say with reasonable certainty were not part of the original books of the Bible. Furthermore, Joseph failed to identify those two major additions to the New Testament that did not belong.
(Rob Bowman, “The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible”)
[20]This Kindle title makes the process of picking Joseph Smith’s revisions easy by bolding Smith’s additions and including but showing the removals as strike-throughed text: Kenneth and Lyndell Lutes, “Joseph Smith Translation” [Kindle Edition] The authors have also included the original KJV chapter and verses numbers – which is a big help when cross referencing against the KJV.
Those interested in a good, even toned critique of Bart Ehrman and methodologies should consider this article from one of Ehrman’s most well known and long standing colleagues: Ben Witherington, “Misanalyzing Text Criticism–Bart Ehrman’s ‘Misquoting Jesus'”
[22] As James White articulated so well on this point:
“When we see how God lead His people to recognize the canon of Scripture, the listing of the books that were inspired over against those books that were not, we note that He did not therein engage in any celestial fireworks. No angels showed up with golden tablets marked, ‘Divine Index’. Instead, God worked with His people over time, leading them to recognize what He had already done through the act of inspiration. Some might wish that it had happened faster, and some might wish for a more spectacular process, but God did it in His way, in His time.
The same is true regarding the protection and preservation of the biblical text. One might well see tremendous divine wisdom in the way God worked over the years. By having the text of the New Testament in particular explode across the known world, ending up in the far-flung corners of the Roman Empire in relatively short order, God protected that text from one thing we, centuries and millennia later, could never detect: wholesale change of doctrine or theology by one particular man or group who had full control over the text at any one point in its history.
You see, because the New Testament books were written at various times and were quickly copied and distributed as soon as they were written, thre was never a time when anyone or any group could gather up all the manuscripts and make extensive changes in the text itself, like cutting out Christ’s deity or inserting some foreign doctrine or concept. Neither could someone gather up the texts and try to make them say the same thing by harmonizing them. If someone had indeed done this, we could never be certain what the apostles had actually written, or what the truth actually is.”
(James R. White, “The King James Only Controversy”, pp.77-78)
About the Author
Beggar's Bread 