Years ago, I taught a small Sunday School class. There were four of us. We were going through books of the Bible, and each of us had a different Bible version: A King James, a New King James, a New Living Translation, and a New American Standard. One of us referred to his translation as "The One True Bible." Which one was that?
The last couple of weeks I dealt with issues relating to Theology Proper (the Doctrine of God), and am moving into Bibliology (want to guess what that means?). There are controversies dealing with the Bible, and most of them deal with questioning the authority of Scripture, such as inerrancy. To be honest, I believe these show a desire to follow the word of fallible men than the infallible God. Thus, since I'm focusing on disputes between those who have a strong Bibliology, I won't be dealing with those areas.
Another set of disagreements fall into hermeneutics (i.e. Biblical interpretation). I thought of focusing on it here and decided not to; there are debates that are rooted in hermeneutics, and I'll deal with some of those later.
This leaves one area of division, and that is Bible translations and versions. And for the most part, in spite of the staggering number of English versions, there isn't a lot of division there. Except for those who believe there's one true Bible. By the way, I'm not talking about my classmate who used that term to describe his NASB! No, the version that has that claim is the King James - many KJV Onlies don't accept the New King James.
Let's start with an important fact, and that's the texts we have. In looking at ancient manuscripts, two things looked at are the number of texts and the time between the writing of the work and its oldest existing manuscript. The New Testament is the strongest in both categories. Now, hold on to that thought for a minute.
History time. When Erasmus did his manuscript around 1500 AD, shortly after the printing press came out, he used half a dozen complete manuscripts (technically, a fragment can be counted as a manuscript, up to the complete work). The Textus Receptus' had about 10. Now, we have thousands - last I knew, it was 4500.In the 1800s, they discovered a pair of complete texts dating to the 300's. That sounds like a long time, but that is not at all long for ancient manuscripts.
Of course, with handwritten copies, variations of the texts are given. And there were differences between the manuscripts Erasmus and the Textus Receptus used and the 300 year ones found later. So should we go with the texts that were most common, or the ones closest to the originals?
There are two main reasons for those believing the King James is the one true Bible. No, let me rephrase it. One reason is because the believe the TR text better represents the original manuscripts than translations based on the older texts. The other reason is really an excuse - it's simply tradition. (By the way, the Geneva Bible is an English translation predating the KJV, and there were others as well).
At this point, let me mention two different types of translations - I'm not counting paraphrases, which is putting the text in one's own words and doesn't need any Greek texts as you would for a translation. Those two forms are formal (word for word) equivalent and dynamic (thought for thought). One way you can tell which one you're using is look at Luke 9:44a -
- "Let these words sink down into your ears..." NKJV
- "Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you..." NIV
You'll notice that there is no difference in meaning, but we are more apt to talk like the Dynamic Equivalent NIV than the Formal Equivalent NKJV.
Let's go back to my Sunday School class. The person reading the KJV would struggle reading it. Well, he was excited when his wife bought him a NIV for Christmas, which he was able to read easier. But three weeks later, he was back to his KJV. Why? Because he could follow when I read from the NKJV or the other guy read from "the One True Bible" aka NASB. Those all were formal equivalents.
This blog is long enough, so let me focus on two arguments for the KJV Only view. One is that all translations since the KJV are copywritten, and thus that shows profit motive. Well, no. Another reason for copyrights is to make sure someone doesn't release a version without changing words and meanings. And when I look at the NKJV and the NIV, I see the copyright item allows churches to use it with certain reasonable considerations without charging anything.
The other is the complaint that the Greek texts used for the NASB, NIV, and most other translations take Christ's blood out in Colossians 1:14. Really? True, some translations don't have the blood in Colossians but do in the parallel passage Ephesians 1:7. I learned that when there are parallel passages, the different alternative is preferred. After all, we're more apt to make the two passages match than to make them different.
I will close with this observation. I've mentioned that the dates and the number of manuscripts set the Bible apart from all other ancient writings. Another is the amount of agreement. No major doctrine and no minor doctrine is affected by the textual variations. It might affect the meaning of a verse, but when you look at the whole of Scripture, you'll see that they fit together.
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