Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 402

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Hope everyone's having a wonderful day, a wonderful week so

00:00:15.020 far. Today we are going to discuss KJV-onlyism. Now, maybe you don't know what the heck I'm

00:00:24.400 talking about. Maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe you were raised in this

00:00:30.560 world. Maybe you are a believer in KJV-onlyism right now. Maybe you know it. Maybe you don't.

00:00:37.620 But I've gotten a lot of questions about this subject. When I posted about it very briefly

00:00:42.080 on Instagram a while ago, I got a ton of you asking me, can you please do an episode on this?

00:00:46.280 So I am. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I still think this is going to be beneficial

00:00:50.460 for you because you may run into people who believe this and you should know kind of what

00:00:57.400 they're talking about and you should be able to rebut it. And that's what we're going to do today.

00:01:03.760 But I do want to give a fair assessment of what it is. And I want to give, I want to fairly lay out

00:01:10.500 some of the arguments and also talk about the fact that there's a spectrum of KJV-onlyism.

00:01:16.320 I can't put everyone into the most extreme camp. But basically, KJV-onlyism is the belief that the

00:01:24.840 KJV, the King James Version, is the only correct translation of the Bible. It's the only trustworthy

00:01:32.020 translation. All the other translations have been watered down in order to gain cultural relevance,

00:01:37.960 but the KJV is the only inspired translation, the argument goes, that everyone should be reading.

00:01:45.860 I have run in to many people who believe this, whether it's on Instagram or whatever. This has

00:01:52.200 been a long debate, by the way. This is not like a new thing that's cropping up. This is something

00:01:57.320 that has been argued, has been defended by certain people within Christianity, in particular evangelicalism

00:02:03.780 for a long time. And there are just new generations of people that latch on to it, it seems.

00:02:09.820 If you don't know, like I said, KJV stands for King James Version. It may also be referred

00:02:16.200 to as AV or Authorized Version. It's most commonly thought of as the Old English Translation of

00:02:23.620 the Bible. So if you've got like an old family Bible, typically it's in this King James Version.

00:02:29.880 So let me read you a verse from the KJV so you know what I'm talking about if you don't already.

00:02:35.960 So Galatians 3.1, that's just a random verse that I decided to pick.

00:02:40.080 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth before whose eyes

00:02:46.520 Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you. I feel like I have to say it

00:02:52.600 with flourish in an English accent. Now, if you're listening to this, say you're not a Christian or

00:02:58.520 you're a new Christian who was not raised in the church or you were raised in a particular

00:03:03.680 denomination, maybe more like a fundamentalist Baptist church who uses this translation, you

00:03:10.220 might think that this is the only translation that exists. Like it might be news to you that

00:03:14.960 not every biblical translation has these kinds of words and this kind of language in it. Maybe

00:03:21.460 you think this is just how the Bible sounds. But there are many other translations too. There

00:03:26.500 are more modern translations. So there's a version called the New King James Version,

00:03:32.340 the NKJV, which is similar, but more modern. So that would read like this in Galatians 3.1,

00:03:40.220 O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes

00:03:45.720 Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified. So still kind of wordy or wordier than

00:03:52.020 we're used to, but there's no halfs or yees or shalls or things like that. And then you've got

00:03:58.980 an even more, I would say, readable colloquial translation, which is the ESV. This is the version

00:04:06.600 that I prefer, the English standard version. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

00:04:13.300 It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. So even less wordy,

00:04:20.420 easier to read, easier to read, easier to understand. And then there's another popular

00:04:26.060 translation called the NIV or the New International Version. You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched

00:04:32.820 you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. So even less wordy,

00:04:39.260 a little different word used from publicly to clearly. We're going to talk about at the end of this,

00:04:43.940 the difference in translations, why I prefer the ESV, why I recommend certain translations over

00:04:51.280 others. And so we'll talk a little bit more about the differentiations between those versions

00:04:56.220 at the end of this episode. But in going back to this KJV-onlyism belief system, the KJV is the old

00:05:05.300 English translation that was commissioned by King James I and was published in 1611.

00:05:12.420 There are people who read it for a few reasons, who don't necessarily fall into this category of

00:05:17.800 being, you know, of thinking that KJV is the only inspired version. So you might read KJV just

00:05:24.620 because you genuinely like it, like you think this version is the best version. It's what you're used

00:05:30.260 to. You appreciate its style. Or you could fall into the second category, or I guess you could fall

00:05:36.580 into both. You believe it to be superior to other translations because, not just because you like it,

00:05:42.340 but because of the scholarship that's associated with it, with its translation. Or you could be in

00:05:48.720 this third category, which is what we're focusing on today, which I would say is the most extreme

00:05:53.340 category, that you believe that it is the only truly inspired text, English text, and that all other

00:06:01.180 translations are unreliable. They're uninspired and even sinful. And it's this third category that is

00:06:09.940 most commonly referred to as King James onlyism. And again, if you haven't heard of this, you might

00:06:14.100 be thinking, there's no one who believes that. Yes, there are. I guarantee you there are people who

00:06:18.580 are listening to or watching this podcast episode who believe that and are going to be very upset about

00:06:26.300 this episode. Because if you talk to a lot of people who fall into that third category, it is

00:06:31.480 a belief system in itself. It's almost like another part of—it's almost like another religion.

00:06:40.200 Trevin Wax wrote about this issue for the Gospel Coalition back in 2007, and you're thinking,

00:06:45.020 wow, that was a long time ago. People have been writing about this since at least the 1970s,

00:06:49.340 if not before that. Theologian James White has done, I think, at least recently, some of the most

00:06:56.320 extensive research on this issue. So we'll be drawing from them. We'll be drawing from D.A. Carson,

00:07:02.500 who wrote about this a long time ago and has been working in this realm for a long time. So

00:07:10.100 we'll be drawing a lot of insight from what they have already written. The reason that third camp that

00:07:18.180 we talked about believes that KJV is the only translation that is truly inspired is because of

00:07:25.420 a few reasons that they typically state. And again, this is from the work of some of the teachers

00:07:31.260 that I just mentioned a few minutes ago. Number one, the text from which KJV was translated versus

00:07:38.240 the text from which other translations were translated, which they claim is more authoritative.

00:07:46.200 So they claim that the text that the KJV originally used to translate into English were better. They're

00:07:54.620 more authoritative because they're more accurate. They're more reflective of the original text.

00:08:00.260 The second reason they typically give is that other translations water down Jesus's divinity in other

00:08:05.980 parts of the gospel. They even change the meaning of the gospel by leaving out important words and

00:08:11.820 phrases and mistranslating verses in a way that misses or manipulates their original intent. You'll often

00:08:18.780 see them use like a side-by-side comparison of the KJV versus another translation to try to say that,

00:08:26.800 look, every translation besides the KJV is leaving important stuff out and your understanding of the

00:08:33.920 gospel and of scripture is going to be lacking unless you're using the KJV. And then they also talk

00:08:39.080 about the third reason they give for being a KJV-only-ist is the untrustworthiness of the

00:08:45.480 linguistic scholars who have translated the other versions as opposed to the linguistic scholars

00:08:52.580 who translated the KJV, whom they see as more reliable. So true KJV-only-ers believe that the

00:08:58.980 Greek texts from which the creators of the KJV translated were and are not only the most reliable,

00:09:07.720 but also the only inspired texts. These texts are commonly referred to as the Textus Receptus,

00:09:16.460 which was a 1516 compilation of the Greek New Testament completed by Erasmus using what's called

00:09:24.040 the Byzantine texts. So KJV-only proponents believe these texts are more reliable than the texts used by

00:09:31.240 other translators, which are most commonly referred to as the Alexandrian texts. They say, again,

00:09:37.500 that other texts are corrupted. Other translations just don't get it right. They're not inspired.

00:09:43.640 They will point to different verses, like I said, that seem to show the serious discrepancies in

00:09:49.260 different translations that water down the meaning of the message. But the problem with these arguments

00:09:54.780 is manifold. The Byzantine texts on which the Textus Receptus Erasmus' compilation of the New

00:10:01.940 Testament in Greek is based, on which the KJV translation is based, are not actually the oldest

00:10:08.340 manuscripts. And they're not as close to the original manuscripts as the Alexandrian texts,

00:10:14.040 for example. So scholars have argued since the late 19th century that translations should actually

00:10:19.520 draw not just from the Byzantine texts and not just from the Alexandrian texts that we have,

00:10:25.180 which are commonly accepted by scholars as the oldest texts and the closest to the original,

00:10:30.880 those Alexandrian texts, but also from the Western and the Caesarian texts. James White says that

00:10:37.940 these are four categories of ancient texts, and they should be thought of as textual families,

00:10:46.560 which he says are groups of texts that all seem to come from the same source or scribal group.

00:10:52.300 So KJV-only believers argue that we should only rely on the Byzantine texts. But according to D.A.

00:10:58.660 Carson, all of them were any older than the 12th century, whereas the Alexandrian texts

00:11:07.240 traced back earlier than that. So KJV-only believers argue that we should only rely

00:11:13.140 on the Byzantine texts. But according to D.A. Carson, these Byzantine texts were only as old as

00:11:19.340 about the 12th century, whereas, as we've already stated, the Alexandrian texts actually traced back

00:11:24.460 earlier. James White says this. Cambridge scholars Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort

00:11:32.300 argued that we should use alternate manuscripts from the 4th and 5th century. Westcott and Hort

00:11:37.880 based this view on two primary arguments that are still used today by textual critics.

00:11:43.060 First, the Church Fathers never quote the Byzantine before AD 325. Carson writes that Church Fathers

00:11:51.180 before the 4th century unambiguously cited every text type except the Byzantine. He adds,

00:11:57.380 there is no unambiguous evidence that the Byzantine text type was known before the middle of the 4th

00:12:03.540 century. Likewise, White writes, the fathers who wrote during the early centuries give no evidence

00:12:09.940 in their citations of a familiarity with the Byzantine text type. Therefore, this textual family

00:12:15.680 is later than the other families. Second, the Byzantine text harmonizes verses from the

00:12:21.600 Alexandrian and Western text. Fee argues that the Alexandrian text is earliest because it contains

00:12:26.960 readings that are terse, somewhat rough, less harmonized, and generally more difficult than

00:12:31.380 those of the other text types, though on closer study they regularly commend themselves as original.

00:12:36.560 He adds, the Byzantine text contains some 38 major harmonizations as compared with one harmonization

00:12:43.480 in the Alexandrian text. Scribes rarely make the text more difficult to read. Instead,

00:12:48.380 they typically smooth out difficult readings. Therefore, this group is most likely earlier

00:12:53.880 than any other. So this is actually, part of this is a paraphrasing of what James White has written.

00:13:01.760 This is from someone else who is drawing from James White's work. So that observation alone

00:13:07.760 means that the Textus Receptus, based on these Byzantine documents, on which the KJV is based,

00:13:15.400 cannot be seen as the singularly most reliable translation, or arguably even the most reliable

00:13:26.480 translation. It doesn't mean it's not a good translation at all, but these facts dispute the

00:13:33.980 claim that it's inspired perfectly by God or that it's superior to all other translations. Some

00:13:40.540 people even think that God inspired Erasmus in that interpretation or in his translation,

00:13:47.980 and we just don't see evidence of that. Plus, James White also points to other reasons that we should

00:13:57.160 question this claim of KJV being the exclusively correct, only trustworthy translation. Number

00:14:04.020 one, Erasmus himself didn't believe the Textus Receptus was inerrant. Erasmus was quoted saying

00:14:10.920 this, you must distinguish between Scripture, the translation of Scripture, and the transmission of

00:14:15.960 both. What will you do with the errors of the copyists? And so he understood that he was a fallible

00:14:22.060 human being. Christians believe the only inerrant Word of God is the original text. However, because

00:14:30.540 we believe in God's sovereignty, and as we look at the preservation of manuscripts over time and we

00:14:36.200 study the process of how the Bible has been translated from the original text, we have very good reason to

00:14:41.940 believe that we have a Bible that has been translated extremely reliably. The truth is that textual

00:14:49.340 variants in the New Testament are extremely minor, representing only 1% of the text. There is a

00:14:56.840 biblical critic, Bart Ehrman, who writes this, to be sure, of all the hundreds of thousands of textual

00:15:03.220 changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, and of no

00:15:09.420 real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better

00:15:15.660 than the rest of us. Christian textual critics Daryl Bach and Daniel Wallace write,

00:15:20.120 we noted the kinds of errors that are to be found in the copies. The vast majority of them are quite

00:15:27.020 inconsequential, and less than 1% of all textual variants both affect the meaning of that verse,

00:15:33.240 though none affects core doctrine and have some plausibility of authenticity. Also, there's another

00:15:41.960 contention that is used to push back upon KJV-onlyers. The original KJV Bibles had 6,637 notes in the

00:15:52.060 margins explaining a more literal translation of the original Greek and Hebrew that couldn't be

00:15:57.600 readily observed, and their translation, which at the time was pretty common English. It was colloquial.

00:16:04.180 So that means that the original KJV translators did exactly what more modern translators have done.

00:16:10.420 They looked at the most reliable documents they had at the time and translated them in a way that

00:16:16.760 would make the most sense and be the most applicable and accessible to their readers.

00:16:21.780 Obviously, they were very careful. They cared about accuracy with that many footnotes. It's obvious that

00:16:27.780 they valued accuracy, but they also valued style. They valued accessibility. They valued making the Bible

00:16:34.700 digestible digestible to their reader. In the same way, later translators translated the Bible

00:16:40.920 in a way that makes sense with how language has evolved so that people could continue to access

00:16:48.420 the Bible. I actually had someone say to me in my Instagram DMs that if someone can't understand the

00:16:54.600 KJV, it's maybe because God didn't mean for them to understand and read it.

00:16:59.800 So hang on. If you have that mentality, are you honestly saying that only people who know

00:17:07.000 English should be reading the Bible, that we can't translate it into other languages or else

00:17:13.100 it's corrupted? And if that's your argument, why wouldn't you use the same arguments to say that

00:17:20.260 maybe God never meant for people who didn't understand the original Greek and Hebrew to read

00:17:25.480 the Bible, that maybe he never meant for English people to read the Bible? Why is it only the King

00:17:30.240 James Version that's the only translation someone must be able to read and understand to be considered

00:17:37.740 chosen by God? That is silly, superstitious nonsense that has no grounding in logic or truth. And so you

00:17:45.920 can kind of see, again, how this kind of cultish mentality actually affects people's faith and theology.

00:17:52.040 So the KJV was translated into an English that people living in the 17th century could understand.

00:18:00.980 And there was never any expressed intent, by the way, by these translators to say that this

00:18:08.520 translation is the only translation that people can use forever and ever, especially since they knew

00:18:13.920 as finite people, they could be prone to error. Erasmus's text may be imperfect, as Erasmus himself said,

00:18:21.660 and that they could only do the best that they could. Another reason the KJV exclusivity argument

00:18:28.340 doesn't hold up is that not all KJV Bibles are created equal. They differ from one another.

00:18:34.040 James White writes this in his book on the subject. Most people are not aware of the substantial use

00:18:39.580 of textual notes and alternate readings in the original 1611 KJV. Most modern editions do not contain

00:18:45.520 these items. Finally, we will note that not all King James Bibles today have the same text.

00:18:51.240 That is, printed editions of the KJV differ from one another, presenting additional difficulties for

00:18:56.820 the most radical proponents of a human translation's infallibility. He adds, the KJV carried by the average

00:19:03.860 KJV-only advocate today looks very different than the edition that came off Robert Barker's press

00:19:10.140 in 1611. So, if that's the case, if you believe that the KJV is the only inspired text or the only

00:19:18.000 inspired English translation, then is yours that you're carrying around today, the KJV Bible that

00:19:26.960 you have that I'm sure wasn't printed and published in 1611, like, is that just as inspired? Is that just

00:19:33.940 as incorruptible as the version that came out in 1611 if it differs? Like, who decides which version,

00:19:43.800 the version of KJV today or the version of KJV in the 17th century that is truly the most reliable

00:19:51.920 text? And so, you can kind of see the logical problems with that assertion. Another reason why

00:19:58.620 this doesn't hold up is that thousands of ancient Greek texts of Scripture have been discovered

00:20:02.680 since the KJV was translated and published in 1611, including in the Byzantine textual family

00:20:08.280 on which the Textus Receptus is based. In fact, D.A. Carson says this,

00:20:13.860 to keep a correct perspective, it is important to know that the TR, Textus Receptus, is not exactly

00:20:20.460 the same as the Byzantine tradition. The Byzantine text type is found in several thousand witnesses,

00:20:26.920 while the Textus Receptus did not refer to one hundredth of that evidence. So, KJV only is

00:20:36.000 or simultaneously saying that the Textus Receptus from Erasmus is the only reliable, you know,

00:20:44.400 reliable translation on which we should be translating the Bible into English or the New Testament into

00:20:49.700 English. And also, we have to rely on these Byzantine texts. But there are actually discrepancies

00:20:54.600 between this Textus Receptus and the Byzantine texts. Another point to make is that the message

00:21:00.860 is more important than the translation. The message is more important than the translation.

00:21:06.780 Now, I know some people are going to freak out about that, and I'll, you know, I'll get into more

00:21:11.840 of that when we talk about translations at the end. But what I mean is not that the accuracy of the

00:21:17.020 translation is not important, because it is. But there should be a scholarly balance that strives for

00:21:23.680 as accurate a rendering as possible of the original text with the clarity demanded by modern language

00:21:31.840 and modern understanding. That doesn't mean that we change the meaning of the text or we leave out

00:21:37.440 passages or we take out that which culture finds unpopular or inconvenient. It just means translating

00:21:44.420 it in a way that can be understood by people today.

00:21:58.180 Now, what about the arguments that say that modern translations remove the deity of Christ from the

00:22:05.200 Bible or the disputed text in which modern translations seem to leave out important words?

00:22:12.520 And when I say modern translations, I'm talking about like within the past, like 130 years

00:22:18.300 thereabouts. I'm not talking about like in the past few years, just newer than the KJV.

00:22:23.780 So there are a number of verses in which the KJV includes the word Lord before Jesus Christ,

00:22:28.720 where other translations don't. So KJV only us will say, oh, other translations are trying to take

00:22:33.940 out the deity of Christ. But here's the point to that. Here's what I would say to that.

00:22:39.280 It should be noted that there are places where the KJV does not mention Jesus's deity and other

00:22:46.300 translations do, or they make it not as clear. So if you look at John 1.18, the KJV says this,

00:22:52.940 No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father,

00:22:59.020 he hath declared him. The NASB, the New American Standard Bible, which was translated, I think,

00:23:05.560 at the beginning of the 20th century, right around the turn of the century, no one has seen God at

00:23:13.780 any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him. So KJV says

00:23:20.680 Son, NASB says God. Titus 2.13, the KJV says, Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of

00:23:28.580 the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Well, the ESV, the English Standard Version,

00:23:34.680 says this in Titus 2.13, Waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God

00:23:40.280 and Savior, Jesus Christ. So whereas the KJV seems to differentiate between our God and our Savior,

00:23:49.020 ESV doesn't. It says God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 2 Peter 1.1. KJV says, Simon Peter,

00:23:57.180 a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained precious faith with us through

00:24:04.600 the righteousness of God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. So there again, we see that differentiation,

00:24:10.100 which a translation, for example, like the New International Version, NIV, does not make.

00:24:14.800 To those who, through the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, have received a faith

00:24:19.840 as precious as ours. So these are just three examples. The truth is, each of these translations,

00:24:25.900 especially the ESV and the NASB, are simply trying to translate the Bible as accurately and as clearly

00:24:31.800 as possible from the original text. There is not some conspiracy to take away the deity of Christ in

00:24:38.160 these translations, or to minimize the work of the blood of Christ, or to erase the Trinity. Those are

00:24:43.000 other claims that are made by KJV-onlyists. The reasons for discrepancies in translations between

00:24:49.820 the ESV, for example, and the KJV in many verses is because the ESV translators relied on texts that

00:24:57.860 were from other text families in the Byzantine texts, many of which are actually older and are much

00:25:04.140 more closer to the original. So God has worked through a variety of translations. There were scriptures

00:25:10.360 before the KJV. People didn't only hear the gospel or read the Bible for the first time

00:25:15.440 after the publication of the KJV Bibles in 1611. Now, can we absolutely credit the KJV Bible with

00:25:23.640 granting accessibility that wasn't there before for translating the Bible in a way that was

00:25:28.440 understandable for the people at the time? Yes, I think so, 100%. I think the KJV, from what I've read,

00:25:35.720 has good scholarship and is a good translation to use, but there's no evidence that it's the only

00:25:42.160 translation to use. And as I said, I personally like the ESV better. I like it better than the KJV.

00:25:49.880 I like it better than the NIV. And this is where we'll talk about the different translations. For

00:25:54.980 those of, a lot of you have also asked me about this. Can you explain the different translations? And

00:25:58.840 we could spend hours and hours talking about this. And I'm not a textual scholar, but from what I've read

00:26:04.720 and what I understand, there are a variety of translation methods, and some are, in my opinion,

00:26:11.780 better than others. The ESV is a word-for-word translation that tries to capture the rhythms,

00:26:18.420 the idioms of modern language. It's much more readable and colloquial, in my opinion, than both

00:26:24.560 the NKJV, the New King James Version, and the NASB, the New American Standard Bible. But it's more

00:26:31.600 literal than the NIV, the New International Version. So the KJV, the NKJV, and the NASB all have the same

00:26:41.180 translation method as the ESV. So that method is accuracy while trying to meet the demands of

00:26:48.880 modern language. But they're all created by different people at different times with different

00:26:56.140 scholarship. Sometimes, like in the example of the KJV, drawing from different but very similar

00:27:03.360 texts. And so there's going to be a bit of wording discrepancy, but not a significant enough difference

00:27:11.240 to actually change the meaning of the text. That's why it can be good to have or to at least look at

00:27:18.540 multiple versions of a text at once. If one version is more confusing or too wordy in that particular

00:27:25.140 verse, you can look at how another version words it. I do that a lot on BibleGateway.com. It's really

00:27:31.860 helpful. You don't have to have one kind of every Bible. Bible Gateway is a really great way to compare

00:27:38.700 and contrast. And actually, I think BibleHub.com actually shows the different translations of the

00:27:44.200 verse, like all stacked on top of each other. So you could just see it that way. The truth is God has

00:27:49.200 been extremely good and extremely gracious and so incredibly sovereign over the translation

00:27:57.000 process so that as many people as possible can read and know and understand and believe.

00:28:05.400 Now, I do believe there are better translations than others. Not all translations are of the same

00:28:12.480 reliability because they don't use the same methodology. For example, I don't recommend

00:28:18.260 the NIV as your go-to translation. It is known as a thought for thought translation. So its goal is

00:28:26.360 readability and sometimes it is at the expense of accuracy. Now, this is a problem more so with the

00:28:33.600 2011 NIV than the 1984 NIV. If you've got one of those like adventure Bibles that a lot of us had

00:28:41.380 growing up that mine is just like soaked in like pink and green highlighter because it was from when

00:28:45.820 I was like eight years old, we had the 1984 NIV, which is actually no longer in print. And one of the

00:28:52.900 strange and controversial things about the new 2011 NIV translation is that they opted for gender

00:28:59.340 neutral terminology even in places where the original text specifically intend one gender. So this calls

00:29:09.100 into question the objectives of the translators. Were they really going for accuracy or were they

00:29:14.880 going for cultural sensitivity? I am always going to opt for the translation that prioritizes the former

00:29:21.540 over the latter. That doesn't mean, however, that it can't be useful at all, that the NIV can't be

00:29:27.440 useful. Like I said, it's an extremely readable version, which is why it is so often used, especially for

00:29:33.940 younger kids. There are times if I'm talking to a new Christian or if I'm talking to a non-Christian

00:29:39.060 and I want to reference a verse that I will use the NIV instead of the ESV because the ESV can be a

00:29:45.440 little bit more wordy than the NIV. But if I'm actually going to recommend a Bible, I'm personally

00:29:52.260 going to recommend the ESV. I really like the ESV study Bible specifically. You can just type in

00:29:58.820 wherever you get your books, ESV study Bible. It's this huge, it's just a huge book, a huge Bible

00:30:05.580 full of references and notes and all of that. It has so many great resources, so many great answers

00:30:10.080 to your questions. Now, we also understand though that commentaries that study Bibles and the

00:30:16.220 commentaries in study Bibles are not infallible. They're not inerrant. They're made by people and it

00:30:22.880 is their opinion in a way. And so everything that you read in a study Bible, you still have to compare

00:30:28.780 to Scripture and you still have to carefully study the context of each verse before you just accept

00:30:34.820 human commentary is something that is absolutely authoritative. However, they can answer historical

00:30:41.740 questions for you. They can help you understand the text better. They can help with cross-referencing.

00:30:47.100 And so I do highly recommend a study Bible. I think the ESV study Bible is very reliable. The

00:30:53.380 John MacArthur study Bible is also reliable. Now, what's interesting is that you can see the

00:30:59.440 particular, I don't want to say bias, but the particular view of something like eschatology,

00:31:04.620 the end times come out in particular commentaries, John MacArthur versus the ESV. So again, that's just

00:31:12.620 something that you have to be aware of, that you're going to see those kinds of human perspectives,

00:31:16.960 come through just in the commentary, not actually in the text of the Bibles, but just in their

00:31:21.700 comments and their references and their answers to questions in those kinds of study Bibles. But

00:31:26.400 still, I think super helpful to have biblical scholars offer their insight in verses to help us

00:31:32.400 better understand. And then say you're reading in the ESV and you are like, okay, I need to like

00:31:41.040 better understand this verse, got the commentary and all that, but I need to, like, I need another,

00:31:46.980 I need another way to think about this. You could go to the NIV. You could even, you could even,

00:31:54.980 now I know this is going to be controversial. You could even go to something like the message.

00:32:01.340 Now, I do not recommend the message as your so-called translation of choice. And here is why

00:32:09.840 I say so-called translation, because the message is not a translation. It is really a paraphrasing of

00:32:18.900 the translated text and taking many liberties with phrasing, interpretation, emphasis, et cetera. In fact,

00:32:26.160 the guy who created it, Eugene Peterson, did so because he said he felt his congregations just

00:32:31.000 couldn't relate to the Bible. The publishing company who published it said that the other

00:32:36.360 biblical translations were, quote, losing their impact. Well, that's not only not a true statement,

00:32:42.140 that's not even a, that's not a good statement, because it's saying that the message, that version

00:32:47.360 of the Bible, which is not anywhere close to the original inspired text and adds much of its own

00:32:52.000 flair and its interpretation onto the text is actually more relevant than God's infallible word,

00:32:58.540 which God promises will not return void. It's the same problem with the passion translation.

00:33:04.080 First, again, it's not a translation. It's a compilation by one person, Brian Simmons,

00:33:09.820 who strives to communicate his desired meaning of the text by paraphrasing the Bible to fit his meaning

00:33:18.420 and his intentions. However, like I said, could you use the message or maybe even possibly the passion

00:33:26.680 translation side by side and actual translation like the ESV or NASB just to see if it gets your

00:33:34.460 mental wheels turning and helps you understand the passage? I think so, yes. I think that you can do

00:33:42.300 that. Those should not be the texts and the versions that you rely on, but they could help you think

00:33:50.060 maybe about synonyms of a word that's used or a restructuring of the syntax in a way that is more

00:33:57.080 clear to you. But do not rely on those versions for your understanding of the Bible, because there's

00:34:02.820 just there are too many liberties taken with them. I also like my Keyword Study Bible by AMG Publishers.

00:34:09.580 It underlines keywords and verses and tells you their original Greek or Hebrew. So what they mean and

00:34:16.060 where else they're used in Scripture. That's super helpful in understanding the verses. I think

00:34:20.760 something I used to do, but I don't do as much anymore. But I do still recommend if you are

00:34:27.640 reading your Bible and say you are going through a book, but you want to slow down. Like I know there

00:34:32.400 are times that we, you know, we imbibe a ton of texts every day. You're trying to get through the

00:34:37.740 Bible in a year, which I think is great. But say that you really just want to slow down, which is

00:34:42.320 honestly what I prefer to do, and chew on the text and go through one or two verses a day.

00:34:48.300 You could, this is something I've done, write out a keyword and then next to the keyword in a verse

00:34:54.420 come up with synonyms or come up with an explanation for that word. So I'll give you an example. If we use

00:35:02.940 Hebrews 11.1 in the ESV, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

00:35:08.980 So if I wanted to break that down and think about it in a different way, I could write down the word

00:35:14.360 faith and then I could write next to it. Okay. Different ways to think about faith or that word,

00:35:19.360 trust, belief, holding onto something without being able to see it clearly, holding fast,

00:35:24.780 moving forward without knowing definitively what's right in front of you. These are all descriptors for

00:35:29.460 faith. I could write down the word assurance. Okay. I know that means confidence, trust,

00:35:34.420 surety, guarantee, down payment, even promise. And then I could just take some time to think,

00:35:40.680 think about that. It's like, I really like down payment. The Holy Spirit is also talked about as

00:35:46.500 the down payment of our inheritance. There's all kinds of cross-referencing you could do when you

00:35:50.620 break this down. And then I could write down hoped for, wanted, desired, longed for, looked toward,

00:35:56.840 a reaching out for something that you want to be there. So sometimes I create like a mental picture

00:36:02.380 of what a phrase like hoped for could mean or look like. And then you've got conviction,

00:36:09.040 confident knowledge, unwavering belief to know and believe beyond a shadow of a doubt.

00:36:13.900 And then that phrase not seen. So yet intangible, something that you trust is there, but have not

00:36:19.900 laid eyes on. So if you look at this kind of expounded and maybe amplified version or rendering

00:36:28.540 of this verse, you would understand it to mean something like faith is the confidence

00:36:33.820 in that which is longed for and the unwavering belief in that which we trust is in front of us,

00:36:39.740 but haven't yet seen with our eyes. Now, maybe that's helpful to you. Maybe it's not. It'll be

00:36:44.640 more helpful when it comes from your own brain. And that's not trying to reinterpret scripture or add

00:36:50.120 to scripture or to superimpose our opinion on scripture. That's just our subjective way

00:36:55.540 to break down a verse in a way that lands. We didn't add to the interpretation or meaning to

00:37:01.780 the text or make it more culturally relevant. We're not trying to decontextualize it. We're

00:37:06.040 not trying to make it mean something that it doesn't. We have just expounded upon it in a way

00:37:10.500 that we're not claiming is infallible, expounded upon what's already there, not for the purpose of

00:37:15.680 retranslation or even improvement, but simply to deepen our understanding and challenge our thinking

00:37:22.300 about what this verse means. So all of this to say, God has so beautifully allowed for the

00:37:30.200 scholarship of the translation of many versions of the Bible. Some, like I said, because of

00:37:34.840 methodology and because of purpose are better than others, but KJV is not the only way. Really be

00:37:42.680 careful with that. You may like the KJV and that's great, but since there is no real substantive evidence

00:37:49.660 of its exclusivity and supremacy, please don't use it as a bludgeon to make people feel bad or

00:37:56.160 to make people feel that God is only reachable through ye and thou and half. I mean, it's just

00:38:03.300 not true. It's just not true. Read your Bible, get an ESV study Bible, get you a good, reliable study

00:38:10.440 Bible, pray for wisdom, which God promises to give believers who ask without reproach in James 1-5.

00:38:18.140 And hey, if you need another translation to look at that verse side by side, because reproach is

00:38:25.220 kind of a weird word, the NIV says without finding fault, which I think in this case is a fair

00:38:31.960 alternative. So see, it can be so fun to look at different versions of the Bible to add to our

00:38:38.400 understanding. All right, that's all I've got for today. I will see you guys back here soon.

00:38:48.140 Bye.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 13, 2021

Ep 402 ｜ Is KJV the Only Way？

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