TR/KJV argument. . .as clearly as I have ever done

I had recently been having some conversations with some people and one of them resulted in me volunteering to write some information up on the TR/KJV issue, and they affirming they would read it. So today I sat and wrote for several hours. My goal was to try to summarize the necessary points of our argument as much as possible. I did not dive into every little detail, nor did I quote. As it stands it is a summary. Forgive the length, this one is almost 8 pages.

This is quite a task I am attempting to undertake here. To summarize this position may be able to be done, but often the main points make little sense without the background. Sometimes this background is simple, and sometimes it covers all of church history. I will try to keep the main points obvious, while only including the necessary information. There will of course be much remaining, that may need to be covered if you have questions, or if you are aware of certain arguments raised against the position. Please do not hesitate to ask anything. I should add that I do have references and quotes for almost everything here. It would have extended this by several pages. If you are curious about quotes on something in particular please let me know. I do not at this time have a simple compilation of all quotes, so I cannot simply add that. Perhaps I will one day.

So, the end argument is that the KJB is the Word of God for English speaking people. By saying this we are saying that we have in our possession the perfect inspired transcendent Word of God. Those who disagree do not think it is possible to have the perfect inspired Word (though they may not admit that).

This is where the problem comes. If we do not have God’s Word, then we are of all men most miserable. We must have the Word of God, or everything we do is in vain. If we don’t we should eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. This is the argument for certainty. There are hosts of quotes to say that certainty is not something new to the church, but that the church has always required certainty. It seems logical and reasonable to me that we must have certainty without citing any of the quotes. If we admit there may be error in part of the Scripture, than we cannot be 100% sure that there is not error elsewhere. So, we must have certainty. Again, the other side disagrees. Recognizing the need for certainty is our first step.

The second step is to correctly understand God’s Word. What we mean by this is the many verses pertaining to preservation. No matter what we ever talk about or argue, we must always start with proper exegesis of the Scripture. This is the second step. Here is one of the most difficult parts. It is like arguing with an Arminian about Calvinism and referencing foreknowledge. No matter how right you are on the proper definition they always say it means something else. The Scriptures that we use to support preservation have for a 100 years been twisted so that anyone even slightly anti-KJV will say “That just means – .“ Here is a list of Scripture: 2 Tim. 3:16; Ps. 12:6, 7; 19:8, 9; Heb. 6:18; Matt. 5:18; 1 Peter 1:25; John 17:17. Without going through each verse what you need to know is that we have to interpret these verses understanding that they were written to the people of that day and those people would have expected the words to mean what they say. These verses point to always having God’s inspired inerrant Word here among the church, i.e. preservation. That these verses support the preservation of the perfect Word of God has been the position held for centuries down through the church.

The third step is arguing for the TR. Our argument is not based in the KJV. Our argument goes back centuries, and then the only logical conclusion is the KJV. We can’t start with it; we end with it. Where do we go next then? In order to understand what we must now argue, we must understand the other possibilities. When we argue for certainty, the other possibility is uncertainty. When we argue for the Textus Receptus (TR), the other possibilities are what we call the critical text and the majority text. We must further understand where these come from.

Brief History.

Previous to Christ, around the 3^rd-1^st centuries, the Hebrew OT was translated into Greek. It is said that it was done by 70 men, and thus the Septuagint is abbreviated the LXX.

Recall that when the epistles, gospels, etc. were written they were not instantly in every church. They had to be passed from church to church and copied from page to page as the parchment began to wear thin, and as more churches and individuals wanted their own copies. Copies happened. People made copies of copies. The canon (the 27 books of the NT) was not closed, and people were unsure what was Scripture and what was not. (This is a different history lesson entirely.) However, by 397 AD, the canon was closed. God had lead in the church to ensure that the apocryphal books were rejected, along with other similar titles, and God had also made certain that the 27 books were settled. While the Scriptures were now together, they still continued to be copied. Somewhere around the 5^th century, Rome commissioned the Latin Vulgate (Also known as Jerome’s Vulgate). This was to be the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) for the next thousand years and the reformers wrote many things against it.

The copies remained however in libraries. It was very rare to find entire copies of the Scriptures, but rather pieces and fragments were found of different books, verses, and passages (called Papyri, Uncials, and Minuscules).

As early as 640 AD people were attempting to translate parts of the Scriptures into English. The first well-known complete translation was in the 14^th century by John Wycliffe. Wycliffe’s bible appeared in two editions. Tyndale’s translation in the 16^th century differed from Wycliffe in that he used the Hebrew and Greek texts, and used the Latin to help. In all likelihood, he also probably used/referred to Wycliffe’s translation as well. This could probably be assumed for most translators during this time. After the Tyndale 1526 came the “Coverdale” 1535, the “Matthews” 1537, the “Great” 1539, the “Geneva” (first divided into verses) 1560, the “Bishop’s” 1568, and the “King James” 1611. These translations continued to follow much the same MSS as the previous. Unlike today where each version sits on the shelf next to each other, the previous was removed as the latter was accepted by the church as the authentic Word of God.

We must also understand that this is the same period that ends the dark age. This is the time frame which hosted great men like Luther, Zwingli, Huss, and Calvin. Luther posted his 95 theses in 1517. As the Reformation swept over all Europe, the need and desire for the Scriptures in the common tongue was understood and catered too. Thus we have these translations moving from the false piety of the Catholic church and back to the Greek texts for their translation into the English language.

It was during this time of translations that MSS were being collected and catalogued for the purpose of assembling a complete Greek text. This was not an easy process. Communication was immensely limited, and safe transportation of these MSS was neither quick nor easy.

Erasmus was one such person attempting to collate a Greek text. Erasmus was a Catholic who believed in reforming the church from within and so he never left. He was a scholar and was well learned. He mastered both Latin and Greek and was determined to provide a new Latin translation. When he published it however, it included the Greek translation alongside his Latin work. When Erasmus was missing pieces of either Greek or Latin from his sources, he would go to the other to find the pieces in that language and transfer them over. Thus, his two languages published together were in agreement, and though written in Greek and Latin their respective basis was not pure Greek nor pure Latin. It was his second edition that Martin Luther used to translate the Scriptures into German. It was his third edition that Tyndale used to translate into English. The 3^rd edition was also the basis of another Greek Text: the 1550 Robert Stephanus edition. This was the text used by the Geneva and King James Bibles. It is Erasmus’ last edition that is often referred to as the TR.

Theodore Beza, who studied under Calvin and assumed his role in Geneva when Calvin passed away also published a Greek text in 1565. This text was also indebted to Erasmus’ editions. After this time period, it was not until the 1880’s that another prominent Greek text appeared. Several continued to gather MSS and translate, but nothing prominent was published until after the Enlightenment.

The extant (=known existing) MSS are categorized based on their family type. Today we see three main family types: the Byzantine, the Alexandrian, and the Western. We hear the most regarding the first two. In brief, the Byzantine family contains those texts found within the byzantine empire. The text-type and location where they were found groups them together. It is the same for the Alexandrian family: they contain the Alexandrian text-type and were generally found near Alexandria. The majority of all extant MSS are from the Byzantine family. There are around 5000+ pieces from this family. These could be anything from a phrase to entire books, or multiple books. These are often dated from the 5^th to the 12^th centuries.

The Alexandrian family is considerable smaller. The force behind the Alexandrian family is that the 2 main MSS both supposedly date to around 400 BC, and they contain very full texts, rather than pieces. The early dating of these MSS causes some to place much more emphasis on them than on the majority. Among these are the texts found in a monastery in a burn-barrel. There is debate over their value. One side claims that they are extremely valuable, and the other says they were in the burn-barrel for a reason. The discussion further breaks down in that the one who found them (Constantin von Tischendorf) originally claimed they were in the trash. This may have been because they were worthless or he was lying to excuse his sudden possession of them. Or they were not in the trash at all, as his son later claimed in his father’s biography. Tischendorf himself is reported as saying that the MSS. contained 15,000 changes made by contemporary or later hands. This should discredit it from having any true significance.

I present this history not for your memorization but rather for your understanding. These things need to be somewhat familiar to your mind as we continue our argument. I previously mentioned three text options when choosing a Greek text: the TR, the majority text, and the critical text (CT). The TR is that tradition that ended with the Greek text of Erasmus/Stephanus/Beza and the English text of the King James Bible. It should be mentioned that this text did not arise from pure Greek MSS support, but also some Latin. It contains readings that do not appear to be well supported. It is from this Greek Text tradition that the KJB is translated. The KJB is the only Bible today translated from this Greek Text.

The majority text is held by a minority who think that both other sides have valid points. Instead of accepting the few readings in the TR that are less obvious, or have Latin support, they opt for a text that is completely among the Byzantine family. This “text” however does not exist. Two men, Hodges and Farstad, attempted to compile a majority text. However, the MSS they worked with to complete this text came mostly from one individual. Further, this portion they used was only a small portion of the Byzantine family, and they only cited a small portion of what they had access too. Their Greek text was published with the admission that it was incomplete and not a true majority. It was compiled from a fraction of a fraction of all extant Byzantine MSS. Farstad was on the committee translating the NKJV and he was impacted by his previous work. The NKJV is the closest thing to a modern version translated from this supposed Majority text. This position is generally thought to be “safe.” It avoids many of the problems the CT guys point out about the TR position and it makes most TR guys happy because it is closer to them than the CT. Recall however that we started with the necessity for certainty. With no true majority reading, we have no true certainty, even supposing that this argument had weight.

The critical text is that which came about (through a similar process) but which originated from the 1880 Greek text of Westcott and Hort. Among the first English translations from this text was the English Revised Version in 1901.

Our argument for the TR at this point is rather simple. We understand we need certainty. We know that Scripture promises that we will have God’s perfect transcendent Word for us to live by. Lastly, we follow the Holy Spirit guided church as it searched for the Word of God. God uses human means. He did so in the assembly of the canon after the writing of the NT. He did so in bringing the Reformation and their emphasis on returning to the Scriptures to Europe. It was here that the church recognized the need for it to be in the common tongue and so it was here that the church looked for and sought out the Word of God. The brilliant “scholars” of the Reformation’s day were pastors called of God to minister. How did they know which MSS to use, and which to ignore? God worked in much the same way of the collecting of the canon. This resulted in a text which was used to translate. Another text and another were published. Each one correcting the mistakes of the past text. The Holy Spirit led the bride of Christ accepting each in turn until the TR and the King James Version. After this however, there was not another publicly and universally accepted Greek text, nor an English version. Today, there are over a dozen versions sitting alongside each other and not one has obtained widespread public and undisputable acceptance among the Holy Spirit lead church. These are the positive reasons we argue for the TR, and come to the conclusion of the KJV. We have a host of negative reasons against the CT as well; this is our last step.

There are striking differences between the CT and the TR. The CT as known today began in the 1800’s and has continued changing and evolving. The CT has been in development for over 100 years and does not have a final form. Nor does the current CT as of yet have an English version translated from it. While the TR tradition began in the rise of the Reformation and the brilliant minds that accompanied it, the CT arose from the Enlightenment. The mindset of the Enlightenment was that man was the measure for all things. It was a turning from the Scriptures rather than too them. The Enlightenment rejected inspiration and divinity. The standard of faith is recorded by Kant as that which man’s reason finds morally profitable. It was this environment which fostered Westcott and Hort.

Westcott and Hort (hereafter WH) published their Greek text in 1881. This was the first popular critical text. WH put great stock in Sinaiticus (one of the Alexandrian texts; claimed to be found in the trash), and especially Vaticanus (MSS contained in the Vatican library). These two MSS were judged as the best MSS and their readings were taken above others – primarily Vaticanus. While the CT has evolved today so that the current version is not near as blatant in its dismissal of the previous Holy Spirit guided tradition, it follows strongly in WH footsteps. Two reasons drive us to further analyze these men. 1. This tradition began with WH. 2. They abandoned the church tradition of the previous 300 years.

While none of the men through the TR tradition were perfect nor inspired, it can be seen through history how God used each to lead the church to the acceptance of the TR text. WH however called the TR a “corrupt text.” They set the standard for preferring two MSS over 1,000’s. They valued the text of the RCC over the text of the Reformation. (This is completely opposite to that of the Reformation which took the church away from the heresy of the RCC and towards the Scriptures.) Further, these men were not orthodox and could easily be labeled heretics. Note the following beliefs drawn from their own writings:

They believed in and agreed with:

1. Baptismal Regeneration

2. Necessity of the Sacraments

3. Mary Worship

4. Purgatory

5. Prayers for the dead

6. Communism

7. Darwin

They did not believe in:

1. Literal Heaven

2. Literal 2^nd coming of Christ

3. Literal 1,000 year reign of Christ on Earth

4. Reality of Angles

5. The oneness of the Trinity

6. Literal Devil

7. Soul’s existence apart from the body.

8. Power of the atonement

9. Inspiration of Scripture

These are the men with whom the CT position originated. Those that follow in their path have problems of their own.

History of the CT:

The CT path following WH includes the publication of several other Greek texts: Tischendorf’s text (containing almost entirely Sinaiticus, published prior to WH), and the popular Nestle text in 1898. Nestle’s text would undergo 27 editions and would be the main underlying text for almost every new English translation. Nestle published his edition using Tischendorf’s, WH, and other less-well-known text. The 13^th edition was published by his son in 1927 using the same texts for its basis. When considering further editions Nestle enlisted the help of Kurt Aland who would then make the 26-27 editions “Nestle-Aland.” Aland also happened to be on the committee of the United Bible Society (UBS). The first Bible society in the early 1800’s supported the RCC. As the Bible societies around the world joined to form the UBS, the support and participation of the RCC continued. The UBS produced 4 editions of a Greek text to be used for translating the Gospel around the world. Edition 3 and 4 are exact replicas of the Nestle-Aland 26 and 27. The only differences are their apparatus. The texts are identical.

Though the UBS may have seemed to some to have started with good intentions, it was involved with heretical views from the first. Constantly involving the RCC in each committee and decision, the UBS extended farther by inviting “representatives from 46 different denominations, including Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and even a Christian Scientist!” – Plains Baptist Challenger, Sept. 1982. The goal of the UBS was to “prepare a ‘common text’ of the Bible in the original languages, acceptable to all Churches, including Roman Catholics; and to explore the possibility of preparing a ‘common translation’ in certain languages, which could be used by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike.” – Andrew Brown, The Word of God among All Nations, p. 122).

There is no current English version from this text; every English translation besides the NKJV since the KJV has however been based on the CT tradition begun by WH. In the process of creating these texts the translators admit that they will not come to a perfect text but it will hopefully just be better than before. In creating an English translation the do not rely on one published Greek text but rather upon multiple. Even with all this work towards a solid Greek text, no English Bible has been translated from it.

We have noted then that the CT tradition began in a time of departure from the truth. It was started by heretics who denied the doctrine of inspiration. It has continued by one of the most ecumenical groups whose published goal has always been ecumenical acceptance. There is no English version that is based solely on this text. The Holy Spirit lead church has not publicly and universally left the TR for any new Greek text. Rather, the influx of multiple Greek texts and English versions has seen the almost universal weakening of the church, doubt in the authority of Scriptures, the support of Evolution, and the dismissal of God from our nation. It has witnessed pastors standing in the pulpit and throwing their Bible away since it is no longer relevant nor needed.

What I have not covered are the arguments against the KJV being perfect. Often those are the arguments raised, and they do take up quite some space. They include trouble accepting the work of the KJV translators without applying to them the doctrine of inspiration (which we don’t). These things should be handled similar to any unsaved person claiming problems with the Gospels or different numbers recorded dying at such-and-such battle. We begin those thoughts with the truth from God’s Word that it is accurate and inerrant. Then we look at the “difficulties” and answer them as best we can. We do not admit of error because God says it is not. Whether we can explain it thoroughly enough is not a test of God’s truth. The same applies to the KJV argument. Just because one word may see inaccurate to someone, does not mean we throw out our previous argumentation. We begin with the conclusion we have reached that we have the inerrant Word of God and then answer the translation issue accordingly: never giving up our ground.

As we have covered quite a bit, I have included an outline of the main points as well as tried to highlight those things that are necessary to the argument

1. Need for Certainty.

2. Proper Exegesis of Scriptures leads us to the doctrine of Preservation.

3. 3 texts possible: TR, Majority, and CT; Majority text not a viable option.

4. We fight for the TR

It was the accepted Greek text as seen in the Holy Spirit guided Church.

The tradition began in the glory of the Reformation;

The theme of the Reformation was by grace alone, though faith alone, in Christ alone.

The Reformation was lead by Pastors who called the church back to the Scriptures.

This tradition leads us to the KJB in English.

5. We fight against the new tradition.

The tradition began under the thinking of the Enlightenment.

Man is the measure.

Inspiration and divinity are nonexistent.

WH were heretics; they introduced this tradition; they didn’t even believe in inspiration.

Main MSS of this tradition found under questionable circumstances; or in the heart of the RCC.

WH completely discarded the TR tradition. The tradition accepted by the chuch for over 300 years they called “corrupt.”

Ecumenical tradition.

Translation committees providing the new Text to the world are full of apostasy. They are ecumenical and are bringing all of “Christianity” back to Rome.

The scholars of today are translators who sit on committees, rather than men called of God to oversee His flock.