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patrick jane (February 24th, 2016)
Hello once again. Thanks again for allowing us to have this debate/discussion about the inerrancy of the King James Bible.
Some of you may have noticed that I did not address all the questions Bob E. and Will D. asked (again) in their last post.
Bob E. mentions this saying: BWQ4b BWQ9 BWQ10 BWQ11 BWQ18
You must respond to the questions asked of you just as Bob and Will must respond to your questions. Take more of your allowed 48 hours between posts and make every round count.
Will Kinney, please answer those five questions in your next post.
The reason I did not answer them AGAIN is because they were the same questions about the same things they brought up in their previous posts. I already answered them and I see no need to merely repeat the same answers I gave before.
Bob E. and Will D. have presented no convincing evidence to prove their examples are anything other than mere printing errors and they now bring up another example of where they claim the KJB corrected or improved a reading.
I would agree that they corrected a typo or a mere printing error, but they did not correct what they had previously sent to the printers.
The example they bring up this time is found in Hosea 6:5 where the first printing of the KJB had Therefore have I SHEWED them by the prophets: I have slain them by the words of my mouth
This is easily proven to be nothing more than an easily explained printing error, but our Bible critics seem to think they have found the mother lode example of a proven change in the intended text or an afterthought of a better way to translate the passage. It is nothing of the kind.
The KJB correctly reads Therefore have I HEWED them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth
You will notice that this typo (printing error) consists of the mere addition of one letter - S - at the beginning of the word. This typo was caught and corrected in 1612, the very next year.
How do we know it was a simple printing error? All we have to do is check both the underlying Hebrew text and the previous English Bibles. The Hebrew text uses the word # 2672 ghah-tzehv, and this same word is translated as to hew or to cut or to divide in Isaiah 51:1 Look unto the rock whence ye ARE HEWN, and to the pit whence ye are digged.
And again in Isaiah 22:16 and whom hast thou here, that thou hast HEWED thee out a sepulcher here, as he that HEWETH him out a sepulcher on high, and that gravest an habitation for himself in a rock?
In Hosea 6:5 the previous English bibles read I HAVE CUT DOWN. These were Coverdale 1535, the Great Bible, Matthews bible, the Bishops bible and the Geneva Bible 1587.
And Wycliffes bible 1395 as well as the Douay-Rheims bible of 1610 both had I HEWED
The Geneva Bible reads Therefore have I CUT DOWN by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth
Now also reading I HEWED THEM by the prophets are the Revised Version 1885, ASV 1901, RSV, NKJV, NASB, ESV and Modern English Version 2014, to name but a few. This is obviously nothing more than a simple printing error that was immediately caught and corrected.
Our Bible critics have a picture with notes that even they say are hard to read.
Handwritten Confession: This same nicer-than-God tendency also produced the 1611 error of softening Hosea 6:5 from cut down to show. The translators revised Hosea 6:5 from the 1602 Bishops Bible to moderate the message by producing a rendering never before seen in any text, to say that God shewed [showed] them by the prophets that they were slain by His words.
As I look at this writing, it obviously does NOT says I shewed. What I see here is a line going up to indicate a possible change, followed by the letters EOWN you by Since English spelling was far from standardized in 1611, it looks to me like he is suggesting hewn you by They often spelled words without the initial h, that today do have an h.
But, in any event, we know from looking at the Hebrew and the previous English Bibles that the KJB translators would not have put the word shewed instead of hewed. This was a simple printers typo.
Exodus 20:13 Thou shalt not KILL.
Next Bob E. and Will D. bring up the example of Thou shalt not KILL as found in Exodus 20:13 and somehow claim that this is a subtle form of self-righteousness and a mistranslation.
I have an entire article on my website about Exodus 20:13 and in it I show that it most definitely is NOT a translation error and that the modern versions like the NKJV, NIV, ESV, NASB, etc. themselves are inconsistent on how they translate this word. They ALL often translate it as KILL.
Not only does the KJB translate Exodus 20:13 as Thou shalt not KILL. but so too do the following Bible translations - Tyndale 1534 (he translated Exodus before his death), Coverdale 1535, The Great Bible 1540 - "Thou shalt not kyll.", Matthew's Bible 1549, Bishops' Bible 1568, the Geneva Bible 1599, Webster's translation 1833, the Longman Version 1841, the Brenton Bible 1851, Lesser Bible 1853, the Smith Bible 1876, The Revised English Bible 1877, the Sharpe Bible 1883, the 1936 Hebrew Publishing Company version, the Douay-Rheims of 1610, Darby 1890, the American Standard Version 1901, The Improved Bible 1913,*the Catholic Douay 1950,*the Revised Standard Version 1952, Lamsa's 1933 translation of the Syriac Peshitta - "You shall not KILL.", the St. Joseph New American Bible 1970, the New Life Version 1969, the Updated Bible Version 2003 - "You shall not KILL.", The Word of Yah 1993,*the KJV 21st Century Version 1994, Green's Modern KJV 1998, the Third Millennium Bible 1998, God's First Truth 1999 "you shall not KILL", The Complete Apostle's Bible by Paul Espositio 2005 - "You shall not KILL.", The Revised Geneva Bible 2005, the Context Group Version 2007, the Heritage Bible 2003, Bond Slave Version 2012, Hebraic Transliteration Scripture 2010, The Work of God's Children Illustrated Bible 2011, the brand new critical text Common English Bible of 2011 - "Do not KILL.", The New Brenton Translation 2012 - "You shall not KILL.", The Revised Douay-Rheims Bible 2012, *and the Katapi New Standard Bible 2012 - "You shall not KILL."
And this online Interlinear Hebrew Old Testament - Thou shalt not KILL.
The most common form of the so called Greek Septuagint in print says in Greek ou Phoneuseis and then translates it as "Thou shalt not KILL."
Foreign Language Bibles
Among foreign language Bibles that also say "Thou shalt not KILL" are the Spanish Cipriano de Valera 1602, the *Reina Valera 1909, 1960, 1995, La Biblia de las Américas 1997 - "no*matarás", (the Spanish word for murder is "no asesinarás" or perhaps "no cometerás homicidio", but "no*matarás is clearly "thou shalt not kill"), *the French Martin 1744, Louis Segond 1910 and the French Ostervald 1996 - "Tu ne tueras point.", the Italian Diodati 1649, the New Diodati 1991 and the 2006 Nuova Riveduta - "Non uccidere.", Luther's German Bible 1545 - "Du sollst nicht töten.", the Russian Synodal Version - "Не убивай." = "Thou shalt not KILL.", the Tagalog Ang Dating Biblia 1905 -*"Huwag kang papaya." = "Thou shalt not KILL.", Swedish Bible 1917 - "Du skall icke dräpa.", Vietnamese Bible 1934 - "Ngươi chớ giết người.", Chinese Union Traditional Bible - "不 可 殺 人 " , The Czech BKR Bible -"Nezabije.", the Dutch Staten Vertaling - "Gij zult niet doodslaan." and the Portuguese Almeida Actualizada (Modern Almeida), A Biblia Sagrada em Portugués and the 2000 O Livro -* "Não matarás."
It is more than a little hypocritical for the NIV English version to make a big deal out of the alleged difference between "to kill" and "to murder", but at the same time to make foreign language translations of the NIV that simply say "Do not KILL."
The NIV Spanish version simply says: "No mates.", which clearly means "Do not KILL." and NOT "Do not murder."- La Santa Biblia, Nueva Versión Internacional® NVI® Copyright © 1999.
Likewise the NIV Portuguese version simply say "Do not KILL." - Não matarás." -*Nova Versão Internacional*NVI® Copyright © 1999
Both the 1828 and 1975 Webster Dictionaries tell us that the word "kill" means, "to deprive of life." The word "murder" means, "the crime of unlawfully killing a person." Both can be used interchangeably, in that it is impossible to murder a person without killing them. However, there are those who still object to the phrase, "thou shalt not kill" insisting that it must be "you shall not murder." Therefore, so they state, modern versions have clarified the difference for us. But have they really?
The English word "kill" means to deprive of life. The word "murder" means to unlawfully kill a person." Therefore, by English definitions, the word murder involves an unlawful act. However, if it is lawful it would not be murder to deprive someone of life. With this in mind, I certainly think the phrase "thou shalt not kill" is much better. For this simple reason, abortion is the law of the land. It is not illegal for a doctor to deprive a living child of its life if the mother consents to this act. You can therefore justify abortion on the grounds that it is not murder because it is not unlawful.
If, as the KJB critics affirm, there is a distinct difference between "to kill" and "to murder", they are contradicted by the very versions they promote. Other words are also translated as both "to kill" and "to murder", and often when describing the clear act of what we would call "murder", the NKJV, NIV, NASB use the word "to kill".
The Hebrew word 'harag' # 2026, is translated by all these versions as both to kill and to murder, showing them to be synonymous terms. Notice these few examples of the many that could be given.
Genesis 4:8 "And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and SLEW him." ESV, NASB, NIV, NKJV - "KILLED him". So, this was not murder but he only killed him?
See also Genesis 4:23, 25. *"I have KILLED a man for wounding me." *KILLED = ESV, NIV, NKJV, NASB. *Oh, wait. Shouldn't this be "murder", according to our bible critics?
Genesis 27:41 "And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand: then will I SLAY my brother Jacob."
ESV, NASB, NIV, NKJV - "I will KILL my brother Jacob." - Again, according to our Bible critics, this should be "MURDER", right?
Genesis 37:20 Here the brothers of Joseph envied him and wanted to kill him. Another clear case of what we would call "murder". "Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us SLAY him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams."
ESV, NIV, NASB, NKJV - "let us KILL him". So, had they just killed their brother, it would have been OK, since it was not murder?
Exodus 21:14 "But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor, TO SLAY him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die." ESV, NKJV, NIV, NASB - "KILL HIM". Wait a minute! Wouldnt this have been OK according to the ESV, NIV, NASB because it wasnt murder?
In addition to this, we have the Bible itself to read as a whole to get the mind of God on any particular subject. The Bible tells us "thou shalt not kill" but we also see the intent of this commandment by reading other portions of the Bible and comparing Scripture with Scripture.
Important Point -
One thing to keep firmly in mind during this debate is the FACT that neither Bob Enyart nor Will Duffy believe that ANY Bible in ANY language (including the Hebrew and Greek, which they will never identify for us) IS NOW or ever WAS the complete and inerrant words of God.
If you dont believe me, just ask them to tell you specifically which one it is. Instead, they are Bible Version Rummagers who rummage through the various versions and pick out the parts they happen to prefer as they piece together their every developing and changing text.
But dont ask them to hand you a copy of what they honestly believe IS the complete and inerrant words of God Bible. They wont be able to do that for you, simply because they dont really believe there is one.
Answering Questions I have Already Answered
WKA- BWQ1, Is God able to produce a robust message that could remain effective even as reproduced by mere men (i.e., without the need for divine intervention)?. That question requires a yes or no answer, and any clarification would be happily considered. If the answer is No, then God would have to provide miracles on demand (an idea which disgusted Jesus, as we explain for anyone who Googles: miracle dynamics).
Bob and Will D. Once again, it is a very poorly worded question. Let me just give you basically the same answer I have been giving all the time. YES, God is able to produce an inerrant Bible (I hate your silly phrase a robust message - it is vague in meaning, and subjective in nature - but that is where you guys are coming from anyway) AND He can do it through using mere men. In fact, I and many other Christians believe He has already done this, whereas you do not.
Bob E. and Will D. once again say that I am being hypocritical for not identifying which King James Bible is the complete and inerrant words of God and they once again bring up some very minor printing errors in the multitude of printings there have been over the centuries.
As I have explained before, I use the present day Cambridge printed King James Bible. I believe it is the complete and inerrant words of God.
They then list 13 examples of what they think are deliberate textual changes made over the years in various early printings of the KJB. Such things as my lord or my Lord or even my LORD in Joshua 5:14. What they refuse to grasp, perhaps because it is the ONLY thing they have going for them to try to make their case that NO Bible, let alone the King James Bible, is the inerrant words of God, is that the printing process was very different in the past than it might be today - and we STILL end up with printing errors.
Every time they printed more King James Bibles they had to set up the type one letter at a time all over again and it was a very time consuming and laborious process. Through the constant repetition of words like my lord and my Lord and even my LORD, a tired and distracted printer could easily mistake one phrase for another.
Modern Bible versions such as the NASB, NKJV, NIV are constantly and deliberately changing their own English texts in literally hundreds and even thousands of places.
The NASB made almost 7000 changes in their own text from the 1977 to the 1995 editions. The NASB has been through ten (10) different editions, and they continue to change both the O.T. Hebrew readings and the Greek texts they follow in the New Testament.
Likewise the NKJV 1982 edition has changed thousands of words from that of their 1979 edition.
The ESV has already come out with 3 different editions in just 10 years - 2001, 2007 and 2011 - and they continue to change, not only their English text, but the underlying Hebrew and Greek textual readings they follow as well.
Likewise the NIV so far has 4 copyright dates - 1973, 1978, 1984 and 2011. Each edition is textually different from the previous edition. They radically changed the English text in about 40% of the verses in 2011, now making it far more gender inclusive changing hundreds of singular pronouns to plural, and they changed numerous underlying texts in both the Old Testament and the underlying Greek text of the New Testament.
These are not minor printing errors in the NASB, NKJV, ESV and NIV, but deliberate alterations of both the underlying Greek and Hebrew texts as well as the English translation.
Throughout the history of Bible publishing there have been some rather humorous examples of printing errors . It should also be noted that there have been printing errors, even with today's advanced technology, in the NASB, NKJV, and NIV as well.
Here are a few of the printing errors that have occurred in various King James Bible editions.
A 1631 edition became known as the Wicked Bible because the seventh commandment read, thou shalt commit adultery.
"Wicked Bible" 1633 - This Bible is an unspeakably rare collectors item. The printers were fined 300 pounds sterling for their terrible typographical error in printing the Ten Commandments, omitting the all-important word not and rendering the verse as, Thou shalt commit adultery! The lot of 1,000 copies were ordered destroyed, but only a handful escaped destruction, making them the rarest of rare. This is the only one for sale in the world.
The printer of the "Fool Bible" had to pay 3,000 pounds for this mistake in Psalm 14:1: The fool hath said in his heart there is a God.
In 1653, there was a misprint in I Corinthians 6:9 that read, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God and one in Romans 6:13 that read, "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness unto sin." This Bible became known as the Unrighteous Bible.
In 1716 an Irish edition contains a tiny but significant typo. In John 5:14 it read "sin on more" rather than "sin no more". No one noticed the error until 8000 copies had been printed and bound.
In 1717, there was a misprint in a heading for the parable of the vineyard, which called it the "Parable of the vinegar." This Bible was called the Vinegar Bible.
In 1801, Jude 16 stated, "these are murderers" instead of murmurers, and Mark 7:27 stated, let the children first be killed instead of filled. This Bible was nicknamed the Murderers Bible.
In 1820, Jesus says, "Who hath ears to ear, let him hear" in Matthew 13:43, and this was called the Ears to Ear" Bible.
In 1823, Genesis 24:61 states "Rebekah arose, and her camels", instead of "her damsels," in Rebekahs Camels Bible.
The cause for all of these defects may be found in the Printers' Bible (1702), which states in Psalm 119:161, "printers have persecuted me" (instead of princes. have persecuted me).
If ever there was a misprint that carried a lot of legitimate meaning, this is it. "Printers have persecuted me."
The underlying Hebrew and Greek texts that make up the King James Bible have never changed. Not a single word. And now we have better and improved means to print our Bibles and so hardly any of these printing errors are going to slip through.
This is in sharp contrast to the DELIBERATE and conscious TEXTUAL changes that are made in the ever changing ESVs, NIVs, NASBs and NKJVs which have to copyright their works every time they make these changes.
There is only one copyright date on the King James Bible and that is 1611. The reason you will not see different copyright dates is because it has never been revised. All they have done is to correct some minor printing typos that have occurred at various times through innumerable printings of the King James Bible.
IF every single King James Bible that had ever come off the different printing presses in its 400 year history had been exactly letter perfect the same every time, would todays Christians like Bob Enyart, Will Duffy, John MacArthur, James White, James Price, Rick Norris, Dan Wallace or Doug Kutilek accept it as being the complete and inerrant words of the living God? Not a chance! They dont believe the texts or the translation of ANY Bible (including the Greek and Hebrew) are the inerrant and 100% true words of God.
So if these past, very minor printing errors that occurred in the long history of the King James Bible bother you, but you want to be 99.9% sure of what God has said in His Book, then go with the King James Bible. ANY printing from ANY year of the King James Bible.
For those other Bible believers like myself who see these past, minor printing errors as a non-issue and maintain that God has in fact worked in history to give us a pure, perfect and inerrant Bible in the English language, then go with the King James Bible.
More Questions From the Bible Critics
KWA-BWQ19: Will Kinney, will you dispel the myth believed among many KJO advocates that the KJB was only being perfected from 1611 to 1769, by affirming that in reality, there are many instances where the text incorporated additional errors?
Sirs, I dont believe there is any myth to dispel. There were in the past more minor printing errors because the printing conditions were so primitive and unrefined, but with todays technology these are much less frequent.
I still maintain that you are making a mountain out of a molehill. There is no valid comparison between the occasional printing errors in the long history of the KJB and the modern versions that deliberately omit some 3000 words from the New Testament, reject numerous clear Hebrew readings, add hundreds of words to the Hebrew O.T. and that have totally different meanings in literally hundreds of verses and that corrupt sound doctrines of the faith, and that NOBODY seriously believes are the infallible words of God.
WKA-BWQ20: Will Kinney, will you take our offer and specifically identify two or three King James Bibles, by publisher and year, that meets your standard? And if you do, we will specifically identify a Bible currently available that meets the standard that weve been proclaiming.
I can only give you the information I have this is given in my Bible. It is called The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by his majestys special command. Appointed to be read in Churches. *** privilegio Cambridge University Press. Concord 8vo wide margin edition.
It then goes on to say: Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building. Trumpington Square, Cambridge.
There is no date in my Bible as to when it was published.
The only thing it says is: This Bible is printed and published buy Cambridge University Press, The Queens Printer, Under Royal Letters Patent.
My Bible has no date in it at all. That is all the information I can give about it, because that is all there is. I bought it at the Discount Bible store you know of that used to be there in Commerce City on Hwy 2 about 15 years ago, but has since moved.
WKA-BWQ21: Will Kinney, you have been referring to the complete, perfect and inerrant word of God. Is the 1769 Oxford edition complete?
No, there are 3 or 4 very minor differences between some Oxford editions I have seen and my Cambridge edition.
WKA-BWQ22: Will Kinney, how did you come to the conclusion that it was the Cambridge edition of the KJB, and not the Oxford, London or Edinburgh editions, for example, that are free of error?
From what I have been able to determine from looking at the Hebrew texts that underlie the King James Bible the Cambridge editions seem to be the most consistent.
There are only a very few minor differences between the Cambridge editions and SOME of the Oxford editions. Some Oxford editions read one way, and others read differently. The main ones that are brought up are these -
One is in Jeremiah 34:16 where the Cambridge KJB reads: "whom YE had set at liberty" while some Oxford editions says: "whom HE had set at liberty", and Song of Solomon 2:7 where the Cambridge KJB edition says: "that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till HE please", while some Oxford editions says "nor awake my love, till SHE please."
Another one that exits in SOME, but not all, Oxford editions is found in Joshua 19:2 where the original 1611 and the Cambridge editions correctly say: "Beersheba, OR Sheba, and..." But some Oxford editions read: Beersheba, AND Sheba, and..."
I can go into great detail about each of these and show you how some Bible translations read one way and others read the other way.
Just to illustrate what is going on here in these examples, I will take up the one in Judges 19:2 - "Beersheba, OR Sheba, and..." versus some later Oxford editions: "Beersheba, AND Sheba, and..."
I say SOME Oxford editions, because I have a hard copy Oxford Scofield King James Bible, and in all these examples it reads just as my Cambridge KJB does.
Joshua 19:2 How many cities? Error in many bible versions.
The example here in Joshua 19:2 presents us with an interesting case of "printing errors". When the original 1611 Bible came out, it read as do the Cambridge editions today - "Beersheba, OR Sheba, and..." However some later Oxford editions changed this to: "Beersheba, AND Sheba, and...".
This printing error is easily explained. A later printer could have been proof reading the text and noticed that Joshua 19 is listing a series of cities followed time and again with the word AND. He could easily have thought that the word OR was a printing error, when in fact it was not. So he "corrected" what he thought was a printing error, and instead created one himself. Later editions merely repeated this error.
In Joshua 19:1-6 we read of the lots being cast for the inheritance of the children of Simeon. Notice the number of the cities mentioned - 13 - and then number of cities listed in such versions as the NASB 1972-1977, Geneva, Bishops' bible, Coverdale, Wycliffe, RSV, NRSV, ESV and the Catholic Douay version. * *
The ESV reads: "And they had for their inheritance Beersheba, SHEBA, Moladah..." *
When you add up the total number of cities in these versions you come up with FOURTEEN, and yet the text says there were only THIRTEEN.
NOT EQUAL THE KJB - 14 Cities listed
Such versions as the JPS 1917, NASB 1968-1977, RSV 1952, NRSV 1989, ESV 2001, Geneva bible, Bishops', Coverdale, The New Berkeley Version in Modern English 1969,*the Good News Bible 1992,*The Complete Jewish Bible 1998, Contemporary English Version 1995, *the Catholic Public*Domain Version 2009, *The Ancient Roots Bible 2010, The Common English Bible 2011, The Work of God's Children Illustrated*bible 2011, The Hebraic Roots Bible 2012,*the New Living Translation 2013 and the Lexham English Bible 2012,*The New English Septuagint Translation 2012 and the Jehovah witness New Word Translation all read: "And they had in their inheritance Beersheba, AND Sheba, and Moladah....THIRTEEN cities." Yet a simple count from these wrong bible versions shows that they list FOURTEEN cities and not thirteen.
Dan Wallaces NET version, The New English Bible 1970 and The New English Bible 1989 simply OMIT the words "and Sheba" from the text, but they both footnote that the Hebrew reads: "and Sheba".
Dan Wallace says: The HEBREW TEXT APPEARS TO BE CORRUPT"
The ever changing NASB has gone through 10 revisions so far, and each time they change textual readings of both the Old and New Testament, as well as their English translation.
The 1972 and 1977 editions of the NASB say: "Beersheba AND Sheba, and....", but in 1995 the latest NASB has now corrected its previous blunder in this verse and now reads "Beersheba OR Sheba...".
In the King James Bible we read: "And they had their inheritance Beer-sheba, OR Sheba, and Moladah, and Hazarshual, and Balah, and Azem, and Eltolad, and Bethul, and Hormahn, and Ziklag, and Beth-marcaboth, and Hazarsusah, and Bethlebaoth, and Sharuhen; THIRTEEN CITIES and their villages."
If you count the number of cities mentioned in the King James Bible, and correctly take the reading of "OR Sheba" to mean that the town of Beer-sheba was also known as Sheba, then we end up with exactly 13 cities mentioned.
EQUAL THE KJB - 13 Cities listed
This is the reading found in the King James Bible and in Lesser's O.T. 1853, The Revised English Bible 1877, Young's 1898,*Darby 1890, the Revised Version 1885, the ASV 1901, Rotherham's Bible 1902, The Ancient Hebrew Bible 1907, Bible in Basic English 1961, The NKJV 1982, The New Jewish Version 1985, God's Word Translation 1995, The Koster Scriptures 1998, The World English Bible 2000, The Message 2002, the Complete Apostle's Bible 2003, the Green's Literal 2005, Holman Standard bible 2003-2009, the Concordant Literal Version 2009, New Heart English Bible 2010, The New European Version 2010, the Jubilee Bible 2010, The Hebrew Transliteration Scripture 2010, the Names of God Bible 2011, The Orthodox Jewish Bible 2011, The Hebrew Names Version 2012, The Biblos Bible 2013, the ISV (International Standard Version) 2014 which reads: "Its inheritance included Beer-sheba (ALSO KNOWN AS SHEBAH), Moladah...", The Modern English Version 2014, and The Translator's Bible 2014.*
John Gill comments on the passage saying: "Or, Beersheba, that is, Sheba; for so the particle "vau" is sometimes used, and must be so used here; or otherwise, instead of thirteen, it will appear that there are fourteen cities, contrary to the account of them, (Joshua 19:6); so Kimchi and Ben Melech make them one city."
The Bible Critics Continue
WKA-BWQ23: Will Kinney, like Bibles published in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, did the printed 1611 King James Bible say anywhere on it that it had the designation of being Authorized?
No. So what? You dont believe that ANY Bible Authorized or Not Authorized is now or ever was the inerrant words of God.
Bob Enyart and Will Duffy close out their latest round saying: Will, we are not Bible agnostics. We made you an offer above. It is up to you to accept it.
OK. Finally we get to some basic questions to see if Bob E. and Will D. are what I call Bible agnostics or not. Do they know for sure what God wrote, or do they not know (a = not + gnostic = to know) for sure.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is a well known document.
One of the points they make is that inerrancy has to do with recorded historical facts as well as theological truth.
Its found in Article XII - We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science.
As a King James Bible believer (with a real Bible to give to anyone who wants to read it for himself) I agree that the true and infallible words of God must also be 100% historically true.* IF it is not, then we should ask at what point and when does God start to tell us the truth about all those other things found in His Book?
WKQ14- So, Bob E. and Will D. Do you know which of the following historical facts is part of this robust message and Gods perfect word that exists on Earth today you told us you believe in?
I can give a LOT more examples, but these should suffice for now.
The Bible Agnostic Test**
I hear from many unbelievers in the existence of a complete and infallible Bible when they say: "I'm not a bible agnostic! You don't know my heart. How can you say I am a bible agnostic and an unbeliever in the inerrancy of the Bible? *How dare you? You are being judgmental." **
So I ask them if they are willing to take The Bible Agnostic Test. A bible agnostic is someone who does not know (a = not + gnostic = to know) for sure what God said in many instances.
The Bible Babble Buffet Versions
Among these historic details are whether Jeremiah 27:1 reads Jehoiakim (Hebrew texts, RV, ASV, NKJV, KJB, Douay-Rheims) or Zedekiah (RSV, NIV, NASB, ESV, NET, Holman, Catholic New Jerusalem 1985)
*Or whether 2 Samuel 21:8 reads MICHAL (Hebrew texts, KJB, NKJV, RV, ASV, Douay-Rheims) or MERAB (RSV, NIV, NASB, ESV, NET, Holman, Catholic New Jerusalem)
or God smiting 50,070 men in 1 Samuel 6:19 (KJB, RV, ASV, NASB, NET, Douay-Rheims) or 70 men slain (RSV, NIV, NRSV, ESV, Catholic New Jerusalem), or 70 men- 50 chief men (Youngs), or 70 MEN OUT OF 50,000 Holman Standard
Or 1 Samuel 13:1 Here we read: Saul reigned ONE year; and when he had reigned TWO years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand men of Israel. reading - ONE/TWO years (NKJV, KJB, Geneva, Judaica Press Tanach, Orthodox Jewish Bible), or 40/32 (NASB 1972-77) or 30/42 (NASB 1995, NIV), OR 30 years/ 40 years (NET) or _____years and______and two years (RSV, NRSV, ESV 2001 edition, St. Joseph New American Bible 1970, Catholic New Jerusalem 1985), or "was 40 years old...and when he had reigned 2 years" (Amplified bible 1987) or "____years old and reigned 2 years" (Complete Jewish bible, Knox bible) or "was 30 years old...ruled for 42 years" (ISV, Common English Bible) or 32 years old...reigned for 22 years in the 1989 Revised English Bible, or even "was 50 years old and reigned 22 years."!
But wait. Theres more. The ESV 2001 edition had "Saul was________years old when he began to reign, and he reigned____and two years over Israel." But now the 2011 edition of the ESV has come out and it now has the perhaps even more ridiculous reading of "Saul LIVED FOR ONE YEAR AND THEN BECAME KING, and when he had reigned FOR TWO YEARS over Israel, Saul chose 3000 men of Israel...". Think about it. "Saul lived for one year and then became king".
Or 2 Samuel 15:7 forty years (KJB, Hebrew, Geneva, NKJV, NASB, RV, Douay-Rheims) OR four years (NIV, RSV, ESV, NET, Catholic New Jerusalem)
Or Luke 10:1,17 were there 70 sent out to preach (NASB, NKJV, RV, ASV, RSV, NRSV, Holman, ISV, KJB) or 72 sent out? (NIV, ESV, NET, St. Joseph NAB, Catholic New Jerusalem)*
WKQ15- The Lord Jesus said that heaven and earth shall pass away but that His WORDS would not pass away. These words of the Lord Jesus are only found in Matthew 23:14.
Does this verse belong in your robust message, Gods word in a 1000 tongues and the Perfect word of God that exists on Earth today or not? If they are not found in a particular bible version, is that version then deficient and not the Perfect word of God you said you believe in?
Matthew 23:14 - Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
WKQ16 - Is 1 John 5:7, the strongest verse on the Trinity, as it stands in the KJB and in the NKJV you brothers use inspired Scripture and belongs in the perfect word of God that exists on Earth today or not? Yes or No?
*For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 1 John 5:7
WKQ17- Here is one of the over 25 doctrinal issues I have with the modern versions. Which is the true doctrine? Does it matter to you? Is the fine linen the righteousness of the saints (that of Christ) or is the fine linen the righteous acts of the saints?
Revelation 19:8 KJB - "The fine linen is THE RIGHTEOUSNESS of saints" or
ESV, NKJV - "the fine linen is THE RIGHTEOUS ACTS of the saints"?
Jehovah Witness New World Translation - "the fine linen stands for THE RIGHTEOUS ACTS of the holy ones."
I only asked a few questions. I hope you will answer them. Thank you.
patrick jane (February 24th, 2016)
Bob Enyart and Will Duffy have 48 hours from Kinney's post to make their post--6:41 PM Monday
We begin this round grieving and in disgust. Will Kinney's defense of the KJV's contradictory "Thou shalt not kill/murder" (Ex. 20:13 / Mat. 19:18) led us straight to the KJO leader Peter Ruckman's grotesque claim that dismembering the tiniest boys and girls in their mother's wombs is neither a homicide nor a murder. We've documented that Ruckman has taught this from the 1970s through to at least 2005, and that he claims the killing of these children is no crime at all because such a baby is "not a living soul."
From an audio clip of one of his teachings that we will archive with this debate and link to in our final post:
"I teach that a baby is not a living soul until it breathes. … if a man goes by the King James Bible he's bound to be [considered] a heretic these days. And so I don't teach that abortion is murder." -RuckmanRuckman concludes that killing a fetus is not murder based on his (horrific) assertion that the unborn child "is not a living soul."
From the article that we have written that appears on American Right To Life's website titled, What Does the Bible Say about Abortion, (from which Kinney would say nothing, because we're not quoting the KJB), we show that:
The Baby in the Womb is Called a ChildSo who here is true to God's Word, the current godfather of the KJO movement or the so-called "Bible agnostics"?
"Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son." -Mat. 1:23
"Rebekah his wife conceived [and] the children [Jacob and Esau, the most famous twins in history] struggled together within her." -Gen. 25:22
"Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. Now drink no wine or similar drink… for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb…" -Jud. 13:7
"...a woman with child [then] gives birth..." -Ex. 21:22
"He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And... the babe leaped in her womb…" -Lk. 1:15, 41
"Before I formed you in the womb [i.e., when you were a single-celled living being and not yet kid-shaped] I knew you…" –Jeremiah 1:5
Confusing scholarship with name calling, at almost every opportunity the KJO leaders psychoanalyze their opponents. Here, Ruckman goes on to explain that what motivates pro-life activists is that they are "sex obsession neurotics", "floozies", and his psychobabble concludes by describing those who fight for the unborn as "hung up on short skirts".
The Body of Christ generally is awol and an abject failure at defending children in neighborhoods across America from being tormented by Planned Parenthood and killed. So we can't even make the argument that the KJO movement's failure to disfellowship Ruckman is evidence against it. For the Body of Christ showed neither love nor concern to Billy Graham and thus never admonished him for openly supporting, in multiple editions of his Christian Worker's Handbook, the killing of some unborn children. (See the Pro-life Profiles website.)
As other KJV defenders (even in the Grandstands), Kinney ignores that the Hebrew word at Ex. 20:13 is the one for "murder" and says "kill" is better because "murder" only applies to man's law, and not to God's law.
This attempt to prop up the KJV and provide cover for Ruckman's sin is upended by realizing that God's commandments are His commandments and the meaning doesn't change a whit regardless of how governments or cultures change.
God's enduring command Do not commit adultery still stands even though America has decriminalized sex outside of marriage, and Do not steal still stands even though we've codified thievery in our so-called social programs.
When the Roman governor Pliny in about 112 A.D. received from Emperor Trajan approval to punish Christians (who were typically executed for rejecting the Imperial Cult and not burning incense to a deified emperor), not in the least did that lessen their guilt of breaking God's sixth commandment, for:
I heard the angel... saying: "You are righteous, O Lord... because You have judged these things. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and You have given them blood to drink. For it is their just due." Rev. 16:5-6And of those martyred, now in heaven and delivered of their flesh and no longer seduced by nicer-than-God self-righteousness:
I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" -Rev. 6:9-10(In Round 5, from our copy of his updated 2005 text, we will link to an excerpt of Ruckman's ignorant claims that the unborn child is not a person and that it is just an embryonic organism that looks like an animal.)
The KJO camp is dangerous because as idolaters exalt a piece of wood (or a sheet of paper) as their god, therefore, that god, for a surety, lacks moral clarity.
This BR XIV may be the first KJO debate ever where the KJO proponent admits, as Will Kinney has, that:
- the 1611 was not authorized (though his site calls it that 250 times)
- the 1769 Oxford is not God's complete Word
- the 1769 Cambridge cannot be God's inerrant Word because it has an error corrected later (in Kinney's KJB)
- the KJB translators were not inspired
- the 1611 printers were not inspired
- the 1611 KJB text had many errors
- errors were being fixed over time but new errors were also being introduced into the text.
Thus none of the printers have been inspired. So where's their argument?
Will Kinney's Latest Questions to Bob & Will Duffy
BWA-WKQ15: Mat. 23:14 "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation."
Will Kinney, as we've demonstrated before, the Bible is robust. Matthew 23:14 is missing from some translations who are translating from the Greek text-type called the Critical Text. While we align with the Byzantine text-type (which has 2,000 differences from the KJ's Textus Receptus) and not the Critical Text's Alexandrian text-type, Christ's teaching in Matthew 23:14 is preserved even in the Alexandrian text-type Bibles! See below and you will find Christ's teaching in Mark 12 and Luke 20 and it's verbatim to Matthew 23:14.
NIV Mark 12:40
"They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely."
NIV Luke 20:47 "They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely."
BWA-WKQ16: Is 1 John 5:7, the strongest verse on the Trinity, as it stands in the KJB and in the NKJV you brothers "use" inspired Scripture and belongs in "the perfect word of God that exists on Earth today" or not? Yes or No?
1 John 5:7-8 contains text that is not found in a handful of very late manuscripts. In fact, Erasmus, who compiled the Greek text-type family behind the KJV, the Textus Receptus, did not include the phrase "in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth" from verses 7 & 8 because he had not a single manuscript with these words. It was not until the third edition of the TR that these words were added back in due to pressure from the Catholic church and a possible fraudulent manuscript being presented to Erasmus.
We do not believe the phrase above, which is included in 1 John 5:7-8 is original. But as we've already demonstrated, God is able to create a robust message which can withstand these issues. Bob Enyart has proving the deity of Christ in his ministry for over 40 years and has never referenced this verse.
God's Message Is Robust: And if you're looking for the first phrase, it appears six times in the NIV, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees" in Matthew 23.
BWA-WKQ17: Here is one of the over 25 doctrinal issues I have with the modern versions. Which is the true doctrine? Does it matter to you? Is the fine linen the righteousness of the saints (that of Christ) or is the fine linen "the righteous acts" of the saints?
Will, either English translation here is perfectly fine.
Comment from the Grandstands: We appreciate all the encouragement from the Grandstands including from "Zach_":
I wasn't planning on replying, commenting, or conversing regarding this debate, especially since I wasn't a member. I had to comment, though, and applaud Bob and Will D. for their excellent responses. They were beyond expectations and, honestly, it is unfortunate that you must waste them on Mr. Kinney's sloppy posts.We commiserate with many of our readers over the bad behavior of our opponent but we'd like you to know that in our opinion, this is the kind of debate you would get from most of the KJO leaders. In Dr. James White's excellent book, The King James Only Controversy, he gives examples of their terrible behavior. Until this debate we had never studied the KJO controversy and only were aware of it through contact with the militant divisiveness that they spread through the body of Christ. (One of our relatives, a member of Bob's immediate family, was taught the KJO message in her midwestern church; and another attended a South Carolina church that split over the KJO cult-like zeal of some of its members.)
We can see the people who are actually trying in this debate and those who are not. Thank you for your patience with Mr. Kinney! I hope that the result of this debate will show the true scholarship of the KJVO position.
The greatest compliment that we have ever received for our Pro-life Profiles website is the Massachusetts history teacher who wrote to us about our (shocking) Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and National Right To Life reports who said:
Bob,Thank you G.S. Yes, whatever your hand finds to do, do it as unto the Lord!
The profiles on all those politicians are UNMATCHED in detail and faithfulness to the Truth. You produce research as if you care that God is watching. This has edified me so much.
With the utmost gratitude,
G.S. [name withheld]
Will Kinney Takes Our Offer; Identifies His Bible
WKA-BWQ20: "Will Kinney, will you take our offer and specifically identify [a] King James Bibles, by publisher and year, that meets your standard? And if you do, we will specifically identify a Bible currently available that meets the standard that we've been proclaiming."
Kinney: "I can only give you the information I have... in my Bible. It is called: The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by his majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in Churches. *** privilegio [with privilege] Cambridge University Press. Concord 8vo wide margin edition.Thank you Will. We've just spoke to the purchaser for Bible Discount. You own the Cambridge Concord Bible. The Concords are their Bibles that omit the Aprocrypha. Your edition was published in the 1990s but at least by 1992. It's text was settled on in 1950s and is primarily based on the 1769 Cambridge edition. But before we get to identifying the Bible that we promised you, we have some details to cover.
It then goes on to say: Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building. Trumpington Square, Cambridge. There is no date in my Bible as to when it was published. The only thing it says is: This Bible is printed and published by Cambridge University Press, The Queen's Printer, Under Royal Letters Patent. That is all the information I can give about it, because that is all there is. I bought it at the Discount Bible store... that used to be there in Commerce City on Hwy 2 about 15 years ago, but has since moved."
Show Us the KJO Originals: Will Kinney, you have spent years ridiculing Christians who read other Bibles who say what most of the church says, and what we teach, about the original autographs. God insured that when Moses wrote, as with Isaiah, the four Evangelists, Paul, James, etc., that the text they produced was His inspired inerrant Word. So then you harangue believers by asking them: Show us those originals if you can; let's go out and purchase that inerrant text; you don't really believe in a currently existing (present tense!) inerrant text do you; you don't have an inerrant text do? Will, repeatedly in this debate and throughout the years you have said that the original copy of the 1611 that was produced by the translators was destroyed in a fire. (That may be.) You further argue that the errors in the KJB were being fixed (while other errors are being made, as you've admitted in this debate). Further, we have shown the readers just a glimpse of the differences between KJ Bibles out of those documented in thick and fine-print research texts that run many hundreds of pages long. The KJO camp is nothing if not self-contradictory and cannot survive without its special pleading of blatantly exempting itself from its own accusations against all other Bibles. You've never seen the originals Will Kinney for the King James Bible. You don't own them. You can't go out and buy them. Like the other KJO leaders, you're just a hypocrite. And a bully.
Job 17:8. Matthew 25:40. Proverbs 11:9. Romans 16:17-18.
Taking a Moment for More Mimicking: Recall that we mimicked a KJO leader to respond to Kinney's list of 26 modern-version problem translations by explaining that they were all printer errors. We expect those errors to be fixed over the next 150 years. To this Will Kinney objected by saying that the modern translators had admitted to intentionally making those specific renderings. Well, as you were not answering our BWQ9 (about the printers' work being read by millions, but the translators work only being read by the printers), you wrote, "It is THE TEXT that is inspired; not the translators". And so as KJO advocates have said elsewhere, you all don't care what the translators' said; you only care what the text says. Same for us. Staying in character as KJO mimics, we reply to your objection: us too. We don't care what the translators of the modern versions say. The modern translators were not inspired. But that doesn't matter. Any errors are printing errors. In another 150 years (or maybe 400 years, since editions of the KJB are still changing, fixing some problems, introducing others, etc.) one of these modern versions will be purified (to use KJO language). Then you (or descendants) will see that we were right all along and that it was one of these modern versions that was the true Bible all along (except that, by then, it'll no longer be a modern version). And if you disagree with us, just pray and one day you may be able to feel that what we are saying is 100% true! Or not.
We Offered to Name a Specific Bible If You Did: And you did. Thank you for that. Before we identify the specific Bible we stand behind as God's inspired Word, first we want to make clear that we were being literal when we said in our opening statement that God's Word has filled the world in a thousand tongues. For years now, if someone clicks on "The Gospel" tab atop our websites they'll arrive at a page that appends /gospel to, for example, our KGOV radio show site or to the American Right To Life site (which we write for). You will find there links to the Word of God by way of a Gospel presentation in over 1,300 languages and dialects. For those languages beginning with the letter A (as we refer to them in English), this presentation, which includes much of the Gospel of Luke, is available in Abidji, Afrikaans, Agarabi, Akeu, Albanian, Amandab, Anuak, Arabic, Aramba, Armenian, Assyrian, Ateso, Aukaans, Avar, Awadhi, Ayta, Azerbaijani, Aztec Nahuati Guerro, and in sixty-five other languages. Then there's 110 languages that begin with letter B. And so on.
So a "Thousand Tongues" was an Understatement: In the summer of 2014 Bob E. traveled to Alaska on a cruise for Real Science Radio to interview those scientists leading the increasingly successful battle against the the theory of evolution. At sea I spent hours with the translator from Wycliffe who has the sobering responsibility of ensuring that translations of the Genesis creation account are true to the original texts and are not biased by particular theories on origins. As of this debate Wycliffe Bible Translators and their partners have brought the New Testament into 1,333 languages! Often these include various portions of the Old Testament. Virtually always beginning with a Gospel, one or more books of the New Testament have so far been translated into 2,883 languages! Worldwide today there are about 7,000 languages in active use, yet of the estimated seven billion people alive, more than five and a half billion can read the Bible in their own language! Currently, complete Bibles are available in 554 languages and they hope to have begun translation projects in all the world's languages by 2025, Lord willing! There are 2,195 translation projects underway right now with Wycliffe having already identified another 1,860 languages for which they are actively looking for translators.
What Most Christians Celebrate the KJO Camp Condemns: Perhaps you can be one! William Tyndale was martyred after publishing his English Bible in 1534, and John Wycliffe escaped that fate nearly 120 years earlier in 1395. Today thousands of his namesake's translators are working to bring God's inspired Word to a world in desperate need of knowing Jesus Christ. These men and women are not bringing perversions into existence. Rather, they are bringing the living water to a parched world. The Bible is available on audio through an outreach called Faith Comes By Hearing which provides audio scriptures in 844 languages. And for handy text translations the youversion app so far supports over 800 languages and has been downloaded 191 million times (including onto our own phones)! You could sooner put your shoulder to the Sun and stop it from moving in its course, as has been observed, than you could eradicate God's Word in all these different languages.
We Stand Behind this Precious Bible: Here is the Bible we stand behind as the inspired Word of God. It has been used to bring one of our dear friends to the Lord, as it has brought the Gospel to countless others. In 1590 pastor Gaspar Karoli led this translation into the Hungarian tongue and on the cover below you can make out the date in Roman numerals (MDXC). To get the readily available modern printing we here identify it exactly. From Amazon, purchase the 1991 edition Amazon standard identification number (ASIN) B002BEPWCY which you can find just by searching for: Hungarian Bible Karoli Gaspar.
WIll Kinney, if you find any report that the translator Gaspar said that his translation may not be perfect, please don't fret over that because the 1611 KJ translators said the same, not only in their preface but thousands of times over as they incorporated those admissions directly into their 1611 translation work. They provided more than 2,150 alternative translations in the margins of the KJV because they were unsure of how to translate the text. And in the margins they identified 67 variant readings, indicating that they were uncertain even as to the correct underlying Hebrew or Greek wording that they were supposed to be translating.
BWQ24: Will Kinney, regarding your utterly contradictory claim that God produced an inspired, 100% perfect, inerrant text from printers that you admit made errors, and from translators that you admit were not inspired, who brought about a text that you admit had errors, can you include these three underlined admissions of your in explaining how this all adds up to the world's only supernaturally preserved inspired text?
At a science conference in Dallas this summer, with scores of scientists and engineers (some of whom work at world-class secular science institutions), who all oppose neo-Darwinian evolution, Bob E. became friends with a Hungarian molecular biologist and invited him to travel from the university that he teaches at to come to Denver to be interviewed on Real Science Radio. Dr. Mark Carson accepted the invite for October 9th. In preparation for our KJO debate, Bob had asked Mark if he could bring along his personal Bible (which of course he would have done anyway). As Spurgeon noted, a Bible that's falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn't. For our debate, Bob took these photographs of Mark's personal treasure:
Does the Hungarian Bible Effectively Preserve God's Word? What if the Hungarians have an imperfect translation? You go to war with the army you have. Likewise, from the Scriptures themselves we know that God is happy to have His Hungarian children use the Bible they have. If others were to improve the translation by access to more manuscript evidence and better resources, then undoubtedly the angels in heaven would celebrate that too! (The old canard from Plato that anything perfect cannot change was exploded by the baby Jesus, who was perfect in everyway and changed in countless ways as He grew.) God could celebrate the Hungarian use of His Scriptures because He was able (was He not) to produce a robust message that could remain effective even as reproduced by mere men (i.e., without the need for further divine intervention).
Jesus Used the Imperfect Septuagint Translation: Jesus (and the Apostles, but we'll get to them next) quoted from the Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. There are many in the KJO camp who reject the early existence of that Greek translation. This claim reminds me, Bob Enyart, of when our group was sharing the Gospel with Palestinian Muslims in the Old City of Jerusalem. I pointed over toward the Temple Mount and mentioned the temple that had been built there. The Palestinians stopped us at that to insist that the Jews had never built a temple in Jerusalem. Never. That shockingly uneducated claim caught us off guard. Of course King Solomon built the temple there about 1,500 years before Muhammad had even been born. It was destroyed by Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar, rebuilt following a decree from Persian King Cyrus with help rendered by King Artaxerxes and work done by Zerubbabel, governor of a Persian province and grandson of a King of Judah. Five hundred years later this second temple then was dramatically renovated by Herod the Great. The more enormous of the massive stones still sit one atop the other where this evil monarch, for his own glory (but actually, in preparation for the Lord), erected the walls, including the Western Wall, to enlarge and strengthen Mt. Moriah for his opulent 46-year (John 2:20) refurbishing project. In 29 A.D. Jesus predicted the temple's destruction and the Roman general Titus obliged in A.D. 70. While the evidence is of a different nature for the early translation of the Old Testament into Greek as compared to that for the Jewish temples, it requires a similar ignorance of literary history to deny the existence of that body of work, the Septuagint itself being an extraordinary testimony to the influence of Hebrew Scriptures beyond the borders of Israel, and a preparing of the way of the Lord to the Hellenized (Greek-speaking) world. Yet KJO advocate Peter Ruckman denied the early existence of the Septuagint, and was followed in that embarrassing wilful ignorance by Gail Riplinger, and by Will Kinney, etc. However, Jesus Himself approved of the Septuagint, as we know because He quoted from it. Even though the Septuagint was far from a perfect translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (for, a perfect translation from one language into another is a fiction not unlike a round square).
Apostles Quote Imperfect Septuagint O.T. Within New Testament: The New Testament's use of the Septuagint refutes the KJO camp.
BWQ25: Will Kinney (please try to understand this question before answering it; you are not good at hypotheticals), if in fact the New Testament records Jesus and the Apostles quoting from a popular but imperfect Greek translation of the Hebrew, rather than from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, would that demonstrate that unlike you and the KJO camp, God is not uptight about a perfect translation?
The following is the translators' explanation that the imperfect Greek Septuagint was used by the Apostles as they quoted the Old Testament in writing the New Testament.
Again the 1611 Translators Testify Against the King James Only Camp:
"No cause therefore why the word translated should bee denied to be the word, or forbidden to be currant, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting foorth of it. For what ever was perfect under the Sunne, where Apostles or Apostolike men, that is, men indued with an extraordinary measure of Gods spirit, and priviledged with the priviledge of infallibilitie, had not their hand? ... So, by the story of Ezrah, and the prophesie of Haggai it may be gathered, that the Temple build by Zerubbabel after the returne from Babylon, was by no meanes to bee compared to the former built by Solomon (for they that remembred the former, wept when they considered the latter)... The like wee are to thinke of Translations. The translation of the Seventie [from hence the name Septuagint which is from the Latin for seven - ten times] dissenteth from the Originall in many places, neither doeth it come neere it, for perspicuitie, gratvitie, majestie; yet which of the Apostles did condemne it? Condemne it? Nay, they used it, (as it is apparent, and as Saint Jerome and most learned men doe confesse) which they would not have done, nor by their example of using it, so grace and commend it to the Church, if it had bene unworthy the appellation and name of the word of God."BWQ26: Will Kinney, please try to answer this question. Ruckman, Riplinger, others within the KJO camp, and you in your own article "No LXX" all reject that the Septuagint existed in the time of the Lord. So, did the 1611 translators agree with the opinion expressed today within the KJO camp that the Septuagint was not quoted within the New Testament, or do the translators by their preface in the 1611 KJ agree with KJO opponents who affirm the existence of the Septuagint in the time of the Lord?
Do KJO Leaders Have Any Credibility Left Claiming Printers Errors? The answer is no, based on Will Kinney's latest attempt to blame the much maligned printers.
And continuing:
BWQ27: When you claim that we have never seen the originals, you have never seen the originals, you claim they were burned in that London fire in, so how is it that more and more changes are being made to the text by printers, without those originals available to be accessed?
Manuscript 98, John Bois' Notes, and Some Funny Mistakes: The KJO camp's absolutism is its weakness. For any errors, and even the tiniest changes, falsify their claims. For our purposes, the notes of translator John Bois only document that spellings that were explicitly indicated by the translators (as in Phil. 2:20; Heb. 9:20, and Rev. 5:5) that appeared in the 1611 KJV were later changed (by both Oxford and Cambridge, including in their 1769 editions). The following table lists a few renderings that the translators wanted, as is known from the surviving MS 98. These translators' edits then appeared as the text of the 1611, but were later changed by editors of future versions, as noted below. And finally, of course, any errors that still exist in the translation of the KJB falsify the KJO claim. Thus, to be a KJO advocate, you have to insist that the obvious errors in the second half of this chart, that appear in most all King James Bibles, are the correct translations.
The Tiniest Changes Utterly Refute the KJO Claim of Perfection
Last edited by Bob Enyart; November 9th, 2015 at 07:08 PM. Reason: Added the word "this" in our question #26.
The Bob Enyart Live talk show airs at KGOV.com weekdays at 5 pm E.T. Also, same time, same station, check out Theology Thursday (.com) and on Fridays, Real Science Radio (.com) a.k.a. rsr.org. All shows are available 24/7 and you can call us at at 1-800-8Enyart.
That's it for round 4!
Will Kinney is now on the clock. He must make his round 5 post within 48 hours of Bob's posting.
Hi all. Since this is my last post in this debate, I wish to thank everyone involved and those who have been following along in this discussion about the most important issue of our time - Has God given us an inerrant and perfect Bible or not?
Hopefully we have given you some useful information to consider what it is that you really believe about The Bible.
Bob.E. and Will D. open their next response with an emotionally charged, inaccurate and misguided guilt by association argument about some of the errant beliefs of Peter Ruckman and his views about an unborn child.
First of all, there is no such thing as THE KJO leader. There are thousands of us King James Bible believers and most of the ones I have ever come into contact with are not Ruckmanites or followers of Gail Ripplinger or any other big name King James Bible promoter. Many of them have never read their books at all.
I most definitely am not a follower of either Mr. Ruckman or Mrs. Ripplinger, and from a theological perspective both Bob Enyart and Will Duffy have far more in common with both of them than I do.
Nor have I called people floozies nor sex obsession neurotics. But I have referred to both Bob Enyart and Will Duffy as bible agnostics (they dont know for sure what God said in many places) and unbelievers in the inerrancy of any Bible in any language, precisely because that is what they are. Something is only slanderous if it is not true. I have not slandered either one of these men, both of whom I consider to be fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
If they are not unbelievers in the existence of an inerrant Bible in any language, then all they have to do is to tell us which one they really believe IS.
I totally agree with them that the child in the womb is a living person. But it is not the King James Bible that says in Exodus 20:13 you shall not murder, and since abortion is not legally murder, then people can justify their sin if they wish to, using one of the modern versions.
My inerrant King James Bible says Thou shalt not kill. and aborting a baby is definitely killing them.
Bob and Will D. again err when they categorically state - Kinney ignores that the Hebrew word at Exodus 20:13 is the one for murder and says kill is better because murder only applies to mans law, and not to Gods law.
Two things are wrong here. The Hebrew word obviously CAN mean to kill, not only because MANY other Bibles have translated it that way, but even the modern versions like the NIV, ESV, NKJV and NASB sometimes translate this same word as to kill.
I previously gave them a list of some of the Bibles that read just like the KJB, both in English an numerous foreign language versions, including the NIV in Spanish and in Portuguese, but apparently this did not make a dent in their assertion that the Hebrew word cannot mean to kill.
Regarding Exodus 20:13, not only does the King James Bible read "Thou shalt not kill" but so also do Tyndale 1534 (he translated Exodus before his death), Coverdale 1535, The Great Bible 1540 - "Thou shalt not kyll.", Matthew's Bible 1549, Bishops' Bible 1568, the Geneva Bible 1599,*the Douay-Rheims of 1610,*Webster's translation 1833, the Longman Version 1841, the Brenton Bible 1851, Lesser Bible 1853, the Smith Bible 1876, The Revised English Bible 1877, the Sharpe Bible 1883, the 1936 Hebrew Publishing Company version, Darby 1890, the American Standard Version 1901, The Improved Bible 1913,*the Douay 1950,*the Revised Standard Version 1952, Lamsa's 1933 translation of the Syriac Peshitta - "You shall not KILL.", the St. Joseph New American Bible 1970, the New Life Version 1969, the Updated Bible Version 2003 - "You shall not KILL.", The Word of Yah 1993,*the KJV 21st Century Version 1994, Green's Modern KJV 1998, the Third Millennium Bible 1998, God's First Truth 1999 "you shall not KILL", The Complete Apostle's Bible by Paul Espositio 2005 - "You shall not KILL.", The Revised Geneva Bible 2005, the Context Group Version 2007, the Heritage Bible 2003, Bond Slave Version 2012, Hebraic Transliteration Scripture 2010, The Work of God's Children Illustrated Bible 2011, *the Common English Bible of 2011 - "Do not KILL.", The New Brenton Translation 2012 - "You shall not KILL.", The Revised Douay-Rheims Bible 2012, *and the Katapi New Standard Bible 2012 - "You shall not KILL."*
Bob and Will D. then try to justify their You shall not MURDER. versions by telling us that Do not commit adultery still stands even though America has decriminalized sex outside of marriage, and Do not steal still stands even though weve codified thievery in our so-called social programs.
Yes, Bob and Will, I agree. But these commands are found in the Bible itself, and if you steal or commit adultery, then you are going against Gods word in all bible versions.
But it is not the King James Bible that provides the loophole by saying You shall not murder. Here the person who wants to justify aborting a baby can do so without violating what he thinks his bible teaches. And that is the difference you have failed to grasp.
Bob E. and Will D. next take just two of the four specific questions I asked them about regarding certain verses. They completely ignored my charge that they are Bible agnostics, when they assured us that they are not.
I will repeat these the sections they ignored. Maybe they will address them in their final round, though I doubt it.
Bob Enyart and Will Duffy closed out their previous round saying: Will, we are not Bible agnostics.
To whom I responded -
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is a well known document.
One of the points they make is that inerrancy has to do with recorded historical facts as well as theological truth.
Its found in Article XII - We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science.
As a King James Bible believer (with a real Bible to give to anyone who wants to read it for himself) I agree that the true and infallible words of God must also be 100% historically true.* IF it is not, then we should ask at what point and when does God start to tell us the truth about all those other things found in His Book?
WKQ14- So, Bob E. and Will D. Do you know which of the following historical facts is part of this robust message and Gods perfect word that exists on Earth today you told us you believe in?
I can give a LOT more examples, but these should suffice for now.
The Bible Agnostic Test
I hear from many unbelievers in the existence of a complete and infallible Bible when they say: "I'm not a bible agnostic! You don't know my heart. How can you say I am a bible agnostic and an unbeliever in the inerrancy of the Bible? How dare you? You are being judgmental."
So I ask them if they are willing to take The Bible Agnostic Test. A bible agnostic is someone who does not know (a = not + gnostic = to know) for sure what God said in many instances.
The Bible Babble Buffet Versions
Among these historic details are whether Jeremiah 27:1 KJV reads Jehoiakim (Hebrew texts, RV, ASV, NKJV, KJB, Douay-Rheims) or Zedekiah (RSV, NIV, NASB, ESV, NET, Holman, Catholic New Jerusalem 1985)
*Or whether 2 Samuel 21:8 KJV reads MICHAL (Hebrew texts, KJB, NKJV, RV, ASV, Douay-Rheims) or MERAB (RSV, NIV, NASB, ESV, NET, Holman, Catholic New Jerusalem)
or God smiting 50,070 men in 1 Samuel 6:19 KJV (KJB, RV, ASV, NASB, NET, Douay-Rheims) or 70 men slain (RSV, NIV, NRSV, ESV, Catholic New Jerusalem), or 70 men- 50 chief men (Youngs), or 70 MEN OUT OF 50,000 Holman Standard
Or 1 Samuel 13:1KJV Here we read: Saul reigned ONE year; and when he had reigned TWO years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand men of Israel. reading - ONE/TWO years (NKJV, KJB, Geneva, Judaica Press Tanach, Orthodox Jewish Bible), or 40/32 (NASB 1972-77) or 30/42 (NASB 1995, NIV), OR 30 years/ 40 years (NET) or _____years and______and two years (RSV, NRSV, ESV 2001 edition, St. Joseph New American Bible 1970, Catholic New Jerusalem 1985), or "was 40 years old...and when he had reigned 2 years" (Amplified bible 1987) or "____years old and reigned 2 years" (Complete Jewish bible, Knox bible) or "was 30 years old...ruled for 42 years" (ISV, Common English Bible) or 32 years old...reigned for 22 years in the 1989 Revised English Bible, or even "was 50 years old and reigned 22 years."!
But wait. Theres more. The ESV 2001 edition had "Saul was________years old when he began to reign, and he reigned____and two years over Israel." But now the 2011 edition of the ESV has come out and it now has the perhaps even more ridiculous reading of "Saul LIVED FOR ONE YEAR AND THEN BECAME KING, and when he had reigned FOR TWO YEARS over Israel, Saul chose 3000 men of Israel...". Think about it. "Saul lived for one year and then became king".
Or 2 Samuel 15:7KJV forty years (KJB, Hebrew, Geneva, NKJV, NASB, RV, Douay-Rheims) OR four years (NIV, RSV, ESV, NET, Catholic New Jerusalem)
Or Luke 10:1,17KJV were there 70 sent out to preach (NASB, NKJV, RV, ASV, RSV, NRSV, Holman, ISV, KJB) or 72 sent out? (NIV, ESV, NET, St. Joseph NAB, Catholic New Jerusalem)*
WKQ15- The Lord Jesus said that heaven and earth shall pass away but that His WORDS would not pass away. These words of the Lord Jesus are only found in Matthew 23:14KJV.
Does this verse belong in your robust message, Gods word in a 1000 tongues and the Perfect word of God that exists on Earth today or not? If they are not found in a particular bible version, is that version then deficient and not the Perfect word of God you said you believe in?
AND they ignored this one as well -
WKQ17- Here is one of the over 25 doctrinal issues I have with the modern versions. Which is the true doctrine? Does it matter to you? Is the fine linen the righteousness of the saints (that of Christ) or is the fine linen the righteous acts of the saints?
Revelation 19:8 KJB - "The fine linen is THE RIGHTEOUSNESS of saints" or
ESV, NKJV - "the fine linen is THE RIGHTEOUS ACTS of the saints"?
Jehovah Witness New World Translation - "the fine linen stands for THE RIGHTEOUS ACTS of the holy ones."
The Two Examples they did address.
BWA-WKQ15: Matthew 23:14 -Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
I then asked Bob and Will D - Does this verse belong in your robust message, Gods word in a 1000 tongues and the Perfect word of God that exists on Earth today or not? If they are not found in a particular bible version, is that version then deficient and not the Perfect word of God you said you believe in?
Bob E. and Will D. respond: Will Kinney, as weve demonstrated before, the Bible is robust. Matthew 23:14 is missing from some translations who are translating from the Greek text-type called the Critical Text. While we align with the Byzantine text-type (which has 2,000 differences from the KJs Textus Receptus) and not the Critical Texts Alexandrian text-type, Christs teaching in Matthew 23:14 is preserved even in the Alexandrian text-type Bibles! See below and you will find Christs teaching in Mark 12 and Luke 20 and its verbatim to Matthew 23:14.
NIV Mark 12:40
They devour widows houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.
NIV Luke 20:47 They devour widows houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.
Gentlemen, First of all, though Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47 are similar, they are not the same nor are they in the same context as the Lords scathing and directly addressed to them Woe unto YOU, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for YE devour widows houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore YE shall receive the greater condemnation.
Our Lord Jesuss public ministry lasted about 3 years and He often gave different or similar teaching to different groups of people at different times.
It is not an issue of Well, is there something ballpark similar to this verse found somewhere else in the Bible Babble Buffet Versions? But what did He actually say in this context on this occasion?
You dont know and dont really seem to care. Yet you use the NKJV and tell us you align with the Byzantine text-type (which has 2,000 differences from the KJs Textus Receptus) and not the Critical Texts Alexandrian text-type.
But you apparently have no real CONVICTIONS as to which is the correct, inspired and inerrant TEXT.
And that is why you guys are Bible agnostics and unbelievers in the existence of an inerrant Bible. Your hypocrisy is further seen in the next example where you gentlemen use the NKJV, but obviously do not believe it.
BWA-WKQ16: Is 1 John 5:7, the strongest verse on the Trinity, as it stands in the KJB and in the NKJV you brothers use inspired Scripture and belongs in the perfect word of God that exists on Earth today or not? Yes or No?
Bob E. and Will D. respond: 1 John 5:7 contains text that is not found in a handful of very late manuscripts. In fact, Erasmus, who compiled the Greek text-type family behind the KJV, the Textus Receptus, did not include the phrase "in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth" from verses 7 & 8 because he had not a single manuscript with these words. It was not until the third edition of the TR that these words were added back in due to pressure from the Catholic church and a possible fraudulent manuscript being presented to Erasmus.
We do not believe the phrase above, which is included in 1 John 5:7-8 is original. But as we've already demonstrated, God is able to create a robust message which can withstand these issues. Bob Enyart has proving the deity of Christ in his ministry for over 40 years and has never referenced this verse.
Gentlemen, first of all, it may have been a printing error (you fellas DO have your share of problems with these, you know) or a typo or perhaps you just dont know what you are talking about. But this text is NOT a text that is not found in a handful of very late manuscripts.
Your information here is completely wrong. Hopefully this was just some typo and not the result of your vast amounts of research.
Since I am now allowed to include links to my articles, I will place it at the end of this final response so that those who are interested can see the evidence for this hotly disputed and very important verse of inspired Scripture that you do not believe is supposed to be in The Bible, even the ones that you tell us you prefer.
But I will show you just parts of my article on this verse and hopefully it will give others a desire to look into it some more.
In the sovereignty of God 1 John 5:7 as it stands in the King James Bible is also in the following Bible versions in a thousand tongues all over this earth.
English Bibles that contain all these words in 1 John 5:7-8 are*the first complete English Bible ever made by John Wycliffe in 1380. It was in Tyndales New Testament of 1525 - "For ther are thre which beare recorde*in heuen the father the worde and the wholy goost. And these thre are one.", the Coverdale Bible of 1535, the Great Bible 1540, Matthew's Bible 1549, the Bishops' Bible 1568, the Geneva Bible from 1557 to 1599 -"For there are three, which beare recorde*in heauen, the Father, the Worde, and the holy Ghost: and these three are one.",*the Beza New Testament 1599, the Douay-Rheims of 1582, and the Authorized Version of 1611.
It is also in the Bill Bible 1671, Mace's New Testament of 1729, John Wesley translation in 1755, the Clarke N.T. 1795, *and Thomas Howeis N.T. 1795. It was included in The Revised Translation 1815, The Patrick Paraphrase Bible 1822, Webster's 1833 translation, The Longman Version 1841, The Hammond N.T. 1845, The Morgan N.T. 1848, The Hewett N.T. 1850, The Commonly Received Version 1851, James Murdock's translation of the Syriac Peshitta done in 1852 - "For there are three that testify in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one.", Julia Smith Translation 1855, The Calvin Version 1856, the Kenrick N.T. 1862, The Revised New Testament 1862, The Smith Bible 1876, *and Young's literal in 1898.*
All the words are found in the NKJV 1982, the New Life Bible 1969,*the Amplified Bible of 1987,*the 1994 KJV 21st Century Version, The Revised Webster Bible 1995, The Interlinear Greek New Testament 1997 (Larry Pierce), the Third*Millennium*Bible 1998, Lawrie Translation 1998, Worldwide English N.T. 1998, The Worldwide*English New Testament 1998, God's First Truth 1999,*Green's 'literal' translation of 2000, The Tomson New Testament 2002, the 2009 Public Domain Version, the Easter/Greek Orthodox Bible 2008, the Heritage Bible 2003, The Resurrection Life N.T. 2005, the Complete Apostle's Bible 2005, The Revised Geneva Bible 2005,*The Apostolic Bible 2006, the*Catholic Public Domain Version 2009, the 2010 English Jubilee Bible, the Bond Slave Version 2009, the Online Interlinear Bible 2010 by André de Mol, the Hebraic Transliteration Scripture 2010, The Holy Scriptures VW Edition 2010.
Other English Bibles that include the whole verse are The Work of God Children's Bible 2011, Revised Douay-Rheims bible 2012, Interlinear Hebrew-Greek Scriptures 2012 (Mebust), the Knox Bible of 2012 - "Thus we have a threefold warrant in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, three who are yet one.", the Biblos Interlinear Bible 2013, *The International Standard Version 2014 - For there are three witnesses in heaventhe Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. and*The Holy Bible, and the Modern English Version 2014 - 7*There are three who testify in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and the three are one. 8*There are three that testify on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are toward the one.
The Westminster Confession of Faith 1646 in Chapter II,* Of God, and the Holy Trinity gives 1 John 5:7 as their first reference.
III. In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding: the Son is eternally begotten of the Father: the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.
1 John v. 7; Matt. iii. 16, 17; Matt. xxviii. 19; 2 Cor. xiii. 14; John i. 14, 18; John xv. 26; Gal. iv. 6.
The London Baptist Confession of 1689 also specifically mentions 1 John 5:7 as being the first verse used to teach and support the doctrine of the Trinity. They certainly believed it was inspired Scripture.
The Belgic Confession of 1561 states, The testimonies of the Holy Scriptures, which teach us to believe in this Holy Trinity, are written in many places of the Old Testament, which need not be enumerated but only chosen with discretion There are three who bear witness in heaven the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit and these three are one. In all these passages we are fully taught that there are three persons in the one and only divine essence. And although this doctrine surpasses human understanding, we nevertheless believe it now, through the Word, waiting to know and enjoy it fully in heaven. (The Belgic Confession, (CRTA), article 9.)
The*Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 says, Since there is but one only divine essence, why speakest thou of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? Answer: Because God has so revealed himself in his word, [b] that these three distinct persons are the one only true and eternal God. Footnote b says, 1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one *(The Heidelberg Catechism, (CRTA), section 8.)
The Catholic Connection
The entire reading was included in the earlier Catholic bibles like the 1582 Douay-Rheims and as late as the Douay version of 1950, but removed from later Catholic versions (St. Joseph NAB 1970, New Jerusalem bible 1985), but now once again the 2009 The Sacred Bible Public Domain Version has gone back to include it!
Foreign language Bibles that contain all these words are: the Clementine Vulgate - "*Quoniam tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in cælo: Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt.",*the Spanish Sagradas Escrituras 1569, Cipriano de Valera 1602, *the Spanish Reina Valera 1909, 1960 and 1995 editions,*La Nueva Biblia de los Hispanos 2005, La Biblia de las Américas 1997 (put out by the Lockman Foundation, the same people who give us the NASB that omits it) and the 2010 Spanish Reina Valera Gomez bible,*"Tres son los que dan testimonio*en el cielo: el Padre, el Verbo y el Espíritu Santo; y estos tres son uno."*
The words are included in the Italian Diodati Bible of*of 1603 and 1649 and the New Diodati of 1991- "nel cielo: il Padre, la Parola e lo Spirito Santo; e questi tre sono uno.".*
1 John 5:7-8, is in the 1535 Olivetan Bible, the French Martin 1744, the French Ostervald 1996 and La Bible de l'Epée 2005, -"dans le ciel, le Père, la Parole, et le Saint-Esprit, et ces trois-là sont un.",*the Portuguese de Almeida of 1681 and A Bíblia Sagrada em Portugués and the Portuguese Almeida Corrigida 2009 - "Porque três säo os que testificam*no céu: o Pai, a Palavra, e o Espírito Santo; e estes três säo um.".
*Other foreign language Bible that include these words are the Afrikaans Bible 1853 - "die hemel: die Vader, die Woord en die Heilige Gees, en hierdie drie is een", Smith and van Dyck's Arabic Bible - " فان الذين يشهدون في السماء هم ثلاثة الآب والكلمة والروح القدس وهؤلاء الثلاثة هم ", the Basque N.T.; the Western Armenian N.T. "Արդարեւ երե՛ք են՝ որ կը վկայեն երկինքի մէջ.- Հայրը, Խօսքը եւ Սուրբ Հոգին, ու այս երեքը մէկ են",* Czech Kralicka Bible, Dutch Staten Vertaling "Want Drie zijn er, Die getuigen in den hemel, de Vader, het Woord en de Heilige Geest; en deze Drie zijn Een.", Finnish 1776 "Sillä kolme ovat, jotka todistavat taivaassa: Isä, Sana ja Pyhä Henki, ja ne kolme yksi ovate",* the Hungarian Karoli, Icelandic 1981, Latvian N.T. "Jo trīs ir, kas dod liecību debesīs: Tēvs, Vārds un Svētais Gars; un ie trīs ir viens.", Maori -"Tokotoru hoki nga kaiwhakaatu i te rangi, ko te Matua, ko te Kupu, ko te Wairua Tapu: kotahi ano enei tokotoru., Lithuanian "Mat yra trys liudytojai danguje: Tėvas, odis ir ventoji Dvasia; ir itie trys yra viena." and the Tagalog Ang Salita ng Diyos Bible of 1998 - "May tatlong nagpapatotoo sa langit, ang Ama, ang Salita, ang Banal na Espiritu at ang tatlong ito ay iisa."
The words are in the Romanian Cornilescu Bible and the 2014 Romanian Fidela Bible - "Pentru ca trei sunt cei care aduc marturie in cer: Tatal, Cuvantul si Duhul Sfant; si acestia trei una sunt.", Russian Synodal 1876, Russian Victor Zhuromski, the German Schlachter Bible of 2000, the Thai Bible, the Czech BKR - "na nebi: Otec, Slovo, a Duch Svatý, a ti tři jedno jsou." Ukranian Kulish 1871, the Vietnamese bible 1934 - "ấy là Ðức Thánh Linh đã làm chứng, vì Ðức Thánh Linh tức là lẽ thật.", The* Indonesian - Terjemahan Baru (TB) - "Sebab ada tiga yang memberi kesaksian di dalam sorga: Bapa, Firman dan Roh Kudus; dan ketiganya adalah sati.", the Ukranian New Testament - "Бо три їх, що сьвідкують на небі: Отець, Слово і сьвятий Дух, і сї три - одно.", the Xhosa language Bible,
the Modern Greek Bible - "Διοτι τρεις ειναι οι μαρτυρουντες εν τω ουρανω, ο Πατηρ, ο Λογος και το Αγιον Πνευμα, και ουτοι οι τρεις ειναι εν·"
and the Modern Hebrew bible - כי ושלשה המה המעידים בארץ הרוח המים והדם ושלשתם לאחת המה:שלשה המה המעידים בשמים האב הדבר ורוח הקדש ושלשתם אחד
Here is just a partial list of those who contended for the authenticity of this verse.
Cyprian - 250 AD,*Athanasius 350 A.D.,*Priscillian -385 AD, Jerome 420 AD, Fulgentius (late 5th century), Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, Jaqub of Edessa, Thomas Aquinas, John Wycliffe, Desiderus Erasmus, Stephanus, Lopez de Zuniga, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, Cipriano de Valera, John Owen, Francis Turretin, John Wesley, John Gill, Matthew Henry, Andrew Fuller, Luis Gaussen, Frederick Nolan, Robert L. Dabney, Thomas Strouse, Floyd Jones, Peter Ruckman, George Ricker Berry, Edward F. Hills, David Otis Fuller, Thomas Holland, Michael Maynard and Donald A. Waite.*
Bob E. and Will D. next give us another song and dance routine about the originals but, they never identify for us what they honestly believe is the complete and inerrant words of God that they actually believe in or can show to anyone else.
Instead they do one of the strangest things I have yet to see from the Bible agnostic crowd. They say: we identify the specific Bible we stand behind as Gods inspired Word Here is the Bible we stand behind as the inspired Word of God.
And what do they do? They now show us the cover of a 1590 Hungarian Karoli bible and tell us that we too can get the 1991 edition from Amazon!
And this is their answer to the question Can show us a copy of what you honestly believe IS the inerrant words of God?!!!
Its a Protestant Reformation bible version that is in a language that perhaps 1% of the worlds population could read (and I highly doubt that either Bob Enyart or Will Duffy are included in this 1%).
Oh, and by the way. This Hungarian Karoli Bible DOES include both Matthew 23:14 and 1 John 5:7.
Máté 23:14 Hungarian Károli (KAR)
14*Jaj néktek képmutató írástudók és farizeusok, mert felemésztitek az özvegyek házát, és színbõl hosszan imádkoztok; ezért annál súlyosabb lesz a ti büntetéstek.
1 János 5:7 Hungarian Károli (KAR)
7*Mert hárman vannak, a kik bizonyságot tesznek a mennyben, az Atya, az Íge és a Szent Lélek: és ez a három egy.
Next Bob and Will D ask the following question
WKA-BWQ24: Will Kinney, regarding your utterly contradictory claim that God produced an inspired, 100% perfect, inerrant text from printers that you admit made errors, and from translators that you admit were not inspired, who brought about a text that you admit had errors, can you include these three underlined admissions of your in explaining how this all adds up to the worlds only supernaturally preserved inspired text?
Bob and Will. You keep asking same questions I have already answered. Yes, there were some printing errors. The KJB translators were inspired in the sense of God giving them understanding, but they were not inspired in the sense of giving us ALL NEW SCRIPTURE, and the text has NO errors in the present day Cambridge editions you can buy at any bookstore today. Is this finally getting through to you gentlemen? (Probably not)
Then, as predicted, brothers Bob and Will get into the issue of the so called Greek Septuagint that they claim Jesus Himself approved of the Septuagint, as we know because He quoted from it.
They then ask if I agree with a statement made in the Preface to the Reader found in the King James Bible where they said that the apostles used the Septuagint version.
The simple answer to this question is NO, I do not agree with their statement. They, like you and I, were imperfect men and not always right in the things they stated. I have studied this whole the Greek Septuagint issue a great deal and have a rather lengthy article on it.
Here is the introduction to my article on the so called Greek Septuagint and in my article I deal with many of the specific verses that are brought up by the Vatican Version users.
NO LXX - The Fictitious Use of the so-called Greek Septuagint
Short Version - There was no pre-Christian, official and authoritative so called Greek Septuagint. What passes for the LXX today is nothing more than the Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus manuscripts, all of which were written some 250 to 300 years AFTER the New Testament was already complete.
If there had been*an authoritative*pre-Christian LXX in wide use and circulation, there would not have been any need for people like Jerome,*Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotian, Lucian and Hesychius to make their own translations years later. There are several so called Septuagints out there and none of them agree with the others. There are only a few remaining scraps that could possibly be dated as B.C. writings, and even those sites that mention them tell us that*they do not agree with other Septuagint*copies. In all likelihood they are nothing more than the confused remnants of an independent individual's own attempt at a translation, just as several others did at a later date. *
There is no such thing as "the" Greek Septuagint. *There are several of them, and they all differ from each other. Three are three different readings on how tall Goliath was.
Just look at a modern version like the NIV and what they tell us in their own footnotes. For example, go to the book of Judges in the NIV 2011 edition. Notice the footnotes in places like Judges 10:12 "SOME Septuagint mss. read...."; 14:15 "Some Septuagint mss. read...."; 16:13-14 "SOME Septuagint mss. read...."; 16:19 "SOME Septuagint mss. read...."; 18:7 "Some Septuagint mss."; 18:30 "Many Hebrew mss, SOME Septuagint mss. read..."20:33 "SOME Septuagint mss... the meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain."
If a person knows anything about the so called Greek LXX, then they know it is a horrible translation, almost a total paraphrase and it differs by literally hundreds of whole verses either added to or omitted from what we have in the Hebrew Scriptures and it differs A LOT in many places from what the Hebrew O.T. says.
A Few Quotes from recognized scholars -
Dr. F. F. Bruce points out that, strictly speaking, the LXX deals only with the Law and not the whole Old Testament. Bruce writes, " The Jews might have gone on at a later time to authorize a standard text of the rest of the Septuagint, but . . . lost interest in the Septuagint altogether. With but few exceptions, every manuscript of the Septuagint which has come down to our day was copied and preserved in Christian, not Jewish, circles." (The Books and the Parchments, p.150). This is important to note because the manuscripts which consist of our LXX today date to the third century AD.
John Owen - "the LXX - IF ANY SUCH LXX THERE WERE"
In his massive exposition of Hebrews, John Owen makes some interesting observations regarding the relationship of the book of Hebrews to the LXX. He was well schooled in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac. He possessed a vast knowledge of manuscripts and other translations. In his work on the book of Hebrews, Owen discusses each passage in great detail about the Hebrew and Greek, along with comments about the LXX translations done by Aquila, Theodotian, and Symmachus. (These last three men mentioned each attempted a Greek translation of the O.T. after the N.T. was already completed. Today, there is little left of their writings, but we know that they all three differed from each other.)
In his commentary, John Owen makes this amazing statement: "It is evident that they are exceedingly mistaken who affirm that the apostle cites all his testimonies out of the translation of the LXX, as we intimated is by some pleaded... Should he [Paul] have had any respect unto that translation [LXX], it were impossible to give any tolerable account whence he should so much differ from it almost in every quotation, as is plain that he doth... And thus, in those testimonies where there is a real variation from the Hebrew original, THE APOSTLE TOOK NOT HIS WORDS FROM THE TRANSLATION OF THE LXX, BUT HIS WORDS WERE AFTERWARDS INSERTED INTO THAT TRANSLATION... Whereas the reasons of the apostle for his application of the testimonies used by him in his words and expressions are evident, as shall in particular be made to appear, so no reason can be assigned why THE LXX - IF ANY SUCH LXX THERE WERE - who translated the Old Testament, or any other translators of it, should so render the words of the Hebrew text." Exposition Of Hebrews, Vol I, Exercitation V. (CAPS are mine)
John Gill comments on Psalm 14:3 - "Here follows in the Septuagint version, ACCORDING TO THE VATICAN COPY, all those passages quoted by the apostle, (Romans 3:13-18) ; which have been generally supposed to have been taken from different parts of Scripture."
John Lightfoot, the well known Bible commentary writer, give his opinion of the LXX version saying: "Before the bible had been translated for Ptolemy - AS IT IS SUPPOSED - into the Greek tongue, there were an infinite number of copies in the Hebrew in Palestine, Babylon, Egypt, even everywhere, in every synagogue: and it is a marvelous thing, that in all antiquity there should not be the least hint or mention of so much as one Hebrew copy amongst all these that agrees with the Greek version. WE HAVE VARIOUS EDITIONS OF THAT VERSION WHICH THEY CALL THE SEPTUAGINT, AND THOSE PRETTY MUCH DISAGREEING AMONG THEMSELVES... The interpreters have still abounded in their own sense, not very strictly obliging themselves to the Hebrew text...IT IS PLAIN ENOUGH TO ANY ONE THAT DILIGENTLY CONSIDERS THE GREEK VERSION THROUGHOUT, THAT IT WAS COMPOSED BY DIFFERENT HANDS, WHO GREATLY VARIED FROM ONE ANOTHER, BOTH IN STYLE AND WIT."
End of "Short Version"
*Bob E. and Will D. close out their article by bring up their favorite printing errors argument, in an effort to prove that there is not now nor ever has been such a thing as an inerrant Bible (which is what they both really believe, but are unwilling to admit it) and they even included two examples that they think are mistakes in the King James Bible that they undoubtedly got from some other Bible critics laundry lists of alleged errors.
These are Hebrews 10:23 our profession of FAITH versus confession of HOPE
Here is my article showing why this is not an error -
And they bring up Acts 19:37 robbers of CHURCHES versus robbers of TEMPLES
Here is my article on this verse and why the KJB is not in error.
Thank you all for letting us have this debate. May God graciously open the eyes of more of His people to the absolute truth of His inerrant Book - the King James Holy Bible.
Links to my articles on these verses.
1 John 5:7 "the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one"
NO LXX - The Fictitious Use of the so-called Greek Septuagint
Revelation 19:8 KJB - "The fine linen is THE RIGHTEOUSNESS of saints" or
ESV, NKJV - "the fine linen is THE RIGHTEOUS ACTS of the saints"?
*Fake Bible Versions DO Teach False Doctrines - over 25 examples
*Is the NKJV the inerrant words of God? Not a Chance!
Undeniable Proof the ESV, NIV, NASB, Holman Standard, NET etc. are *the new "Vatican Versions"
patrick jane (February 24th, 2016),Rosenritter (August 20th, 2018)
Bob Enyart and Will Duffy are on the clock. They have until 10:54 PM Wednesday night to make their post.
Thank you all for being a part of this debate! Our goals in this concluding post are to:
- Summarize the debate
- Answer the questions, from the King James Only perspective, that our opponent would not answer
- Expand this debate with our offer below to other KJO leaders including D. A. Waite, Jack Moorman, William Schnoebelen, Michael Pearl, and Gail Riplinger.
We begin with a summary of our opponent's Round One post, then analyze his reply to our 27 questions while attempting to provide, to the best of our ability, the kind of direct answers you would get from a KJO proponent if he were to open his soul. And before concluding, we can't resist presenting a few more historical gems that also refute the KJO position.
Summary of Kinney's Round One Opening Statement
Does Kinney Offer Any Proof for His Position? Does Will Kinney even make the argument that the KJB is the only inspired word of God? In Round One he says that his "belief… is based on a God given faith that our Creator" gave us "'the book of the LORD'". He then quotes Isaiah 34:16 referencing the "book of the LORD". So his first argument is only that he believes in his position by faith, and even that seems invalid because there is no evidence that Isaiah is talking about the KJV. Likewise, his application to the KJO claim of Psalm 12:6-7 that God would preserve His words is invalid because it doesn't say He would preserve them in a translation, nor in a single-source, and certainly not in the KJV. He then adds the Lord's wonderful promise in Mat. 24:35, "my words shall not pass away", but this proves nothing about the KJV. And his admission that "There was no complete and inerrant Bible before the King James Bible" refutes the KJO interpretation of every proof text of their claim, because those verses don't have an expiration date and neither do they claim to take effect in 1611.
Claims KJB is Faithful to the Hebrew Texts He Claims have Errors: Then Will Kinney brings up a major contradiction common in KJO claims, that the King James more accurately translates the Hebrew texts. Even if this were true, Kinney denies that those same texts are inerrant (see "Originals" paragraph below). So this is another invalid appeal. And if he were to modify his position (as he did on whether the 1611 translators were inspired) and claim that the Hebrew texts were inspired, then his side would lose the debate, because it is titled: Is the King James Bible the Only Inspired Scripture on Earth Today? So he cannot provide evidence that the KJV is inerrant by appealing to its similarities to texts that he says contain errors.
Offers the KJO Camp's Circular Arguments: In our opening we warned about the "logical fallacies" of "circular arguments" "offered in defense of the King James Only position." You cannot prove the KJB is inerrant by showing that it differs from another Bible or that the KJB has 3,000 words more than various other Bibles. The later manuscripts that the KJB was based on became "fuller texts" because over 2,000 years they gradually picked up liturgical phrases. Where once there was "Christ", while making a copy of a lengthy Gospel say in 400 A.D., the scribe mistakenly though innocently wrote, "Jesus Christ", and in 900 A.D., another wrote, "Lord Jesus Christ", and another, "forever and ever", and yet another ended a passage with, "Amen", because that is how he's always heard it in church. Further, there are known places where words are duplicated because the scribe looked back up and caught the same phrase that appeared in an earlier verse, and so then he accidentally inserted the following few words into the passage he was then copying. No mystery. No sin. No crisis. (No crisis, that is, except for the KJO movement which cannot withstand the method that God chose to transmit His texts throughout the centuries.) This circular fallacy lies also at the base of Kinney's claims about varying interpretations from different translations.
Everything Kinney Said About Originals: (To cover this in one place we'll grab his relevant comments from throughout the debate.) Using an argument that the KJO camp has hammered on a thousand times, Will Kinney rejects the mainstream Christian doctrine that God inspired only the original writings of the Prophets and the Apostles, also known as the "original autographs". Likewise, we teach that God did not inspire the scribes who copied and the translators who rendered those writings. He says, "Hint: there ARE no originals to compare anything to. The originals turned to dust thousands of years ago, and never did make up an entire Bible." As you've seen him do however, Kinney constantly appeals to the original written work of the 1611 translators as the perfect text, which his position forces him to do because the KJO movement knows that there have been hundreds of errors in the printed KJBs, including the early ones, that have been corrected over the centuries (with occasional new errors added, as Kinney has admitted.) Yet he persists in criticizing the common doctrine on inspiration: "They have never seen a single word 'in the original autographs' a day in their lives… and, most importantly, they are confessing a faith in something that even they know does not exist!"
The Original Idols Were Made of Wood: The rampant contradiction among KJO leaders surfaces everywhere, including in Round Two, when Kinney wrote: "The original handwritten, finalized copy of the King James Bible that was given to the printers was destroyed in a fire along with many other resources they used." At the risk of being accused of sinking to the KJO level, we will share the only observation that explains this widespread contradiction that fills the KJO camp. When anyone digs in after being corrected and defends their error, that man becomes foolish and prideful. We've broadcast a hundred times on Bob Enyart Live this observation: Stupid does not make you sin, but sin makes you stupid. Of course Will Kinney, as is abundantly obvious, you have never seen your "originals" either and neither do they exist.
Idols Also Made of Paper: When a Christian reproves another for erecting an idol, only repentance can avoid foolishness and self-righteousness. By the prophet Isaiah God makes clear that the idol maker is not only foolish, but absurd.
The craftsman [who] fashions [an idol] cuts down cedars for himself… to burn… he kindles it and bakes bread [and then with the other part] he makes a god and worships it. He makes it a carved image, and falls down to it. He burns half of it in the fire; with this half he [cooks his lunch and] eats meat; He roasts a roast, and is satisfied. … And the rest of it he makes into a god, His carved image. He falls down before it and worships it… and says… "...you are my god!" -Isaiah 44:13-17The KJO movement has made an idol out of that same wood, processed into pulp, and formed into a text.
KJO Against Itself: Kinney's Round Two contradictions continue as he makes fun of what he himself believes, that (even) the (KJB) inspired original texts no longer exist. And mocking he says, "including those non-existent originals you claim to believe in." And in Round Three: "The King James Bible itself is the inspired words of God in a similar way that those long lost and never seen by you 'original Greek and Hebrew scriptures' were inspired." Astoundingly, in the same round he then repeats his previous' round's observation: "We do not know what was finally handed over to the printers because all handwritten copies of it were burned up in a fire shortly after the KJB was first published." And in Round Five: "Bob E. and Will D. next give us another song and dance routine about 'the originals'..." And we've seen Will Kinney blame the printers for the very detailed translators' annotations that ended up being reproduced exactly in the 1611 as errors that were later corrected. Like the evolutionist who believes that proteins form by random chance, the trillions-and-trillions-to-one chance that the printers happened to set scores of passages incorrectly, but coincidentally identical to what the translators themselves had written, is absurd in the highest degree.
KJO Sides with the Anti-KJO Position: Our anti-KJO position is that God's Word exists in various languages. In agreement with this (except for the 1611 date which is not referenced in Scripture) Will Kinney rightly says that prior to the KJB, "God's true words were still preserved, but they were in different Bible versions and manuscripts that also contained many corruptions." Because those same manuscripts still exist, this means that God's words are still preserved today in the exact same manner as Kinney says they were before. Thus by this inherent KJO contradiction, Kinney has admitted the truth of the anti-KJO side of BR XIV: Is the King James Bible the Only Inspired Scripture on Earth Today?
Kinney Never Directly Claims the KJB Is 100% Inerrant: Notice that not once in this debate has Will Kinney described the King James Bible as "100% inerrant" even though he used "100%" ten times. On his website he uses "100%" extensively, more than 150 times (in context, and as of today). Yet not once there does he describe any KJ Bible as "100% inerrant". This is not an accident. KJO leader Will Kinney knows that there are errors in the King James Bible so depending upon his particular argument, he uses the phrases:
"100% historically true" – "100% true" – "100% accurate" – "100% pure" – "100% infallible"
"100% truth" – "100% textually pure" – "100% inspired" – "right 100% of the time"
Of course being called on this, expect Will Kinney in the TOL Grandstands to now claim that when he includes "inerrant" in sentences with these phrases, that the "100%" extends to the inerrancy too. But aside from the big errors, every one of the little errors that we've been pointing out and that he has agreed to then ever-so-easily falsifies their extremist and spiritually immature KJO claim. For like other KJO leaders Kinney has admitted errors in various King James Bibles ("I've seen [only] printing errors"; "hundreds of… printer errors such as omitting… a word"; "errors… today are much less frequent"; etc.), and of course there are the whopper KJB errors admitted such as, "Thou shalt commit adultery".
KJB Standardizes on Differing Texts: Further, depending on which argument he is pressing and which weakness in the KJB is not in the immediate discussion, he also very deliberately permutates the above terms with the words "infallible", "perfect", "inspired", and "complete". Yet he has admitted that the 1769 Oxford is not "complete", even though that means that millions of KJV Bibles were not "complete", based on that one error alone. When someone points out his admission that the Hebrew and Greek texts contain God's "inspired" words, Kinney then throws in "complete". If they point out a modern Bible that is complete (like say the Hungarian Bible, for which Kinney approved that it had a verse omitted in other versions), he will circle back around to "perfect". Yet in 1769 the King James Bibles "standardized" with differing texts from Oxford and Cambridge (and there's also the widely-used different text from 1762). So certainly for the first 150 years while the KJB publishers were working out the bugs, clearly the KJV could not be considered "100% pure". And the millions of Bibles printed from then until now based on the currently circulating, differing texts have hundreds of variations so they cannot all be "100% inerrant" 1) by Kinney's own admission, 2) by his frequently used reasoning, and 3) by his preference for a single KJ publisher, Cambridge. Yet during these 400 years of the "purifying" KJB text (as Kinney describes it), the old Hebrew and Greek texts used to translate the King James haven't changed at all. And in those texts, the very ones Kinney appeals to again and again to defend a reading in the KJB, in them Kinney had said, "God's true words were still preserved". And still are.
Will Kinney says that God chose English to combine both testaments: "when He worked in history to combine both testaments into one single far reaching language, he chose English, which just 'happens to be' the closest thing to the end times universal language there is." And he claims that God waited for the printing press, but eight English Bibles were printed before the King James and the famed Gutenberg Bible was in Latin.
Kinney makes fun of Bible "agnostics" saying that they must have "compared all bible translations" to the Greek and Hebrew to make their claim that "no translation" is "inerrant". However again he argues against himself in this debate, because he would have to "compared all bible translations" to defend his proposition in this debate that: The King James Bible is the Only Inspired Scripture on Earth Today.
Purity of Doctrinal Truth vs. 25 Errors: Our opponent, again subjectively and circularly, concludes his first post by ascribing to the KJB "purity of doctrinal truth." And he then provides what he says are 25 examples of doctrinal errors in other versions. His eleventh is: "son of the gods" vs. "the Son of God" which is paralleled in the similarly contradictory translations within the King James versions themselves. Included among many inconsistencies in our "Cambridge vs. Cambridge" and "1611 vs. Other KJBs" charts we've pointed out:
- the "God" vs. "the LORD" change from the 1611 to the 1629 and the still-in-use 1769 Oxford text
- "thy God" vs. this reference to God omitted, a change from the 1629 KJB and the 1769 Cambridge as compared to other versions including the 1611 "He" Bible and the Cambridge 2005 and 2011 versions. The KJO movement cannot survive without its special pleading, exempting itself even when the KJB has the virtually exact errors that used to reject all other versions.
Analysis of the KJO Replies to All 27 Questions
That summary of Kinney's opening post gave us an overview of his position, and in a way, of the whole debate. Now we dive down into the questions that form our challenge to the KJO movement.
BWQ1: Is God able to produce a robust message that could remain effective even as reproduced by mere men (i.e., without the need for [further] divine intervention)?
In rounds two, three, and four, Will Kinney quotes but does not answer this question. He could easily have answered something like: "Yes, as I've said, the Gospel message itself is found in any Bible version in any language." In Round Three he misread our question (which we then pointed out, and then we needlessly clarified it, as above, with the word further). He adds that the question is absurd and then replied regarding, of course, the KJB (and again in Round Four), that "God can use mere men to give us not only 'a robust message' but an actual Book in print", by which he means with divine intervention. The question asks if God can produce a robust message that can remain effective even when reproduced "without… divine intervention."
Our previous Battle Royales currently have a combined quarter of a million views here in the Coliseum's Center Ring. In BR VII's Does God Exist? (also available in paperback), TOL's resident atheist Zakath the psychologist refused to answer many questions. So we decided to put him on sodium pentothal truth serum. In the twelve years since then, TheologyOnline has acquired some state-of-the-art technology for use only in the kind of extreme circumstance like the one we now find ourselves in.
The only one at TOL who can officially authorize the use of this compulsion technology is Knight. But he is currently traveling somewhere in the jungles of Central America. (Literally). Yet coincidentally, out of the whole United States, Will Kinney happens to live nearby. (We practically drive by his house whenever our families get together for dinner.) So, while some might claim we used false pretenses to set this up:
So we now have the answers we've asked for. We insert these where needed but not with Kinney's TOL username brandplucked, but under the username Will Kinney Lie Detector.
WiKiLiD: For BWQ1, I just didn't want to answer this. If I deny this, I seem unreasonable because firstly, God is utterly competent. And if I admit that God is capable of producing a robust message that could remain effective even as reproduced by mere men without His further intervention, then clearly He could have chosen to communicate His word in that way. The three other examples that you guys gave seemed pretty strong. I remember them. That the fallen cosmos still declaring the glory of God; and of our human DNA still enabling us to bring kids made in God's image into existence; and that a million species still filling the world with life even without divine intervention. So, if God could do all that, it seems that He probably could communicate His Word effectively, even through man's imperfect transmission. But I didn't want to think about that, and I sure wasn't going to admit it.
BWQ2: Of any actual error that appeared in the 1611 KJB (like ones corrected in later versions), if that error was made not by the printers but by the translators themselves, would that falsify the KJO position?
WiKiLiD: Well hey, give me credit. I did say that this "might change the KJB only position somewhat", but yeah, I know, in Round Two when you asked for a clarification, I wasn't going to give you one.
Enyart: Why not?
WiKiLiD: In the KJO movement, we've always said that any errors that exist in any of the King James Bibles are the result of printer errors. I was surprised when I saw that you guys brought the translators themselves into the debate. So I was afraid to answer either yes or no. If I answered Yes, that errors by the translators would falsify our movement, I was afraid that you might be able to show from the translators' own handwriting that they were the ones who produced some of the errors. If I answered No, that would seem obviously deceptive. So I just pretended to answer. Any anyway, you guys had a good point. If we deny that the translators were inspired, which we sometimes do, and admit that they made errors, and if we admit that the printers made errors, which we do, and if we admit that the text had errors, which we do, it's like having your head in a vice and there's no way out. So, to keep defending the KJO position, I just refused to answer, and implied that somehow, while the King James Bible for years had many errors, that over the next centuries, divine intervention moved various editors and printers, many unknown to us, to get the Bible perfect. It's confusing, I know. But that's my position.
Duffy: Will, are you comfortable?
WiKiLiD: Physically? Yeah, I guess I'm fine.
BWQ3: Does God's perfect Word exist anywhere on Earth today?
In Round 2 Will Kinney quoted this question but didn't answer it so we immediately re-asked BWQ3 adding, "Please answer yes or no, and feel free to expound of course." In Round Three, Kinney answered, "Yes. You gentlemen may have even heard of it. It is called the King James Bible. You can pick one up at any bookstore." However, you can get KJBs based on the 1769 Oxford which Will Kinney said is not God's complete Word. And bookstores sell David Norton's 2005 & 2011 Cambridge KJV, and Scrivener's 1873 KJV, and many others based on various texts all of which have changes between them. So by Kinney's wrong but oft-repeated argument that if two texts have changes between them, then they can't all be God's Word, therefore, these varying King James Versions cannot all meet the extreme and spiritually immature standard of the KJO movement.
BWQ4: Will Kinney, please provide a list of King James Bibles, listing publisher and year published, for which you and, to the best of your knowledge, the KJO camp generally, claim them to be free of error (i.e., God's perfect Word). Please also specifically indicate, by presenting the year published, which edition was the very first that was free of error.
In Round Two Kinney quotes this question and answers by saying, "I don't know what year it first came out, but I would say that the Cambridge edition of the King James Bible that you can find in any bookstore today…" (emphasis added). Of course there are a number of Cambridge King James Bibles that have many changes between them, and after decades of obsessive study on the KJB, of course he knows that. During this debate using Google we found on multiple forums that Will Kinney was saying in the past that the 1762 Cambridge was God's perfect Word. Now that he is aware (though apparently, he has not read) of impeccabile researcher Rick Norris' work, Kinney knows that there are changes in the very popular 1762 KJV as compared to many other popular KJVs. So the reason that various KJO advocates prefer to be vague about which KJB is inerrant is similar to the reason that the favorite fossil of the evolutionist is the incomplete skeleton. Both can make their strongest points on that which cannot be tested.
Duffy: So Will Kinney, exactly what year did they finally get all the errors out of the King James Bible? Two of the differences that we pointed between Cambridge editions at Acts 7:28 and Rom. 10:7 are also differences between the 1769 Oxford and the 1769 Cambridge. Between those two still-popular King James texts, here are a few of the differences:
At Acts 7:28:
1769 Cambridge: as thou "killedst" the Egyptian
1769 Oxford: as thou "diddest" the Egyptian
At Romans 10:7:
1769 Cambridge: "ascend"
1769 Oxford: "descend"
And the pattern continues with:
Rom. 11:23 "not still in unbelief" vs. "not in unbelief"
1 Cor. 4:13 "the world" vs. "the earth"
2 Cor. 3:11 "is done" vs. "was done"
2 Cor. 12:2 "above" vs. "about"
Jam. 2:16 "and be ye filled" vs. "and filled"
1 Jo. 1:4: "your joy" vs. "our joy"
Rev. 18:22 "at all in thee, and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more" is missing from the 1769 Oxford
Mt. 19:29 "eternal life" vs. "everlasting life"
Mat. 18:12 "large sums of money" vs. "large money"
John 10:29 "none" vs. "no man"
Acts 21:25 "from things" vs. "from"
Lev. 11:10 "nor scales" vs. "and scales"
Num. 9:13 "from his people" vs "from among his people"
Deut. 11:30 "champian" vs. "champaign" (vs. the 1611's "champion", so things are going downhill here)
2 Sam. 19:18 "came" vs. "was come"
So Will Kinney, again, to the rest of the Body of Christ, these changes do not hinder the effectiveness of God's robust word. But to the KJO camp, you guys claim a "100% textually pure" Bible. So my question is, exactly what year did they finally get all the errors out of the King James Bible?
WiKiLiD: Well... I don't know. Any year that I say and you guys will list a dozen differences between that and all the other KJBs that our movement tells people to go out and buy as God's perfect word. So, I don't know what year.
Duffy: Are there still printing errors in today's King James Bibles?
WiKiLiD: I don't want to answer that.
Duffy: You have to. Will, we pointed out to you in Round Two that in Acts, regarding that Egyptian, that there are seven Cambridge editions that change the text as compared to many other Cambridge editions and as compared to Oxford editions. And remember that also in Acts 7:45 that a dozen KJ versions say "Joshua" brought the tabernacle into the promised land whereas Cambridge and Oxford editions say "Jesus" brought it in. So again, have there been printing errors throughout the history of the King James Bible?
WiKiLiD: Can I think about it for a while?
Duffy: Sure.
Because Kinney did not answer our fourth question in Round 2, we then split it into two to separate out each part of the question.
BWQ4a: Will Kinney, please provide a list [we indicated three or four] of King James Bibles, listing publisher and year published, for which you claim them to be free of error (God's perfect Word).
In Round Three Kinney quoted this question and only replied, "The Cambridge printings of the King James Bible you can find in any bookstore today" and that it doesn't "interest me in the least" as to which Cambridge anyone might purchase because he knows "which one is totally right". All this in itself seems stunning and revealing. Eventually, though it was like pulling teeth and required a bribe, of the hundreds of different KJV editions, Will Kinney seemed unwilling to provide a list but he did name one by sufficiently identifying his own KJ Bible.
BWQ4b: Please specifically indicate, by presenting the year published, which edition was the very first KJB that was free of any type of error.
We asked this first in Round Two and Kinney broke the relevant BR XIV rules that require him to first quote the question in full which he didn't do, and then to number his reply and to directly answer the question, which he didn't do. So we asked this again in Round Three and in Round Four he mentions the number of the question but says he won't answer it because he already has and so he never answered this question.
Enyart: Will Kinney, you've been thinking about Will Duffy's question. So, exactly what year did they finally get all the errors out of the King James Bible?
WiKiLiD: I can't answer.
Enyart: Why not?
WiKiLiD: If I say any year, you guys can probably find errors in that year's King James Bibles. And if I say that there are probably still errors in the King James Bible, then I admit that our KJO camp's claim that we have the inerrant and 100% accurate Bible is false, and that four hundred years later, there are still problems in the text. That's why I can't answer the question.
Duffy: You mean that you can answer it, but that you don't want to answer it.
WiKiLiD: I guess.
Enyart: Why not?
WiKiLiD: I don't want to.
Enyart: It's one of the hardest things in the world to give up an idol.
BWQ5: Did God's perfect Word exist in English in 1610, and if so, in which version?
In Round Two Kinney answers this directly with a "No" and says that there "was a purification process taking place and the King James Bible was the final product..." This is a reference to a hyper-spiritual claim that some KJO proponents make, as does Kinney on his website, that Psalm 12:6-7 refers to God's words as "purified seven times." To various KJOnly believers, that specifically refers to six (of the eleven) English Bibles published prior to the 1611. The King James then became "the 'preserved' words". For as Kinney writes, "When the King James Bible came off the press, beginning in 1611, God's promise of the preservation of his words was almost complete." Almost? After seven full stages covering nearly a hundred years? Of course Kinney says "almost" because of all the errors in the King James that took another few hundred years to iron out, with some actually being ironed back in, and other, rather resilient mistakes, still around in 2015.
As to our own answer to this question, we did understand how Kinney could reasonably complain, from his perspective, about our own answer to the same question that he put to us in WKQ3. The KJO Gambit that they often open with is this: Do you believe there is a perfect word of God in the world [before 1610, now, whenever.] As soon as a naive Christian says Yes, as in the Grandstands during this debate, Will Kinney pounces and says: Well then, you are claiming that every other version is bad, because there can only be one true Book. The poor unsuspecting Christian has no idea how she just became the judge and condemnor of every other Bible in the world.
So when Kinney asks if God's perfect Word exists in English in 1610, we can answer exactly how he answers that for other languages on his website: "God's words from the Old Testament were most likely preserved in the Hebrew texts… for the New Testament... in the Old Latin Bibles."
So, he objects to others using this answer, which inherently declares that there is no single version, but rather, that God's Word permeates the world, including in English. And that is how we answered in Round Two, "from back around 730 A.D." and we stated that "we reject the superstitious, self-contradicting, and superficial 'type of Bible' that the KJO camp pretends to believe in, which even they hesitate to point to one specific one and say, 'This is it.'"
BWQ6: Will Kinney, please explain how God revealed to mankind that the KJ is the only inspired version of the Bible, and please indicate when, i.e., what year, this was first known?
In Round Two Kinney quotes this question but does not answer it, saying that some people who were born before us believed the KJ Bible was inerrant and that fifteen years ago he came to the same conclusion via a spiritual revelation for "that's how God does things".
In Round Three Kinney apparently realized that he did not answer this question so he then found a way to misunderstand it. Even though in the previous round he knew that we were asking how it was that God communicated to him, or to anyone, that the KJV is the only inspired Bible. So now he misreads the question and claims it is asking how did God reveal the truth about the KJV to every person in the world, and adds, "I never said that" and God "obviously has not revealed this to either of you." Touché.
Will Kinney then pulls out of context three verses that teach that God has revealed truth and in yet another instance of circular reasoning assumes they mean that the KJB is the only inspired scripture.
Duffy: Bob, should we ask Will Kinney that question, number six?
Enyart: No, he won't know the answer, not even in this condition.
WiKiLiD: Can I get a drink of water?
Duffy: Sure. How about some iced tea?
BWQ7: Will Kinney, because neither the Bible nor the Gospel is only for English-speaking persons, from the insights gained by the KJO movement, please explain how Chinese Christians, or those who speak Spanish or Hindi, for example, could evaluate whether God's Word was available for them and their children in their own language?
In Round Two, Kinney might have forgotten that both sides posted their opening statements simultaneously, so he chastises us saying "I already answered this." Because Will Kinney didn't answer this, we re-asked him this in Round Two. In Round Three he quoted the question but again refused to answer it claiming he already had. We are more than willing to recognize when Kinney has answered a question, just as we've done above, even when we disagree with his answer. But the KJO position has motivated Will Kinney to obfuscate instead of answer, and so he never answered this throughout the debate.
BWQ8: Will Kinney, from your past statements, we believe that you will agree with us, and here help to dispel the myth believed by many KJO adherents, that there was only a single 1611 King James. So will you affirm that in fact there were two 1611 King James Bibles, and that these two differ in hundreds of instances?
We were a bit surprised in Round Two when Will Kinney answered this essentially saying No. Even though 400 years later they are referred to as the He Bible and the She Bible and their four hundred differences are well documented.
BWQ9: It is your camp, and not the Scriptures, that claims that in the production of the King James Bible, God inspired the translators, but not the printers. (Thus you blame the errors on the printers.) So Will Kinney, can you explain why that is a reasonable claim for you all to attribute to God, considering that the printers' work would be read by millions, whereas the translators' work was only read by the printers?
In Round Two Kinney quotes this interesting question and simply does not answer it. Instead he ducks the read by a few vs. read by millions question and diverts attention to whether it was the translators (no), or their writings (yes, the text itself), that were inspired. Of course he could have offered that clarification and then answered the question, which would be polite and forthright.
So in Round Two we re-asked this question clarifying it to: "[Please explain the KJO defense of the translators and criticism of the printers] 'considering that the printers' work would be read by millions, whereas the translators' work was only read by the printers.'"
In Round Three Kinney neither quoted nor answered the question so we repeated it in that round. In Round Four he mentioned the number of this question and said that he was not going to answer it because he already had which was surprising to hear. In Round Four we listed this as an unanswered question and Kinney never answered this first round question in the entire debate.
Enyart: So, Will Kinney, if the King James Only camp's standard for a perfect Bible is correct, then why would God inspire only the text read by a few printers, but not inspire the printing, which was read by millions?
WiKiLiD: I don't know. I never could figure that one out.
BWQ10: In 1611, any particular minister may not have been convinced that King James was even in a position to authorize a new translation of God's Word. Such a minister could count and find literally thousands of differences in the new text as compared to the 1537 Matthew Bible that his great-grandfather had preached from. If a minister back then had the kind of spiritual insights of today's KJO leaders, how would he have been able to refute the one who declared: "King James' corrupt 1611 translation has hundreds of changes as compared to the Word of God"?
In Round Two, Will Kinney quotes this question but did not answer it. He asserted again what we're referring to as his mystical defense, that to know the KJB is the one requires a subjective spiritual assurance: God told me so. That is not an answer to: "how would [that minister] have been able to refute" an accusation against the King James.
Because Will didn't answer this, we re-asked it in Round Two, changing it to: "In 1611... a minister could count and find literally thousands of differences in the new text as compared to the 1537 Matthew Bible that his great-grandfather had preached from. ...how would he have been able to refute the one who declared: 'King James' corrupt 1611 translation has hundreds of changes as compared to the Word of God'?"
In Round Three Kinney neither quotes nor answers this question so in that round we explicitly asked him to do so. In Round Four Will Kinney mentions the number of this question and says he's not going to answer because he already has, yet he never answered this first round question throughout the entire debate.
Duffy: So, Will, how would you answer this question?
WiKiLiD: I really have no idea. The only thing I could think of is to say that God will tell you. I really didn't like it when you compared my answer to what Mormons and Moonies say. Those cults do say the same thing. And it especially bothered me when you talked about Jesus providing actual evidence for his claims. Now here I am in a debate that probably tens of thousands of people will read (with 4,000 views here on TOL already). And I'm given a chance to provide reasons for how accusations back in 1611 against the King James could have been answered, and I have no idea. I really have no idea.
BWQ11: If the King James translators have taken a position on a matter regarding their work that differs from your position Will Kinney and that of the KJO camp, who would have more authority as to the truth of that particular matter, you and the KJO camp, or the translators themselves?
In Round Two Kinney quotes this question and just didn't answer it. He did say that we probably misunderstand some things that the translators wrote (which is certainly possible; they wrote a lot), and that the translators are not his final authority, the "Book" is, which is a great answer to a different question. We noticed that he capitalizes "Book" but not "word". There's nothing wrong with using either an uppercase or a lowercase "w" for the Word of God. However, because the KJO movement relentlessly psychoanalyzes their opponents, we'd like to offer this: Why does Will Kinney repeatedly point out that he uses a lowercase "w" to refer to the Bible and an uppercase "W" to refer to Jesus? He is overcompensating. The KJO advocates have erected an idol, which is the text of the King James, above God Himself. Therefore Kinney feels compelled to show everyone that he uses a lowercase "w" to refer to the Book.
We re-asked our eleventh question in Round Two to no avail so in Round Three we more explicitly asked him to answer this. In Round Four Kinney mentions the number of this question but says he will not answer it because he already has. He did not answer this opening round question throughout the entire debate.
BWQ12: Will Kinney, do you agree that these actual handwritten notes from the 1611 translators themselves demonstrate that various errors previously admitted by the KJO camp were not the fault of the printers, but that these errors were generated by the translators themselves?
Will Kinney quotes and directly answers this question in Round Two with a "No".
Enyart: Will Kinney, you've listened to our Real Science Radio broadcasts, right?
WiKiLiD: Yes. They're interesting.
Enyart: Thank you. You've heard us talk about how absurd it is for evolutionists to claim that unique, individual proteins could arise by random chance when the odds of that happening are trillions, upon trillions, upon trillions to one.
WiKiLiD: Yes, that's a good point.
Enyart: So, what do you think are the odds that the printers could exactly, by accident, create many of the same errors that the translators had created in their own handwritten annotations?
WiKiLiD: Not good, I guess. They're probably astronomical, if they even could be calculated.
BWQ13: Will Kinney, if in truth the actual 1611 KJB errors long blamed on the printers could be shown to have been caused by the translators, would you publicly call for the KJO leaders to join you in humbly retracting those incorrect statements?
In Round Three Kinney quotes this question but doesn't answer it. Like a politician unwilling to answer a hypothetical question about the possible consequences of his policies, Kinney diverts attention from his failure to answer by saying that we have not proven our case that these are translation errors. Kinney never answers this question throughout the debate.
We know his answer though. For unless he repents of his sin of teaching this false doctrine regarding the 1611, Will Kinney would not call for other leaders to retract their incorrect statements.
BWQ14: Will Kinney, can you describe in a thoughtful way how the KJO movement might be able to survive if many of the actual King James Bible errors that it has admitted to were actually the fault of the translation work itself?
In Round Three our KJO opponent quotes this question but doesn't answer it and says that we had already brought this up.
Duffy: So Will Kinney...
WiKiLiD: WHAT?
Duffy: How could the KJO movement survive if their errors were actually the fault of the translators?
WiKiLiD: I don't know. I have no idea. That would be rough. I hope that idea doesn't catch on. Because even if it is true, of course I'm still going to tell everyone that the King James Bible was a result of supernatural intervention. But like you guys said, if God didn't keep the translators from error, and if He didn't keep the printers from error, and if He didn't keep the text from having errors, and if hundreds of years later publishers were still dealing with errors, then it does get harder to make our case.
BWQ15: Will Kinney, if you do not believe that the translators were inspired (which we are thankful that you do not) then why can you not agree with their own testimony, which is right before your eyes, and acknowledge that some of the errors that the KJO camp has always attributed to the printers were instead, demonstrably, caused by the translators?
In Round Three Kinney quotes this question but doesn't answer it. He seems to think he has dodged it by saying that we haven't "proven", i.e., convinced him, that these are not printer errors. Then he claims that "the King James Bible translators did NOT give any testimony to having made errors in their translation", which seems to ignore the fact that, being unsure of how to translate certain texts, they provided more than 2,150 alternative translations in the margins of the KJV along with 67 variant readings that indicated that they weren't even sure what was the correct underlying Hebrew or Greek wording that they were supposed to be translating. Will Kinney never answered this question.
Duffy: So Will, it's Will again. Will versus Will. Huh! Sounds like Paul in Romans 7. So, you say you don't believe that the translators were inspired. Over at Oxford I took about 4,000 photographs, with the vast majority of those capturing their very specific notes. We can see in their writing that they certainly came up with these exact errors, months and even years before they ever got to the printers. So if you don't believe that they were inspired, then why can't you agree with the obvious, that some of the errors in the 1611 were their fault, and not the fault of the printers? Why can't you agree to that?
WiKiLiD: I don't know. It's scary in a way. If I agree to that, I'm not sure where it will lead. So I'm not going to agree.
BWQ16: Do you deny that there were at least 400 textual differences between the "He" 1611 and the "She" 1611?
We asked this in Round Two because Will failed to acknowledge in his answer to BWQ8 that there were two different 1611s. In Round Three, Kinney quotes this question but then changes it somewhat in his answer, "No, I do not deny that there were very minor printing errors". Of course that wasn't the question. The truth helps everyone. Just like later when Will Kinney admitted that (unlike other Anglican Bibles) the 1611 KJB did not say that it was "Authorized", here too, it would have helped if a KJO leader could openly acknowledge the order of magnitude of the errors in the first King James Bibles.
Oops: Will Kinney then criticizes us because "next [we] bring up… Judges 14:17..." which we did not. He did, in his opening statement. On November 1st we called Will Kinney to discuss the rules with him. They are very brief, and we talked them through and asked him if he understood them. He had previously acknowledged his agreement to Knight here on TOL. Atop this thread Knight posted the rules which stated that they are designed to "ensure[] that the participants actually debate one another and not simply post material written for other purposes…" Kinney has rapidly copied and pasted lengthy excerpts from his site into this debate, enabling him to post absurdly quickly, and thereby deny us the time TOL debate opponents expect to read, understand, research, and write their replies. An unintended consequence of Kinney's bulk pasting of material, is that he would forget what he posted. So we will remind the readers. In his Second Round post, resisting our photographic evidence, Will Kinney listed seven verses, including Judges 14:17, which he claimed were (not translation errors) but obvious printing errors. We then looked up each of his seven verses in the 1602 Bishops' Bible that many of the translators worked on for seven years. All seven of Kinney's verses had annotations, and those detailed notes in all seven verses were exactly reproduced by the printers in the text of the 1611 KJV. Kinney's reply to this historic and astounding development was to claim that we were making a big deal about a small printing error that we found.
He ends by saying that we were "making mountains out of molehills and straining at gnats. But since this is all you've got, I guess you just have to run with it and hope that others will become Bible doubters like yourselves", all of which is about a verse he brought up and asked us about.
BWQ17: If you really agree with us, Will Kinney, as you have stated, that the 1611 translators were not inspired, then why can't you admit the overwhelmingly obvious truth that errors in the 1611 that come from the translators' own handwritten notations were caused by the translators?
We asked this in Round Two and in Round Three Kinney quoted it and did not answer and asks if we've "heard the definition of lunacy" and says we are broken records. Our opponent never answered this question in the debate.
BWQ18: Will Kinney, can you see from the 1602 Bishops' Bible [at 2 Chron. 32:5] that the 1611 translators explicitly changed the correct word "repaired" to the incorrect word, "prepared", by adding a "p" to the beginning of the word and then striking out the "i"?
We asked this in Round Two because, rushing a hasty reply in his own Round Two post, Kinney apparently misunderstood both the question and what the translators had done. In Round Three he did not quote this question nor did he answer it. So in Round Three we explicitly asked him to do so and we pasted the moderators reprimand of Will Kinney, including that he had not answered this question, into our post. In Round Four, Kinney mentioned the number of this question and said he would not answer it because he already had. The behavior of our KJO opponent is typical of the bad behavior of a number of the KJO leaders. (See James White's KJO Controversy book for a summary.) Will Kinney never answered this question.
Enyart: Hey Will, you still with us?
WiKiLiD: Hmm. Yeah, I was just thinking about something.
Enyart: In the debate we showed you the translators' own handwritten changing the correct word "repaired", in Second Chronicles 32:5, to the incorrect word, "prepared". They added a "p" to the beginning of the word and then they struck out the "i". Did you see that?
WiKiLiD: Not really. I didn't really look at the picture.
Enyart: Well, have you gone back and looked at that verse? Do you believe us that that's what is shows?
WiKiLiD: Yeah, sure.
Enyart: So, everybody, even your own guys, admit that this was an error. So can you admit that this KJB error was caused by the translators?
WiKiLiD: Yes.
Enyart: Yes? Wow. Yes!
WiKiLiD: No, yes, I can admit that, if I wanted to. But no, I won't admit it.
BWQ19: Will Kinney, will you dispel the myth believed among many KJO advocates that the KJB was only being perfected from 1611 to 1769, by affirming that in reality, there are many instances where the text incorporated additional errors?
We asked this in Round Three. In Round Four Will Kinney quoted this question and declined to answer it saying that there is no such "myth" and that "errors… today are much less frequent." So at the very least, for an "inspired", "100% textually pure", "perfect", and "complete" text, at least it doesn't have too many errors.
BWQ20: Will Kinney, will you take our offer and specifically identify two or three King James Bibles, by publisher and year, that meet your standard? And if you do, we will specifically identify a Bible currently available that meets the standard that we've been proclaiming.
We asked this in Round Three, a question that is almost verbatim from BWQ4a. In Round Four Will Kinney quoted this question and refused to list two or three, but we were thankful that he did give at least enough information about his own personal Bible for us to identify it.
BWQ21: Will Kinney, you have been referring to the complete, perfect and inerrant word of God. Is the 1769 Oxford edition complete?
We asked this in Round Three and in Round Four Will Kinney answered directly with a "no". He claimed there are three or four very minor differences, which of course is false. No matter how big the changes between various KJBs, the KJO camp almost always describes them as very minor, except when they don't. Here, if Kinney really thought that there were only a few minor differences between millions of other KJBs and the 1769 Oxford, then he wouldn't have answered "no", "the 1769 Oxford edition [of the King James is not a] complete [Bible]". In a moment of near clarity, KJO author D.A. Waite has admitted that by his own counting there are "136 substantial changes" between the 1611 and today's King James Bibles. His other widely-noted claim of about 400 "audibly" noticeable changes of any kind of significance has been utterly refuted.
BWQ22: Will Kinney, how did you come to the conclusion that it was the Cambridge edition of the KJB, and not the Oxford, London or Edinburgh editions, for example, that are free of error?
We asked this in Round Three and in Round Four Will Kinney quoted this question and answered it rather well. He says he determines this by looking at the Hebrew texts that underlie the KJB. Of course, this sets him up as a judge over God's Word. How dare he claim to be the arbiter between one King James Bible and another. As we've shown previously, KJO leaders assert their own authority above all else. Of course this is an enormous admission and would also mean that the Hebrew (and of course the Greek) truly is the higher standard. And that means, as Kinney earlier admitted, that the Hebrew is inspired. But it would also mean that every Christian needs to learn Hebrew to figure out for themselves which KJB is inerrant. Or, they could just trust Will Kinney (who, by the way, significantly disagrees with other KJO leaders on which King James Bible is the one).
BWQ23: Will Kinney, like Bibles published in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, did the printed 1611 King James Bible say anywhere on it that it had the designation of being "Authorized"?
We asked this in Round Three and thankfully, Will Kinney answered directly with a "No". So everyone should remember that the KJO camp has always been defending not the AV but the UB, the Unauthorized Bible.
BWQ24: Will Kinney, regarding your utterly contradictory claim that God produced an inspired, 100% perfect, inerrant text from printers that you admit made errors, and from translators that you admit were not inspired, who brought about a text that you admit had errors, can you include these three underlined admissions of your in explaining how this all adds up to the world's only supernaturally preserved inspired text?
We asked this in Round Four. In Round Five Will Kinney quoted this question and did attempt an answer. He backtracked and now claimed that the "translators were inspired" but that they did not give us completely new Scripture. Of course that is a strawman because we had never claimed such a thing. But with these underlined admissions from our KJO opponent, Kinney does not explain how they could add up to the world's only supernaturally preserved, purified, perfect, inerrant, inspired text. So of course one could wonder then, did God intervene over hundreds of years with the printers, at various times and in sundry places, and primarily at Cambridge University Press, or is it just by man's efforts that they finally got it right?
BWQ25: Will Kinney (please try to understand this question before answering it; you are not good at hypotheticals), if in fact the New Testament records Jesus and the Apostles quoting from a popular but imperfect Greek translation of the Hebrew, rather than from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, would that demonstrate that unlike you and the KJO camp, God is not uptight about a perfect translation?
We asked this in Round Four, and Will Kinney never answered.
BWQ26: Will Kinney, please try to answer this question. Ruckman, Riplinger, others within the KJO camp, and you in your own article "No LXX" all reject that the Septuagint existed in the time of the Lord. So, did the 1611 translators agree with the opinion expressed today within the KJO camp that the Septuagint was not quoted within the New Testament, or do the translators by their preface in the 1611 KJ agree with KJO opponents who affirm the existence of the Septuagint in the time of the Lord?
We ask this in Round Four and in Round Five Will Kinney replied to but didn't quote this, and answered a different question saying, "NO, I do not agree with their statement."
BWQ27: When you claim that we have never seen the originals, you have never seen the originals. You claim they were burned in that London fire. So how is it that more and more changes are being made to the text by printers, without those originals available to be accessed?
We asked this in Round Four and Will Kinney never quoted it and and never answered.
KJO Battle Royale XIV Invite To All KJO Leaders: We invite any of the top KJO leaders who think they could better defend their position to join in this debate according to the following offer. James White had already falsified the KJO claims in his KJO Controversy book. This TOL debate took a different approach and gave the translators themselves the opportunity to testify against the KJO movement (and on behalf of the poor printers). With this BR XIV, we hope that until the Lord returns, help will be just a click away for a Sunday school teacher being browbeat, or a pastor getting harassed, or a family member fatigued by a misguided KJO promoter. (To help others find this debate helpful, please post links now and then to this debate here on TOL or to our kgov.com/kjo.)
Of course we can expect the KJO authors to continue to promote their claims. So to the top KJO leaders, we make an offer to each of you, for we have devised a way for you to join in on this very debate. This offer specifically includes D. A. Waite, Gail Riplinger, Peter Ruckman's group, Steve Anderson, Jack Moorman, William Schnoebelen, and Michael Pearl.
Here's an email from Michael's ministry a few years back declining our debate offer:
He [Michael Pearl] recommends that you contact Peter S. Ruckman... He is probably theWe've just emailed the Pearls to let them know that this debate is now available online and that perhaps their assistant general manager Chuck Joyner's prediction has come to pass.
strongest Bible defender bar none. ... Be sure and tell them Michael Pearl and Chuck Joyner from
NGJ sent you their way. I would recommend that you... possibly make [the debate] available online to document the "total slaughter" that will certainly occur. Please stay in touch and keep me updated. [emphasis in the original]
So here's our standing offer to these KJO leaders. We will reply to you, as though we were debating you, if you post here on TOL in the Bob Enyart Life forum your own answer our 27 numbered questions as listed below. If you do that, also in a single post (which might help us keep the interaction concise) by providing thoughtful answers to the questions, then we commit to respond to you and to answer a similar number of your own questions. And please follow the BR XIV rules for numbering convention, no links, etc. We look forward to the KJO camp's vigorous defense of their position against the evidence presented here from the translators.
Jesus Quotes the Septuagint Instead of the Hebrew: Why does the KJO camp deny that Jesus quoted from the imperfect Greek translation of the Old Testament? The answer is evident. The KJO argument is nullified if the Lord Jesus ever quoted from the very different Greek translation of the Scriptures. (Every KJO leader being honest easily admits this.) Realize that the Septuagint is not the original, God-inspired, Scripture. It is manifestly a less-than-perfect (as all translations must be) translation, sometimes a paraphrase, and sometimes, well, sometimes, it's just something else altogether.
A Textual Lesson on a Graphic: Carefully read the following graphic (even if you don't know Greek) and you will understand this relatively simple (though foreign) matter. Majority opinion does not decide truth. Still, we note that the vast majority of Christian theologians and language and textual scholars (including, notably, the 1611 translators as we heard them in Round Four) concur that a large percentage of the Old Testament passages presented in the New Testament quote not the Hebrew but the Septuagint. For example, at Ps. 8:2:
Such dramatic examples fill the New Testament.
In the last round we reported to you that the 1611 translators testified against the KJO movement by affirming the use of the Septuagint in the New Testament (which fact alone destroys KJOnlyism). Now though, we would like to show you their written affidavit to that effect. Note their brilliance of their understanding as they explain why God preferred to use a popular but imperfect translation rather than have the Lord and the Apostles translate for themselves the Old Testament Hebrew into New Testament Greek. For the quotes from these Hebrew Scriptures provided the evidence for the assertions of the Gospel, and if the Apostles were generating their own translations, then they would lack credibility because any thinking person would reasonably question whether they were biased in their translation. See for yourself the 1611 translators testifying on our behalf and against the KJO movement:
Regarding use of what the KJO camp sees as the imperfect Septuagint: Regarding New Testament quotations of the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit's acceptance and use in hundreds of places of the Septuagint Greek translation, rather than requiring use of the original Hebrew text, testifies to the observation that there is no such thing as a perfect translation of any work of considerable length. God Himself instituted diverse languages and just as it is impossible to exactly render any number of fractions in decimal notation, likewise, by their very nature, it is impossible to exactly render any lengthy text into another language. In fact, as our Russian translator told us regarding our classic article, Judge Rightly Is Not Some Guy's Name, the title of that article on judging is simply not translatable into Russian, nor, undoubtedly, into hundreds of other languages, for it makes use of an English idiosyncrasy of having two identical words that are a verb and the title of the person who performs the action of the verb.
Thank you for participating in this debate!
For the work of KJB researcher Rick Norris.
David Norton's A Textual History of the King James Bible
Ward Allen's Translating for King James
John King's Foxes' Book of Martyrs: Select Narratives
thebiblecorner.com site for reading old (and newer) Bibles
Manifold Greatness website
"Authorization of the KJB" Macmillan's Magazine June 1881
On Ps. 136 (and a global flood passage that we intentionally displayed when we showed the notations diving down into the binding)
Billy Graham advocating the killing of some unborn children.
Audio clip of Peter Ruckman denying the baby in the womb is a living soul.
More about the KJV's incorrect translation of kill vs. murder at kgov.com
A simple listing of all questions from Bob Enyart and Will Duffy to the KJO movement
Statistics of projects overseen by Wycliffe Bible Translators
The Septuagint refutes the KJO camp, so they deny its existence despite the evidence.
Examples of consultations we had with our local Hebrew expert during the debate at kgov.com/kjo#mcmahon
kgov.com/kjo#james-white will link to James White's book and any analysis he may have of BR XIV
An inerrant KJV would require miracles on demand; more about miracles at kgov
Questions about BR XIV rules, violations, and length of posts
Ongoing debate analysis and updated resource list at kgov.com/kjo
Official BR XIV Supplemental Material by Bob Enyart and Will Duffy right here on TOL in the BEL forum
Last edited by Bob Enyart; November 12th, 2015 at 12:12 AM.
The Bob Enyart Live talk show airs at KGOV.com weekdays at 5 pm E.T. Also, same time, same station, check out Theology Thursday (.com) and on Fridays, Real Science Radio (.com) a.k.a. rsr.org. All shows are available 24/7 and you can call us at at 1-800-8Enyart.
MarleneJ (September 17th, 2016),patrick jane (February 24th, 2016),Tambora (July 7th, 2017)
Battle Royale XIV is OVER!!!
Back to your corners!!!
I want to thank all three opponents for participating in this very entertaining battle.
If you have an opinion about this battle please free to discuss this battle here.
Last edited by Sherman; November 12th, 2015 at 10:27 AM.
Uh...what?In the KJO movement, we've always said that any errors that exist in any of the King James Bibles are the result of printer errors. I was surprised when I saw that you guys brought the translators themselves into the debate. So I was afraid to answer either yes or no. If I answered Yes, that errors by the translators would falsify our movement, I was afraid that you might be able to show from the translators' own handwriting that they were the ones who produced some of the errors. If I answered No, that would seem obviously deceptive. So I just pretended to answer.
How can you stand debating with someone like that?
"There is one thing worse than going to Hell. That would be going to Hell and having it be a surprise."
Terence Mc Lean
[most will be very surprised]
Everyone who has not believed the Gospel of grace is not saved, no matter what else they believe or do.
By that measure, how many professing Christians are on their way to the Lake of Fire?
Tambora (July 7th, 2017)
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