Training Video Post updated December, 2018 I’m working on a textual critical project aimed at laypeople, and I need help from volunteers. I am showing English speakers, using English, the differences between the Textus Receptus and the Nestle-Aland text. Differences...
KJV
Something I Am Embarrassed to Say I Just Learned
I knew that English Bible translators have access to a computerized linguistic corpus—an unbelievably massive collection of English texts—to help them do their work. What I didn't know, what I just learned, is that I do, too. What you're about to learn, if you didn't...
Lessons from a Back Porch in a Bad Neighborhood
I once stood on the back porch of a run-down home in a neighborhood your realtor wouldn’t even take you to. (Trust me.) I was the leader of an evangelistic outreach ministry, and I was with a college freshman I was mentoring. I wonder now if we were talking to a...
A Vow Regarding the KJV
An online interlocutor with genuine intellectual acumen engaged me graciously but firmly on a recent post I wrote promoting the use of multiple Bible translations. He's essentially KJV-Only, though his professed allegiance is actually to Scrivener's Textus Receptus....
A Question about the New King James Version
A friend wrote me (and I have his permission to post this): I have a serious interest in using the NKJV as the ministry Bible of choice for our congregation. It corresponds to my textual preference for TR/MT/Byzantine tradition (though I appreciate good CT...
Answering Joel Beeke on the KJV
I'm super late to the party on this one, but I just ran across an article by Joel Beeke offering thirteen "Practical Reasons for Retaining the KJV." Dr. Beeke is respected for good reason, and I have profited in multiple ways from his ministry. He also avoids the...
Bart Ehrman and King James Onlyism Share Two Important But Highly Contestable Presuppositions
In biblical scholar Peter Williams' excellent review of atheist Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, Williams writes, Time and again Ehrman claims to be able to tell us...something of the theological convictions and...
The Reading Level of the KJV
I love the King James Version; it deserves its honored place in English church history. Its words will never leave my heart. But to be honest, I have trouble reading it in places—even though I grew up with it. And this is a concern to me, because I want to understand...
C.S. Lewis on the KJV
Some wise words from C.S. Lewis, who read Greek with a fluency I'll never hope to match. I think Lewis overstates the case slightly in the bolded line, because irreverent translations do exist. But as applied to all the major modern English translations, he's right...
The Odd Bible Translation Situation We’re In
The Book of Mormon (1830) and the Pickthal translation of the Qur'an (1930), both completed long after "thee" and "thou" faded from common English usage, both adopted the archaic syntactical and grammatical forms used in the KJV. Why? Here's the Book of Mormon: Holy,...
Grandiloquence and the KJV
I have long felt that this was the case, and it's nice to have it confirmed by someone with an ear for Hebrew as well developed as that of Robert Alter (scroll down to find his presentation), who's been reading the language since boyhood: Poetry in the King James...
Boy Was Scrivener Wrong
I wish F.H.A. Scrivener, the editor of a version of the Textus Receptus that mimicked the textual critical choices of the King James translators, had been right when he wrote the following in 1873. I have taken the liberty of bolding every erroneous prediction. If a...