A few years ago I turned on the TV (don’t ask why; I had no excuse) and flipped over to the Church Channel. There I beheld a white, 40-something charismatic preacher jumping around the stage before a wildly clapping and shouting audience. He read the following verse...
KJV
Two Questions for KJVOs
1. Has anyone else noticed that the standard language in the doctrinal statement of Crown College (and the approximately 130 other churches and ministries that use it verbatim) is inherently contradictory? "The King James Version of the Bible is the only English...
Another Problematic KJV Rendering
“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” All modern translations render that last phrase with another word: “who suppress the truth.” In contemporary English, to “hold the...
Zeal-of-the-Land Busy
I’m still reading God’s Secretaries, and I’ve arrived at a section in which Nicolson details the umpteen rules the KJV translators were supposed to follow. The second is this: 2. The names of the Profyts and the holie Wryters, with the other Names in the text to be...
Lane Dennis, the ESV, and the Internet Age
Once upon a time, I was preaching as a special youth speaker in a church in the South. It was my fourth or fifth time there. The pastor was KJV-Only, and I knew this, so I converted all the ESV quotations in my sermon to KJV quotations. I was preaching from my...
Another KJV Verse That Is Difficult to Understand
"I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily" (1 Cor 15:31). What does that mean? "I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ"? What? That doesn't make any sense to me, and I happen to speak very well English! Add it to the...
Another KJV Verse You Probably Memorized without Understanding It
Keep thy heart with all diligence; For out of it are the issues of life. (Proverbs 4:23) This is a very common memory verse, as well it should be, but how many people know what issues means here? It doesn't mean what we would usually expect that word to mean in a...
Another Verse in the KJV You Probably Don’t Understand Either
What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols? (Hab 2:18 KJV) Is “the graven image” a direct object of “profiteth” or the subject of...
“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love,” Romans 12:10.
Leon Morris makes an interesting note on φιλόστοργοι (philostorgoi—a combination of φίλος [philos] and στοργή [storge]) in Romans 12:10: KJV has “Be kindly affectioned”, where “kindly” is used in its original sense, “referring to kin.” —The Epistle to the Romans,...
Literacy Rates and the King James Version
Literacy in the U.S. is embarrassingly low. Nearly 50% of the adult US population reads at a 7th grade level or lower. Nearly 25% has reading proficiency so low they cannot read instructions on medication bottles, the manual that comes with a piece of machinery, or a...
King James Quiz!
A few weeks ago a fundamentalist pastor I deeply respect told his congregation that the King James Version is an "impediment to many if not most of the Lord’s people in really understanding many passages of Scripture." (I leave his name out only so as not to create...
Foolish and Unlearned Questions Avoid
When I was a summer camp counselor at a Christian camp in 1999, I once had a cabin full of younger junior high campers. One of my campers at least was only in sixth grade, and he was a bus kid. That means his parents were lost, but that the church came by every week...