For Fair Use Discussion and Educational Purposes

This article by Jovial addressing the Cult of King James Onlyism is very well written: we would all do well to read and take heed. Pastors that lift up their KJV and declare it to be the only word you can believe or trust have done a great disservice to the Word of God. For instance, I'd like to cite the fact that before the present 1611 version of the KJV, the Books of the Apocrypha were a part of the total Bible. The very One that we call our Savior, Jesus Christ, cited the words of Enoch.

Thank you Jovial for an excellent presentation. Gerlinda

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Jovial (24 Aug 2014)
"The Cult of King James Onlyism"
If there is trying a movement within the Christian Church I would consider "cultic", it has to be the King James Only movement. That is the belief that the English King James was Divine Inspired, and therefore there is no need to consult a different translation or read from the original language.

Often this is promoted by people who teach many doctrines of men. Because they teach doctrines of men, they can't afford to let someone read from a translation that has a slightly different spin on a verse, because they have based their doctrine on a misunderstanding of a questionable translation to begin with. Once it becomes clear that the writer may not have meant what they are trying to promote, things get ugly, they get mad, and they accuse anyone of reading from another translation of trying to "rewrite the Bible", because this type of propganda is necessary to defend their doctrines of men.

A belief in King James Onlyism tends to go hand - in - hand with a number of other cultic ideas;

Heresy Hunting / Cult Hunting; Many KJV Only promoters frequently talk about how bad every denomination but theirs is. The reason KJV Onlyism so often occurs with people on a witchunt to discredit every competing denomination is that there are certain wordings of verses, unique to the King James, they are relying on to promote their ideas. Other translations ruin their "proofs".
A lack of academic intelligence. Most KJV Onlyists do not know Hebrew or Greek; if they did, they'd be cured of their error. Sometimes they CLAIM to know one language or the other, at which point I often send them a question in Hebrew and see if they can respond to it or not. But let's face it; the idea that the English KJV is Divine Inspired is not a thinking man's position.
Meanness, impersonableness, and an insultive attitude. Rarely do I find someone who believes in KJV Onlyism who is a "nice guy". They are not people people. They are often argumentative, abrasive, and rude.
First let me say that I do consider the KJV to be one of the better translations. But my primary concern is with the idea that one does not need to study the original languages because we have some perfect translation.

But did you know that the King James Bible

Tells us God lies, despite a different translation from most other versions.
Tell us all men are omniscent
The End of the world has already come.
The Gospel has been preached to everyone
That Yeshua was "made"
Can't quote itself correctly
And nearly all of the above statements are found in the King James Only? Most translation fix these errors and they are indeed errroneous translations not found in the original language. Read on and I will show you the Bible verses where these errors, exclusive to the King James, are found.

http://christianbeliefs.org/articles/englishbiblesurvey.html says that the KJV was the 13th English translation behind:

Wycliffe's [1380]
Tyndale's [1525/6]
Coverdale's [1535]
Matthew's by John Rogers [1537]
1538 Coverdale's Latin-English NT,
"The Great Bible" [1539 by Coverdale for Thomas Cranmer]
Taverner's,
Whittingham's,
Geneva [1560] http://www.greatsite.com/engbibhis/ says it retained over 90% of Tynsdale's translations. The 1599 update to it: (Geneva Study Bible) is available online by clicking here (though it's been "modernized").
Bishops' [1568]
1551 Bishop Becke's Bible,
1552 Richard Jugge's NT
Now from the dates above, it does not appear as the web site I quoted here got the entire order perfect, but all of these were significantly before the 1611 KJV. Also, we know of more. For example, there was also

Rheims New Testament in the 1580's was translated from the Vulgate.
Did G-d not love the English until 1611? And why would G-d only love the English so much and not do the same for German speaking folks or French speaking folks? Are English speakers the new "chosen"? And why do some societies not have the Scriptures in their own languages? Does God not love them?

It's just another translation folks.

When the KJV first came out, it was the "modern" translation of its day and many Geneva Bible lovers attacked this "modern translation" of the KJV for all the places where it disagreed with the Geneva Bible, which many people at the time viewed as THE Word of God. People who think the same way today are now defending, not the Geneva Bible as they did then, but the KJV for no reason other than the fact it is the oldest Bible in wide circulation.

One of the favorite arguments of the KJV only crowd is "Don't you think God would have preserved His Word?" Well, yes He has preserved it for several thousand years, but English is not the chosen language for it's "preservation". Some societies have never had it in their language at all, let alone had it preserved in their language.

God did indeed preserve His word in a language OTHER than English. Good thing, since English has changed quite a bit over the years. Comparatively speaking, Hebrew hasn't changed much at all. How well G-d preserved His Word has no relevancy as to whether the KJV is a good translation or not. If every word of the KJV were wrong or right, it would not have affected whether He preserved His word because it's been preserved in ANOTHER LANGUAGE!!!!!!! As hard as it is to convince the KJV only crowd, English has no special status with God!!! But the KJV only crowd would have you believe that the preservation of God's word rests solely on whether the KJV is error free!

I'm not writing this to promote any favorite translation, but more to encourage people to read from the original languages and demonstrate that even a generally good translation can and does have errors. I consider the KJV to be superior to the NIV, RSV, etc., in most of its translations, but I consider the original manuscripts to be of better value to read than the KJV.

For those who don't know the original languages well enough, I'd encourage them to read from a different translation every year. The KJV is better than most translations, in fact one of the best, but it has it's flaws. If you read from a different translation every time you read through the Bible, you'll begin to get a more complete picture than you will when you read the KJV only, even if it is one of the better translations. This page will detail some of those flaws.

Why does the KJV tell us that G-d lies?

The KJV says this....

God is not a man, that he should lie"
(Numbers 23:19)

"And if the prophet be decieved when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet"
(Ezekiel 14:9)

The word the KJV translates as "decieve" here is "PTYTY" which means to entice, simplify, etc. It does NOT mean "decieve", but the KJV tells us here that G-d decieves people. 1 Kigns 22 might be a good explanation for what this means.

Why can't the KJV quote itself correctly?

Some have alleged that the KJV (King James Version) is a letter-for-letter perfectly Divinely inspired version of the scriptures. If this is the case, then why can't the KJV quote itself correctly? In Matt 12:19, the KJV says:

"He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets." (Matt 12:19 in KJV, quoting Isa 42:2)

One problem with this is that there's verse after verse in which the Gospels record Yeshua being heard to speak outside. Let's see how the KJV reads in Isa 42:2

"He shall not cry, nor lift up; nor cause his voice to be heard in the street." (Isa 42:2 in KJV)

OK, this is much better. It is merely saying He won't force anyone to listen to Him. It doesn't say He wouldn't speak in the streets. Our Messiah taught and acted in such a way that people wanted to hear Him. But they didn't have to. He wasn't the rabbi of their synagogue. No one was ever tricked into listening to Him. The Hebrew word for "Street" here simply means "outside". But we also have this problem; if the KJV is a letter-for-letter inspiration of what G-d intended us to have, how come Matt 12:19 doesn't agree with Isa 42:2? Why does Matt 12:19 say Yeshua would not be heard in disagreement with Isa 42:2? Did G-d inspire Matt 12:19 to misquote Isa 42:2? Isaiah either said "street" (singular) or "streets" (plural), if he meant "street" at all (since the Hebrew word simply means "outside"). But since the KJV doesn't agree with itself anywhere here, did they misquote what came out of Isaiah's mouth when they recorded it as "street" in Isa 42:2 or did they misquote what came out of Isaiah's mouth when they recorded it as "streets" in Matt 12:19? Obviously, one of these has to be "off".

Now some people will say "the reason for that is the translation from Hebrew to Greek to English". But that's not the issue I'm addressing. I'm addressing the absurdity that is promoted when many KJV Onlyists claim that all the problems with the Hebrew or Greek manuscripts were "fixed" when G-d inspired the KJV to be created, and that the KJV now perfectly preserves His Word, whereas the texts they came from do not.

Obviously, the answer lies in the fact that the KJV was translated from other languages, and was not translated perfectly, nor was it translated consistantly. There's plenty of explanations for this that do not give cause to doubt the inspiration of the scriptures in their original languages or to doubt the content of the scriptures. But one really has to ignore reality and reason to conclude that the KJV is letter-for-letter exactly how G-d wanted the scriptures to read in English. Such an idea has been promoted by people such as Sam Gipe in his Answer Book, but one doesn't even haveto be able to read another language to see what that it is impossible for this to be true.

The worst part of this is that it can even quote itself. And its not just the Gospel, but we find this in a multiple quotation of the Tanakh. For example,

Heb 3:11 "So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest" (Heb 3:11 quoting Ps 95:11)

Heb 4:3 "As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest"
(Heb 4:3, quoting the same verse)

Ps 95:11 "Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest."

Not only does the KJV change the verse when it quotes it, but changes it in 2 different ways. Did G-d inspire the KJV translators to translate this several different ways? The Greek text the KJV translates from in Hebrews is identical in both cases, but the English translation is different.

Ps 95:11 in the KJV says they should not enter (but maybe they'll do it anyway, huh, since you can still do what you shouldn't in English thought?) Heb 3:11 says they won't, not just that they should not. And Heb 4:3 doesn't make good sense, and is a result of an overliteral translation from Hebrew to Greek, and then from Greek to English.

English not enough

The 1611 King James doesn't seem to think that studying the scriptures in English alone is good enough. A footnote to the 1611 KJV at Mark 13:8 reads "The word in the originall, importeth.the paines of a woman in trauaile.". The KJV translated the word in question as "sorrows", but indicated with the footnote that this was not a deep enough of an understanding of what the text was saying.

Pure Errors - Here's some things that are just simple erroneous

Of course, having demonstrated now that the resultant text cannot be considered letter-for-letter perfect, let's move onto dealing with the question of whether there are any translational errors. Some KJV Onlyists don't necessarily believe the English is faultless, but just that the translation is faultless, and any problems that exist are in the source texts, not the KJV.

That true is wrong. There are plenty of examples we can give of the KJV mistranslating the scriptures. I'll show example of not only that, but a variety of other reasons why errors came about in the KJV due to problems with translation, interpretation, selecting between manuscripts, and just plain errors.

The King James says every man on planet earth has heard the Gospel! Note that it says...

"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men" (Titus 2:11. KJV)

although a correct reading is...

"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation to all men hath appeared " (Titus 2:11)

But don't expect too many KJV-Only folks to admit that there's an error in the KJV just because...the plain black and white of the text makes it undeniable. No...if their ideas where based on reality, they wouldn't believe the KJV is error free. You have to throw facts, logic and reason out the window to buy into the KJV Only philosophy and accept as a principle of faith, that no matter how much someone shows you an error, you still must look at it and claim it's not an error for no reason other than the fact that the King James cannot be wrong. The main reason for this was that the KJV translators did not convert the word order into English word order, but stuck with the word ordering in the Greek, even though that word ordering implies something different in English than it did in Greek.

One obvious problem in the KJV must be....

"Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfect..." (Heb 6:1)

This sounds like apostacy is the only way we can become perfect! Now even in the 1611 KJV, the translators footnoted that this text was problematic. So I won't go into any detail criticizing the KJV on this verse. but I cite it to point out the fact that even the KJV translators realized there was problems with their own translation!!!

Also, the King James says we're all omniscent!!! Note the following versions:

"ye know all things" (1 John 2:20, KJV from Greek Byzantine NT)

"ye all know" (1 John 2:20 in a small minority (4) of Greek manuscripts)

"ye seperate/distinguish between all men" (1 Yoch 2:20, Pe****ta)

Now according to the KJV, we are all omniscent! In fact, if you literally believe what is written, the logical conclusion would be we know more than Yeshua since the Greek Gospels record Him as saying he didn't know when He would return to earth. But according to the Greek 1 John 2:20, we're omniscent! The King James says so! That of course, disagrees with common sense. We learn things every day, thus, one thing we know is that we don't know everything, because we're constantly learning things we did not know the day before. Now NA (Nestle-Aland) lists 4 Greek MSS that read "ye all know", but that's 4 out of about 18 MSS that I know of extant for 1 John. The Aramaic version reads much different, but even sticking with Greek manuscripts, King James' crowd could have recognized that there HAD to be another way to word this one!

Worse yet, the KJV doesn't seem to think God can do everything. Heb 9:5 reads like this ....

...peri wn ouk estin nun legein kata meros" =
"...concerning which it is not now to speak in detail.", probably meaning to imply
"...concerning which it is not now [the time] to speak in detail." (Greek Heb 9:5)
"...we cannot now speak particularly." (KJV, Heb 9:5)
Note the difference. The KJV says it is impossible to say anymore, but the Greek text that the KJV was allegedly translated from says nothing like this! The Greek text merely suggests it is not proper time to go into more detail than what has been described. But the KJV says it is not POSSIBLE to go into more detail!!!! What is this "...we cannot now speak?" I mean, you could if you wanted to. The Torah does it. Exodus and Leviticus go into great detail, and you could copy that word-for-word and thereby go into more detail without even thinking much about it. I mean, it is POSSBILE, thus saying "we CANNOT" is simply erroneous. It's bad enough that the KJV translators decided to act as "Bible Correctors", but here, it is obvious that there "correction" was not a correction, but introduced error into the text.

And of course, the writing of Heb 9:5 is understood to be Divinely inspired. Is it not possible for an infinite God to say more than Heb 9 says?

Gal 4:4 says Yeshua was "made of a woman" while the Greek text says he "having come of a woman". Someone might use this verse to suggest that He was a created being, but that is simply not true.

Luke 14:10 in the King James says men are to be "worshipped", but the Greek text merely reads "glory" here. According to the KJV, men are to be worshipped! And in 1 Chron 29:20 the KJV has Israel worshipping both G-d and David at the same time, reading "And all the congregation blessed the LORD God of their fathers, and bowed down their heads, and worshipped the LORD, and the king." when a more correct reading would be "And all the assembly blessed YHWH , G-d of their fathers and bowed (their heads) and bowed (their bodies) to YHWH and to the king."

In Heb 9:26, the KJV tells us the end of the world has already come!

John 8:51 in the KJV says "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death", while the Greek text actually says "...he shall not see death forever." The KJV says the man will not die. The Greek text doesn't say he won't die, just that he won't be dead forever. John 11:26 contains the same error again.

In James 5:11 the KJV says, "The Lord is very pitiful."

According to the King James, Yeshua doesn't care about anyone. Matt 22:16 in the King James reads, "we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any : for thou regardest not the person of men." Sounds like Yeshua could care less about people reading this! The second half really says something closer to this, "...for you do not look to the faces of men." The KJV Bible correctors changed "look" to "regardest" and "faces" to "persons", giving us a very different impression of what was said than what appears in the Greek text it was allegedly translated form. The problems with the first half are still problematic in Greek, but are fixed when we go back to the Hebrew text the Greek was translated from. The Hebrew text says, "there is no special-interest of any man upon You" instead of "you don't care about anyone."

Philippians 3:20 in the KJV says, "Our conversation is in heaven."

In James 3:2, the KJV says we offend every-body. "In many things we offend all."

Ps 68:17 talks about "angels" in the KJV even though the Hebrew word for "angel" does not appear anywhere in the Hebrew text.

The above exampes are just a start of a very long list of erroneous translations in the King James that I have collected over the years. There's more I could post. But for brevity, I'll stop here.

There's no doubt that KJV Onlyism is a doctrine of men. There's no verse in which one of the prophets foretells the day the wonderful "Melek Ya'acov" would straighten out all the problems with previous English translations and even the original language. It's a non-Biblical doctrine. It is cultic man-made teaching that smart people should flee from as quickly as possible.

Often, the motivation is to promote cultic teachings, and one could form a horrible cult around the errors in the King James; a cult that teaches that G-d lies, men know everything, and the world has already ended.

Shalom,

Joe

http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/aug2014/jovial824-4.htm

Hi Jovial,

Just in case you happen to read this post.

Per your quote on another one of your posts:

We, on this site, love the Catholic people, who are victims of the Vatican System in place now. We are doing our best to expose the Seat of Satan that has been enthroned into St. Peter's, officially, in 1962, according to Malachi Martin, who left his position as a high ranking Jesuit in Rome. He paid, with his life, for trying to expose what has been taking place in the Vatican through his many books. Although they were fiction, an ex-Catholic, such as myself, can easily see what he was trying to tell the world. We pray that the many God loving Catholic family and friends will find their way out of the System, give up their Rosaries, praying to the Saints and put their complete trust in the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thank you, once again for saying what needed to be said.

Gerlinda