From time to time, particularly among Fundamentalists, you’re gonna find a person who insists no bible is trustworthy but the King James Version. Usually they’re called “King James Only” or “KJV-Only” Christians. I like to call them KJV-Onlyfans. Yes, I’m fully aware of how that’s gonna monkey with internet search engines. Or at least I hope so!
You’re gonna find KJV-Onlyfans revere the KJV a little too much, and regularly cross the line into bibliolatry. A number of ’em are cessationist, and don’t believe the Holy Spirit permits prophecy anymore; it stopped after the New Testament was complete. So instead of listening to the Holy Spirit, they elevate the Holy Bible, mix up the word of God with the Word of God, and worship the scriptures. Well, worship the scriptures they haven’t voided with dispensationalist interpretations. Hey, bibliolatry is complicated.
So… no bible is trustworthy but the KJV. What, I once asked one of the KJV-Onlyfans, about non-English bibles? What about a French-speaker who doesn’t know English, and therefore can’t use the KJV?—are there no trustworthy French bibles? His answer was, “No, there really aren’t.” My hypothetical French-speaker’s best option, he said, would be a French bible translated from the infallible KJV. That’s right, not from the original Hebrew and Greek texts; from the KJV. Toldja they regularly crossed the line.
The main reason KJV-Onlyfans believe as they do, is because they were told to believe it. Their preachers told ’em it’s a vital, essential part of Fundamentalism to be King James-believing Christians. That if you’re not a KJV-Onlyfan, you’re gonna fall into error and heresy and wind up in hell. So make sure you’re going to a KJV-Only church! Like theirs.
Then their preachers gave ’em a big ol’ list of reasons why they should trust no other bible but the KJV. The reasons vary, and some of the reasons are pretty dumb. Like “It was the bible of the Founding Fathers.” It wasn’t the bible of all of ’em! Charles Carroll was Roman Catholic, and used a Catholic bible. Quakers had their own translation, and those Founders in the Quaker movement used that. Deists like Benjamin Franklin and John Adams used any bible they pleased; Thomas Jefferson even sliced up his own.
But I digress. People don’t exalt the KJV because they’re convinced by the reasons; they exalt it ’cause they’re convinced by the preachers. The reasons exist because “Pastor said so” doesn’t sound convincing enough—so they sought reasons, and found a few.
And one of the reasons KJV-Onlyfans like to point to, is the Greek New Testament the KJV translators referred to: Desiderius Erasmus’s Textus Receptus. It’s the Greek NT used by Martin Luther, William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, the Geneva Bible, the Bishops’ Bible, the KJV, Young’s Literal Translation, the NKJV, and the Modern English Version. They insist every Greek NT other than the Textus, or published after the Textus, is irredeemably flawed.
The more common Greek NT. Not the oldest.
The main reason the current scholarly Greek New Testaments are flawed, claim the KJV-Onlyfans, is because they’re not using what they call the “Majority Text.” It’s also called the “Byzantine Text,” ’cause it came from the medieval Roman Empire—which many western historians now call the Byzantine Empire so as not to confuse it with the Holy Roman Empire.
See, Erasmus got hold of every medieval copy of the Greek NT he could find. And most of them came from Greek Orthodox churches—because they were still using the Greek NT text, and still spoke Greek fluently. The majority of Greek Orthodox churches still use ’em; hence they’re the “Majority Text.” This, KJV-Onlyfans insist, is the Greek NT which the Holy Spirit himself chose to preserve, intact—until the Spirit-inspired KJV translators got hold of it and created the Spirit-inspired KJV out of it. In any case this is bible. Accept no substitutes.
Now, a number of ’em admit Erasmus added words and verses to the Majority Text in order to create the Textus Receptus. Back in my article on the Textus, I pointed out Erasmus wanted to include every possible variant found in every Greek text. Just to be comprehensive; just to make sure everything that might have been in the original NT, was definitely in his NT. But were those extra words and verses in the original NT? Really likely not. Some of those extra verses didn’t exist for centuries after the first bibles were compiled. Some KJV-Onlyfans recognize this, and insist all bible study and translation should be based on a proper Majority Text instead of the Textus. And some insist no, the Textus is perfect and good, ’cause the perfect and good KJV is based on it. And still others insist we should forget every Greek NT; they’ve all been superseded by the infallible KJV; why learn Greek at all?—it’ll only confuse you.
Anyway, because of all Erasmus’s extra words and verses, later editions of the Greek NT—starting with Brooke Westcott and J.A. Hort’s 1881 The New Testament in the Original Greek—put the Textus’s extra words and verses in the footnotes. Where they belong. But, according to the KJV-Onlyfans who are also big fans of the Textus, those words and verses are bible, and the other Greek NTs are absolutely wrong to put ’em in the footnotes. And that’s why they’re irredeemably flawed. If not devilish!
But back to the Majority Text fans. They argue all the later scholarly Greek NTs are irredeemably flawed, not because they removed all the stuff Erasmus inserted, but because the Majority Text was the widespread Greek NT, the majority of medieval Greek NTs. And they wouldn’t be the majority unless the Holy Spirit was behind it.
The main Greek texts of the Westcott-Hort Greek NT—and the Nestle-Aland Greek NT, and the United Bible Societies’ Greek NT, and the Tyndale House Greek NT—do not come from the Majority Text. They’re instead based on much older copies of the NT. Copies which date from the second through 10th centuries, not the 11th to 16th. Some of those copies weren’t discovered till the 19th and 20th centuries. The KJV-Onlyfans call these copies “Alexandrian,” because a lot of them came from monasteries in and around Alexandria, Egypt.
Older copies of the bible, the KJV-Onlyfans insist, are not better. What you want are the more popular and common bibles. Digging up old bibles, and using them instead of the Majority Text… suggests you’re up to something. Like you’re trying to debunk the Majority Text, or get around it somehow.
Here’s the thing: When I translate New Testament, I look at multiple Greek NTs. Here’s a screenshot.
The Greek New Testaments I’m usually looking at in Accordance: The UBS-5, Textus Receptus, Tyndale House Greek NT, and the Codex Sinaiticus. Plus the KJV and UBS Translator’s Handbooks. And yes, I have modules of other codices, parchments, and the Peshitta, if I really wanna nitpick a word to pieces.
And you’re gonna find few to no differences between those New Testaments. About 85 percent is the exact same text. That other 15 percent?—debatable textual variants, and words and verses Erasmus inserted. I have all those panes open because I don’t wanna miss the differences whenever they come up, but they seldom come up.
So all this kerfuffle about “You should be using the Majority Text instead of some critical text”: Yep, it’s entirely blown out of proportion. By people who either don’t know what they’re talking about; or who are trying to suck up to the KJV-Onlyfans in their denominations, churches, or families; or they’re conspiracy theorists who think there is something unsavory afoot in the minds of textual scholars.
It’s why I have no problem with switching back and forth between the KJV and more recent translations. If they’re interpreting the original text properly, they’re fine! If they’re not, I’ll say so, and won’t use ’em. But I certainly won’t elevate one of them to the level of divinity—and use ridiculous, bogus arguments to defend why it’s the bestest bible ever. The KJV is a very good bible. Let’s not go beyond that.
