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Old 06-08-2009, 08:11 AM
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Amazon has a preview of James White's new revised edition of his anti-King James Bible Only book.

By comparing to White's first edition, it would be easy enough to see if White improved by correcting the problems with deceptive reporting.

The preview shows that White retains his foggy definitions, and rather than dealing honestly or with any objectivity, he in fact increases the obscurity level.

He says, “They believe that the KJV, as an English language translation, is inspired and therefore inerrant.” The way that reads is as if the English Bible was made by inspiration. It seems like he is being deliberately ambiguous, so that while a KJBO may say that the Bible contains the inspired Word, he writes in a way which implies that the normal KJBO believes that the KJB, and not other Bibles, are inspired, and more, that the KJB was somehow made by inspiration itself.

He goes on with a new footnote, which does nothing but add further confusion to his above-quoted statement, “Some advocates try and avoid using the words inspired and inerrant, but when you ask them if there are any errors in the KJV, they will say there are not. If you ask whether a better translation could be made, they will deny the possibility. Hence, whether or not they use the exact terms, the functional position they take is the that the KJV is inspired and inerrant.” Notice that he points to certain who avoid using certain terms, then says what they really believe, all the while implying such individuals are either ignorant or deceptive as concerning their true position.

Now, what about those people who believe that the King James Bible is inspired by virtue of it being gathered out of the scattered original language witness, thereby reconstructing by traditional scholarship what was the contents of the autographs? White never addresses such a position at all.

Rather he says, “Many of these folks believe that the TR is inspired and inerrant as well”. Of course, I have just shown that the TR editions are not inspired nor inerrant, and that the KJB translators had to gather out of various witnesses the true text and translate it. But White never addresses that, only the absurd position that apparently many believe that Erasmus, Stephanus and Beza must have all been giving an inspired and inerrant text in their various editions!?

He says, “it would seem logical”, obviously stressing that word “seem”, “that the text from which the KJV was translated would have to be inerrant if the resulting translation is to be considered inerrant”. This is a straw man. I do not think that many KJBOs believe that the TR was inspired or inerrant, since the TR differs to the KJB. But then, White knows that, which is why he claims that this is the argument for the position, which he can at a later stage completely destroy with a few facts.

In all this, we notice that White is extremely fuzzy about what “inspired” and “inerrant” actually mean. Now, I can state my view, which is that the KJB has the inspired Word of God, and that the Word of God is inerrant, and that the KJB is without error. But this is something different than what White seems to be attempting to identify.

After White smugly declares that the KJBO believes that the KJB is the Word of God alone (quite preposterous, in that the Patrick, Bede, Luther, Calvin or Queen Elizabeth the First were not using the King James Bible!) White then goes on to claim that we spend our time and effort on comparisons to other translations, and that we must reject all Bibles because the KJB is inspired and inerrant.

What White is doing is over-simplifying and stating only part of the facts, at least, the parts that suit him, which he will be able to demolish with ease.

There is no leeway, by the way he portrays KJBOs, that they would actually believe that the KJB is supersuccessionary to sufficient forms of Scripture. If the KJB is supersuccessionary, then we are not overtly rejecting other good Bibles. KJBOs are not going to burn Geneva Versions or foreign TR-based translations just because they don’t match the KJB exactly. But White talks about KJBOs being “zealous for the cause”, that is, an intolerance and vindictive hatred toward anything not KJB, so that “all are seen as dangerous” except the KJB, that there is “a massive conspiracy — one which is deceiving Christians right and left”.

Was there really a dangerous conspiracy deceiving William Tyndale because he omitted a few verses in his 1526 New Testament? Are the “William Carey Bible Society” part of a dangerous conspiracy because they have supported Bibles which differ in words and concepts to the King James Bible?

If White was being fair, he would show why KJBOs would reasonably, according to their own teachings, not use Tyndale or Scrivener’s Textus Receptus. But it should be clear to anyone, that White’s book is not a balanced treatment of the subject, but a biased polemic which has a commitment to destroying any confidence in the King James Bible as the Word of God.