Is the King James Version the best or only perfect version to use?
This is an introduction to what has been called 'King James Onlyism.' I am not a language scholar, but have access to an infinite number of language dictionaries, as you do. In articles to follow I plan to address the issue of the doctrine of inspiration, and how we ought to read our Bibles from these contexts.
I hope that many of you who read this find freedom in study and that your personal relationship with God is deepened because of freedom you find in understanding the doctrine of inspiration better.
"I am distressed to receive many letters from ignorant fellows who can hardly write, who never finished high school, writing in burning words about the hypocrisy of St. Augustine and the Roman Catholics, and so on... And a fearful result has come in the minds of many people. They think the King James Version is inspired and that inspiration in the Bible has to mean perfection in our language. Multiplied thousands of these people are in waters over their heads, dealing with matters about which they have only a faint surface understanding. For thousands of these, if anybody shows that one word in the King James Version is not the best word, then you have proved that the Bible isn't true, we have no verbally inspired Bible and you can throw it out in the streets and the modernists are right! You would be surprised at the silly and thoughtless, yet violent letters, I get from such people...
And now to have many, many common and rather ignorant people - more women than men -- writing that Westcott and Hort, St. Augustine, and Catholic who had any part in the translation, anybody who now raises a question about the proper wording of some passage in the King James, are perverts or modernists or hypocrites or ignorant fools (much of the language which they got from DR. _________[1]), is a sorry business, and you and I will be answerable to God if we develop that kind of attitude among common Christians...
I do not want to grow a generation of Christians, who, if you show them that the word "Easter" in Acts 12:4 of the King James Version is not the proper translation but it ought to be "passover," as is true, will decide that we have no Bible, there is no authority in the Bible. To have anybody making such weighty decisions on an immature judgement about a word or two is not right, and I do not want to put a burden on common people that they must assume a scholarship they do not have, in order to understand the Bible...
If you mean the differences between the American Standard Version and the King James Version is "the most important question that you or I could ever deal with," then I do not agree with that. I think the differences are minor. Far more important is whether or not the Bible itself is the Word of God. And to have ignorant people jumping to conclusions and railing about this matter which they could not possibly know much about, is a good way to ruin their influence and their happiness and with many people to bring discredit on the Bible itself, it seems to me."
~Dr. Rice
I'm not excited about the method of conversation that Dr. Rice uses but he presents an excellent point about showing even one word to be translated without using the best word choice possible. If the KJV is the ONLY accurate version and if it's language is the ONLY consistent language, then if even one word shows to be wrong, the KJV as well as all scholarly versions have a problem.
1] Presumably Dr. Peter S. Ruckman of Pensacola, Florida.
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