Part 2: Answering King James Only w/ @WesHuff | Cultish

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The King James Bible as the Pure Word of God

So we believe that the King James Bible is the perfect pure word of God. Because if you don't believe that, then with all these hundreds of Bibles, they're going to contradict each other. And not only that, give wrong doctrine.

And not only that, you have to argue a perfect book. That's why we have to believe the King James Bible is the perfect pure word of God. Because there has to be a perfect book somewhere. Now, if you ask these scholars and critics, they're going to say, oh yeah, I believe there's a perfect Bible, I believe there's a perfect Bible.

And then you're like saying, show me, show me. And they'll say, it's all in the thousands of manuscripts. That's what they're going to say. So we do have a perfect Bible preserved today and they're in the thousands of manuscripts.

But you got to realize this, the Bible never said that His words are found in thousands of different manuscripts and you have to pick and choose collectively. No, God says that all of those right words have to be in one book.

All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to part two. I'm very super excited for this episode. Back as always with Andrew, the superstar of the show in Riverton, Utah, in a super secret location out there somewhere.

How are you doing?

How thou art doing. I'm doing great. There's no super fluidity of naughtiness going on here. I am in Riverton and I'm having a great day and I'm excited for this second episode. The first one with Wes was a blast.

I mean, so much good information, so much great stuff.

Really good. Wes, thanks for coming back, man.

Of course. Pleasure to be with you guys once again. And just for the context of what Andrew was talking about, I opened up before we started recording, I opened up my 1611 KJV and read to them James chapter one, verse 2021, which says that wherefore lay apart all filthiness and super fluidity of naughtiness.

So I'm glad to hear that he is laying apart that to rescue with meekness the encrafted word, which is able to sue your soul. So I hope your soul is being sued and there's no super fluidity of naughtiness going on.

Yeah. And just for the record, too, as we kind of jump into the second episode, is that I like the King James Bible. When I first came, when I first went and started witnessing to my friends who are LDS at the time at this small charter school, I mean, all of them were like the King James Bible was their thing.

They wouldn't listen to you if you had a different Bible translation. So all of the initial Bible verses that I memorized in Apologetics were all like the King James version of that. In fact, if I was to pull all the ring rust from all the verses back then, I still have a lot of them.

I just still quote in my own mind and in the King James translation. So I just differ with saying that the King James Bible, that's the only perfect word of God, which we're going to unpack. So all that being said, I really enjoyed the last conversation.

So kind of continue into part two. Andrew, you had a really good point during the break. Maybe something you thought Wes could expand on regarding this whole conversation about King James only translation.

Restate the question again.

Manuscript Evidence, P75, and the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method

Yeah, he said it at the end of the last episode, and I think it'd be really great for myself and for our listeners too if he expounded on it. So if we have the earliest manuscripts, and there's not very much of them, right?

But we have so much of the later manuscripts. In what instance would we go to the earliest manuscript to say that it's correct. When there's always, there may be a majority that says something different?

Yeah, and this is the case where we weigh manuscript readings, and we would do this for any document within the field of textual criticism. It's not limited to the Bible, but because of the just glut of manuscript evidence that we have with the Bible, we're able to do this at a much higher level, or at least at a much more complicated level because we just have more to go off of.

And so because we have so many manuscripts and we can compare them, even though our earliest ones, I mean, the earliest ones are obviously going to be less in number because the earlier you go back, I mean, some of these manuscripts are from the second and third centuries.

An 1 ,800-year-old copy of the Gospel of John is going to look more worse for wear than a 500-year-old copy of the Gospel of John. I mean, I have books on my shelf that are less than 100 years old and they're not looking great.

So 1 ,800 years, I mean, I wouldn't look as good as some of these documents look at 1 ,800 years. So obviously there's going to be less the further you go back. But the question is, what do we do with the readings that we see in there?

Because there's an aspect of those readings being closer to the original.

That's true.

However, we don't just trace manuscripts. We trace readings within those manuscripts. And actually we can see that there are certain manuscript traditions that kind of interlock with other manuscripts.

So a famous example of this is there's a manuscript tradition that is encapsulated with a manuscript that's known as manuscript P75. And P75 is interesting because we mentioned Codex Vaticanus last time.

There's a surprising connection between the text of P75, which comes from the late second, early third century, and Codex Vaticanus, which comes from the fourth century, because they share 85 agreement with one another.

Now, we don't think that the scribe of Codex Vaticanus or the scribes, plural, that copied that massive document that is basically what we would think of as the entire Bible. P75 only includes sections of the Gospels of Luke and John as we have them preserved today.

But whatever the scribe of Codex Vaticanus had, it was in the same sort of vein of manuscript traditions that P75 came from. So what we discovered was that even though Codex Vaticanus and its text of Luke and John was from the fourth century, it agreed with text that came from the late second century.

So it actually, its text was earlier than the manuscript itself. And this is why some later manuscripts can actually be more reliable than some earlier manuscripts. Because some later manuscripts, because of all of the manuscript evidence that we have, we can kind of map the text and see that they're coming from traditions and exemplars.

An exemplar is just a text that is sort of the one being copied before the one that we have, go earlier. And in this case, even 200 years earlier than the one that's being recorded in the fourth century.

And so there's this connection which kind of creates this map. And so this map that we can put together in the 21st century traces readings back and traces the history of the text, not just of manuscripts, but of actual individual readings between the manuscripts themselves.

So without getting too complicated and too nerdy, scholars have actually got the computers involved in this. And there's a process that's called CBGM, the coherence-based genealogical method. And they're actually doing that, which is they're tracing the readings, not just the manuscripts themselves.

And so despite the fact that we have later manuscripts and a later tradition that seems to have a very steady text, we can see that certain readings are introduced at certain places, and we can map all of these readings.

And that's where when there's accusations of, well, earlier is not necessarily better. I think all textual scholars believe that. And we're not just saying because it's from, say, the third century,.

It's closer to the original.

Therefore, we're going to go with that as our reading. What we can do is we can map the readings, and that's where we weigh the readings rather than count the readings. Does that make sense?

Andrew? I hope so.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Okay.

No, it's definitely like a lot. Like I said, I'm probably going to listen to this a couple of times, but it's just I like the fact that, yeah, it does make sense because I do like the fact that you said some of these people are almost, they're just nerdy about it.

So while usually a lot of the KJV argumentation tends to be like very conspiratorial, like the actual, when you look at academic scholarship, whatever people are into, they usually do it because they love it, not because they're trying to cover something up.

They're actually trying to discover it. So I think that is something that sometimes can be put with a broad brush when it comes to sort of using like, oh, academia is like somehow it's just some sort of broad conspiracy or something like that.

But let me ask you a question too. Are you familiar with someone by the name of scholars, Dean Bergen? An Oxford scholar?

Not off the top of my head, no.

Well, so Gene Kim, he quotes Dean Bergen, and he talks about how he was criticizing the manuscripts that were used to make the first modern day Bible, as he calls it. And he quotes and he says, all four are discovered on careful scrutiny to differ essentially not only from 99 out of the 100 of the whole body of extent manuscripts, but even from each other.

And he goes on to say, like, this is the quote from this guy named Dean Bergen. But he goes on to say, according to Dean Bergen, only 1 of the manuscript evidence supports modern versions and 99%, which is attributed to the majority text, supports the KJV.

So it's 99 versus one. So you kind of touched on that at the end of part one. Maybe I kind of expand off of that because he seems to try and, you know, picking the selective person. And he also says, seeing that this makes clear what Bible to choose, scholars, however, do not think so.

They make it seem as if the KJV does not come from the majority of manuscripts. Despite this, even the Nestle-Allen text, an anti-KJV text, which is respected as the authority by manuscript scholars, admits that the majority text.

And in the quotes, he says, the majority of manuscripts and a reading supported by a majority of all manuscripts, they also called a majority numerous times. So just off the get-go, could you sort of like respond to that?

Maybe just expand off of the end of what you said in part one.

Weighing Readings Instead of Counting Manuscripts

Yeah, so it's interesting because what he's saying is not incorrect at face value. The problem is the way it's being presented. Because if you say, well, only 1 of the manuscripts support, say, reading A, and 99 of the manuscripts support reading B, we have to ask the question, when are those manuscripts for reading B coming?

And can we reliably find where that reading can be traced? Now, what do I mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is that if we have a manuscript that says, Andrew appeared on Apologia Radio at 5 o 'clock, and that comes from the 5th century.

Well, if someone is copying that later and they say, Andrew from the cultish podcast appeared on Apologia Radio at 5 o 'clock, and then that person's manuscripts are copied and copied and copied and copied and copied until we get to the 21st century.

And so there's only one manuscript that says, Andrew appeared on the Apologia podcast at 5, whatever I said originally. I can't even remember what I said. But that would be a case of the original falls into the 1%, whereas the 99 is copying something that's being added.

Now, that doesn't mean that the 99 is more reliable. It just means that it's copied more. And so what I said in our previous episode was it's a matter of weighing readings, not just counting noses. Because I grant, and I don't know any textual scholar who doesn't, that there are readings within the King James Bible that are supported by the majority text, that are supported by the majority readings of the Bible.

It's the wrong question. Of course, there are readings that are supported by the majority text. However, if you're copying, say, a scribal mistake or a scribal addition ad nauseum, then it doesn't matter if there are more copies if it's not what the original author wrote.

And here's the question that modern translators want to get down to. And this is the question when I do textual research that I want to get down to. What did the original author say? Because I'm not concerned with what a scribe wrote in the 4th century, even if that becomes the majority text.

If John didn't write it, then I don't care if it's added into the Gospel of John later. I want to know what John wrote in his Gospel so that I can get back to what the Word of God said. And, man, can we do that with incredible accuracy now.

And it's not even that these additions are compromising. You know, that clip that you played at the beginning where the individual said, you know, there are all these translations and the translations have contradictions.

I mean, I would want to know how he defines contradictions, because I don't think that the majority of the faithful modern translations, the ones you think of the NIV, ESV, NASB, NET, NLT, you know, those ones, I don't think they contradict one another.

I think they maybe use different wording, but I don't think they outright contradict one another. But nonetheless, what they're trying to do is faithfully render the text that the original author wrote.

And so if a scribal addition gets copied ad nauseum, that's fine, but I'm less concerned with that than I am with what the original author wrote.

The 1611 Translators and Textual Criticism

Yeah, Andrew, what questions do you have? What's on your mind regarding this?

Yeah, so I'm thinking in terms of the 1611 King James Version, the people who translated it, were they using some form of textual criticism? I know it wouldn't be like the same modern form that we have today, but it seems to me like some of the fundamental presuppositions of the KJV-only crowd is that modern scholarly use of textual criticism is a bad thing in order to get to the, let's say, the original reading of the text.

But wouldn't the people who translated the 1611 KJV, wouldn't they be using some similar type of technique that would have been a modern form for them of textual criticism in order to get the KJV? It seems like they would have done something similar if they could have back then.

Yes, I mean, that's exactly it. They were using textual criticism. And if they had the evidence that we have available to us today, they would have used that too. They were just using what they had. I mean, it's not like they discounted all the manuscript tradition that we have today and they chose to go a particular way.

We've just discovered more because God has blessed us with being able to look back upon these manuscript discoveries from the 19th century and onward. And that's a true blessing. They didn't have that, so they couldn't deal with what they didn't have.

They didn't know what they didn't know. But if they had what we have today, they would have certainly used it. And we know this because we have their notes. We have the preface to the reader. We have all of these things that the King James translators themselves wrote down and used and going back and forth in regards to how they should render the text.

We know that they would have used the available data that we have today if they had it then. So this portrayal of, well, they chose this particular text because that's the purest, the King James translators would not be KJV only if they existed today.

And we know from what they did say that they were very pro-updating the Word of God to be able to be understood in clear and simple English. I mean, we don't say besom, chambering, and emerald today.

We say broom, immorality, and tumor. So those were words that made sense in Elizabethan English. We use completely different words today. And so the King James translators, if they were alive today, would not insist that we used outdated usage of words and phraseology if they were around.

They would have said, no, replace besom with broom. Replace chambering with immorality. Replace emerald with tumor. Those are words that have completely been made obsolete. We don't use those words anymore.

And so in one sense, there's the textual argument,.

Which I think is valid.

But unfortunately, a lot of people don't know Hebrew and Greek. They're not aware of the complexity of the manuscript tradition. But they do understand the fact that there's usage of language within Elizabethan 17th century English that just doesn't make sense today.

And in that sense, the King James translators, if they were alive in 2023, would say, hey, update those things because we want people to be able to understand the Bible when they read it.

The Comma Johannium and 1 John 5:7

Yeah.

So, Andrew, I think we're going to jump into some of the missing verses that I talk about. So, Andrew, I think I have a couple here. Did you want to throw out maybe the first one, the first sort of challenge when it comes to that?

That's one of the big argumentations. They're talking about there's missing verses. And not only there's just missing verses, but there's malicious intent behind the missing verses. But also they will talk about how there's core doctrine, core essential doctrine that you are just not going to get if you use anything else besides the King James.

So, Andrew, what do you see? What's the first on the Rolodex you want to throw out to Wes and see what he has to say?

Yeah. Why isn't the Comma Johannium, 1 John 5, 7 through 8 in the most modern text? I mean, it's one of the most clearest texts that's on the Trinity. Clearly, we have a device from the devil made to confuse us and think that God is not a Trinitarian.

You know what I mean? I don't know why my brain is thrown off there.

Yeah. That's a great example. Because that's an example that is found in almost no Greek manuscripts. And it's actually not found in the majority of texts. So we referred to earlier the majority text.

The Jehoiachin Comma, which is 1 John 5, 7, is not found in the majority text. I'm just looking it up here on my computer. And actually, when Erasmus, who I mentioned previously, who made this edition of the Greek New Testament that was the basis translation or the basis text for the translation that the King James translators use, he had five editions.

I mentioned that last time. The first two editions do not include it. And in fact, on my bookshelf behind me, I have a facsimile of a 1522 Erasmus Greek Latin New Testament. This is the first edition that the Comma Johannium, the 1 John 5, 7, I believe I actually even might have it marked off.

It's the first one that it appears in. And basically, there it is. I've marked it off. I have some sticky notes in there to talk about it. It's the first edition that includes it. And so if we read it, so basically, if you read the Nessie Aland, the critical edition of the Greek New Testament, and you read the Greek, it's going to say, for there are three that testify.

That's going to be 1 John 5, 7. It's just going to say that for there are three that testify. Now, this one says, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.

Now, what's going on there? Well, that seems like a clear verse that talks about the doctrine of the Trinity, right? But what the problem with it is, is that the reason why Erasmus did not include it in his first two editions of the Greek New Testament was because he could not find it in any Greek manuscript.

It did not exist. It did exist in the Latin Vulgate. And it does actually exist in a handful of manuscripts, but they're really coming from the 12th century in the Latin. The only ones that have it in the Greek, I believe, are from the 15th century.

And it does appear in, I believe it's Codex Britannicus Montinfornianus. That's probably too nerdy for the audience to really have any context for. But the basic argument is that this reading appears nowhere in the manuscript tradition.

It is what's probably a textual marginal note by a scribe in the Latin that gets introduced into the text. So this is a case of what I was saying before is where I'm interested in what John included in his original epistle.

And I'm far less interested in, when I'm doing my devotional study, in what a scribe wrote in the Latin Bible in later centuries that eventually made its way into the text because scribes were tenacious.

Scribes, in wanting to preserve the word of God, when they saw things that were written into the margin, and if they weren't sure whether the previous scribe forgot to put it into the text or whether it was a commentary on the text, would just put it in the text anyways to be safe because they were so careful that they didn't want to miss anything.

And in that sense, the word of God was preserved 100%. But I sometimes say, we don't have 100 of the text of the Bible. We have 110 because the scribes were so careful and wanted to preserve the text so much, they added all the stuff in that was often written in the margins.

And so, yes, that makes its way into the text, but that can give us confidence that the text is originally there. We just have to figure out what that added 10 is. And this is an example of that, where you have this passage that is really an explanation of what might be going on there in 1 John.

In 1 John 5, when John is making this argument. Someone is writing into the margin what those three could be. And so, that's added eventually into the text, but John did not write that originally. And we know that.

We know that John did not write 1 John 5, 7. And actually, Erasmus was basically peer pressured into putting it into the 1522 edition of the Greek New Testament. And the King James translators, because they were primarily using the 1522 and then the subsequent two editions that Erasmus came up with, they included it in the King James translation.

However, what you basically have to argue is that Christians, throughout the vast majority of the history of the Bible, who had never read that in 1 John 5, that they were just missing the word of God.

Because often, the King James onlyists want to argue that what we're saying is that you can't have the word of God until, say, you have the critical edition of the Greek New Testament. Well, that's not true.

Because Christians didn't have the Communion of Holium, this expanded section of 1 John 5, 7, up until this point in time and history. So, it's an addition. We know it's an addition. In fact, individuals who I know who are majority text advocates even argue against this, because it's not in the majority text.

It's in a particular stream of a couple of Greek manuscripts and the Latin manuscripts. But it's simply not true that it was taken out. What we've done is we've retrieved the original text, what John actually wrote, and it's because of the manuscript tradition that we've been able to trace back and find out, no, this was not original to 1 John 5.

It was added in later, and it really should never have been there.

To begin with.

Yeah, what's interesting to me is it reminds me of Proverbs 30, verse 5 through 6. And at the end of it, it says, Add thou not unto these words, lest ye rebuke you, and thou shalt be found a liar. It seems like in the KJV-only mindset, the fact that we have the ability now to go back and look through this manuscript tradition to see whether or not this could be a scribal insert, that God may use the ability that we can do that to take things out of the Word that shouldn't be in there.

Right?

So going to the Word to say, Well, no, it's going to be a book. It's going to be bound. It's going to be perfect to me. Holy is God's Word. But you're also forgetting that God says, Add thou not to them, and that we have the ability through the way that God preserves the text to actually see what could be additions.

And that's a blessing, like you were saying. And I'm using God's Word to say that, you know, like Proverbs 35 -6.

Matthew 18:11 and the Question of Imported Readings

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

All right. So next verse I have is, and here's another one too, and this is from his website. And again, we're just giving just a cliff notes overview as always, but this is really good because this is the law for the average person is I'm suspecting when something like this gets thrown their way, it is a little bit of a stick in the bicycle spokes.

So that being said, here's one. So this is Matthew 18 -11 that says, For the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost. And he says, quote, Matthew 18 -11 is not found in modern Bibles, or it is replaced with a note casting doubt upon its legitimacy.

But Matthew 18 -11 is a power and essential verse pertaining to salvation. This verse forms the basis of what we believe as Christians. Tell me, why would anyone not under the influence of evil wish to remove such a verse from the Bible?

Floor's yours, West.

Yeah.

So a lot of these cases, particularly in the Gospels, are not cases of something that's being taken out, but something that's being introduced in. So if I go to Matthew 18 -11 in my NIV or my ESV, it's going to be missing.

But the question is not.

Who took that verse out.

It's a question of who put that verse in and when. And so if I look at this, For the Son of Man came to save the lost. I can see that in the textual apparatus it's missing from most of the earliest manuscripts.

It says it's almost certainly not original, but it's actually not taken out because it's a parallel from Luke 19 -10.

So what you have here.

Is a case of a scribe.

Who is familiar.

With what Jesus says and is importing Luke 19 -10 into Matthew 18. So it's not missing. It's still in Luke 19 -10 where it should be. But the verse is omitted because we know that it's been transposed.

And this happens a lot, particularly with the Gospels because we have similar stories that are being told. And I can see this very clearly in the textual apparatus. When I open up the textual apparatus on my Bible software and I just put in Matthew 18 -11, the first thing I see is that it's not included in the vast majority of our oldest manuscripts.

However, it does pop up later in the 5th and 6th centuries, but it's included in all the manuscripts in Luke 19 -10. So if there is an intention.

To take this out,.

Why did the scribe leave it in Luke 19 -10?

Well, it's because.

There's no nefarious intention here. You don't need to import a conspiracy. What's going on is that a scribe previously has probably copied a section of the Gospel of Luke, is familiar with Jesus saying very similar words in the Synoptic Gospels, and is importing similar wordage, verbiage, and phraseology from the mouth of Jesus into a separate Gospel where he says something very similar.

This happens a lot. And so I would contend that a lot of, if not the vast majority of supposed quote-unquote missing verses in the Gospels is just a case of this. It's a case of a scribe being aware of Jesus saying something in another Gospel.

Think about how long it would take to copy an entire,.

Let's pick the shortest. Gospel,.

Gospel of Mark.

That would take you a long time, right? And if you did that, you'd probably be well aware of the sayings of Jesus if you hand wrote carefully the words of Jesus from the Gospel of Mark. And then you went on to start copying Luke.

Well, Luke includes a lot of the same stuff that Mark does. And so you would have in your sort of mind's eye a lot of the sayings of Jesus. And so it wouldn't be crazy.

For you to start.

Filling in the gaps when you start copying Luke because you're well aware of those things. And so what a scribe is doing is they're importing a verse. And so now we can see that in the manuscript tradition.

We can see where something is being imported. And so what do we do? We take it out. Do we reverse the entire Gospel of Matthew? Well, no. That's going to throw off every commentary that's ever been written since the verses came into standardization.

We're not going to do that. We're just going to... I mean, I'm looking at my NET, my New English Translation,.

And it just has in.

Double square brackets,.

It says empty.

And so it just says empty and then it goes on and then there is a citation note. Now, what you read, Jeremiah, said, well, cast doubt on this. Well, I don't think so. It still says it's in Luke 19 -10.

It's still there. It's just saying, this belongs to another Gospel. Matthew didn't write it. Luke did. We don't have to import any type of nefarious intention. That's what's going on.

Colossians 1:14 and the Expansion of Piety

So, yeah, Wes, I appreciate that point. So you mentioned, this is a great summary of specifically verses or proof texts that are used in the Gospels. And again, I'm probably going to listen to this a couple of times.

But so when it comes to Pauline epistles, I wonder if it would be the same thing. So he goes to Colossians 1 -14. I love the book of Colossians, but he quotes Colossians 1 -14, which says, In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

And then he says, As Christians, the blood of Jesus is very important to us since it is what washes away our sin. Modern translations don't see the importance of Jesus' blood. So they demonstrate that by dropping through his blood out of this verse.

So again, there's assuming malicious intent with how the King James translation of Colossians 1 -14 differentiates from modern versions. So I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

Right.

So I do see that actually here.

I do see,.

So Colossians 1 -14, In whom we have redemption for the forgiveness of sins.

Now,.

I do see in the textual apparatus that there are a number of minuscule manuscripts that have that addition that you mentioned. Diatou, Hematos, Autou. So through his blood.

Now,.

I would actually argue, so this is appearing in the ninth century and onwards, and only in a few manuscripts. One, two, three, four are listed. It's missing in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, up until that point.

So it's missing.

In far more manuscripts than it's found in. However, it's found in much later manuscripts. They're coming along after the 10th century. They're coming along at a time when they would have had access to it in the 17th century because these would have been in much greater access because they were newer.