Earlier this evening I had admired a lovely friend's repost of a
quote by Francis Chan. It contained a scripture verse that she had not
put in, but that used the NIV translation of the Bible.
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..."
~Matthew 28:19
Someone chimed in and state that the scripture was wrong and that
wasn't how it went. They were talking about how it wasn't the King James
Version (KJV) of the Bible and to use any other translation of the Bible was
wrong and that basically by using another translation of the Bible aside from
the KJV earned you a place right out of heaven, according to Revelation 22:9.
That statement starts to smell like "onlyism"...that the
KJV is the ONLY acceptable version, which in turn is almost akin to
Bible idolatry I posted
last
week about where you should
place your faith so that you don't lose it. Faith is not to be placed in a
particular translation of the Bible, but rather in the Author of the Bible.
Here's the thing though...and I'm going to give you a brief
history of the "translation" of the KJV Bible...
The Old Testament was written almost entirely in classical Hebrew
in the dialect scholars believed flourished around the 6th century BC
during the Babylonian Exile. Almost entirely.
By the time the Babylonian Captivity had ended seventy years
later, the first language of most of the Babylonian captives and their
descendants had become the language of their captors, Aramaic.
The Books of Daniel and Ezra were originally inspired and composed
in Aramaic. Alexander the Great outlawed the languages of the peoples he
conquered and compelled them to learn and use Greek in all their dealings. But
by then, Hebrew was largely extinct as spoken language, replaced by Aramaic and
later by Greek.
The New Testament was inspired and composed in both Aramaic and
Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Greek.
His words were translated from Aramaic into Greek, with certain
Aramaic words being specifically identified as
translations. Interestingly, those parts of the Old Testament not inspired
and composed in Hebrew were inspired and composed in Greek.
And the Septuagint is the Hebrew Old Testament as translated by
the rabbis into Koine Greek in the 3rd century BC.
So by the time the Apostles were writing the New Testament
Epistles, much the Old Testament was already a translation of a
translation.
By the middle of the second century, the major writings of the
canon of Scripture were accepted by almost all Christian authorities. St Jerome
translated them all into Latin in the 3rd century.
So by the fourth century, the Old Testament was a translation of a
translation of a translation and the New Testament was merely a translation of
a translation.
Twelve hundred years later, Wycliffe, Hus, Linacre, Colet and
Erasmus were all busily engaged in translating the various translations of
translations into their own translations of English.
One hundred years after John Hus was burned at the stake kindled
with pages from Wycliffe’s Bible translation, King James of England ordered his
translators to come up with a new English translation using the existing Greek
and Hebrew translations, themselves recopied translations of Aramaic and Latin
and classical Hebrew.
The oldest existing Textus Receptus manuscript used by the
translators of the King James 1611 Bible dated to the 12th century.
In the book of Revelation, a missing page had to be translated from the Latin
Vulgate back into Greek so it could be translated back into English.
To be blunt here, nobody is saved according to which version of the Bible they study from.
Nobody is saved by a Bible. They are saved by the Gospel message, a
message so simple it can be conveyed without a Bible being present.
A child can lead another child to Christ on a playground. A
drunk can lead another drunk to Christ on a barstool.
I do not know much about the actual translators of the KJV. Or
much about the translation process. I can’t read the original languages.
And if I could, I don’t have the original manuscripts used by the translators.
And if I did, I wouldn’t know
if they were 1st century Greek or if they were later Greek translations of
the Latin translations of the Greek translations of the original Aramaic.
Would you?
The quickest way I can think of to shake somebody’s confidence in
their salvation is to attack their preferred Bible version. The Bible
that leads you to Christ takes on a very special, personal meaning. If
you came to Christ via the NIV, then the NIV is the Word of God whereby you
were saved. The same applies to all the other versions, including the KJV.
Ever wonder why there are so many Christians that don’t go to
church? It is because there are two kinds of Christianity in this world.
There is the theoretical kind and there is the living kind.
In the theoretical kind, everybody is the same at church as they
are at home when nobody is looking. Saved people always act saved and
always looked saved. Saved people never have doubts – that would be
faithlessness. And when somebody falls, it is because they probably were
never really saved in the first place.
In the living kind, people are different at church than they are
at home when nobody is looking. Saved people don’t always act like
it. Some don’t ever go to church. Everybody has doubts. And it
is only when others fall that we question if they were
really saved.
When a person is young in the Lord, he is somewhere between the
theoretical and reality – all he has is his Bible. And along comes some
grizzled old veteran Christian who, preaching theoretical Christianity
convinces the new Christian that he can’t trust his Bible.
No matter which position you take on the Bible translations issue,
what happens if you prevail in the debate? Assuming your opponent is already
saved, he can't get more saved by agreeing with you.
If you have won the debate, then he has lost. Now let’s return to
the topic under discussion. “Can you trust your Bible?” And his answer
is “no.”
Some debates aren’t worth winning.
Do we have the Word of God? Of course we do. What
about when there are conflicts between versions? God only wrote ONE Bible – but
He didn’t write it in English.
He wrote it in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.
So how do you know that the version that you use,
whether KJV, NIV, NASB, etc, is really the Word of God? Did you get saved
from it? Is that an enemy action?
How do you know that is the one God wants you
to use? I don’t know. But you do. It is because that is the
version God speaks to you from.
Or you would be looking for the version that does.
