I was raised and am still a member of a Southern Baptist Church. Most of them typically use the KJV but I don’t recall any of them saying it was the only version to use.
It really does read majestically.
Never made sense to me either. How could all those German people be lost? Those who read the Gutenberg Bible or Tyndale’s Bibles in English?
The KJV was what I grew up with and used until a teen, that was when the Living Bible came out. There are still KJV highly preferred types of people, but I have trouble understanding it now. Personally prefer the ESV.
I’m not a KJ Onlyism fella. However, the KJ version has been translated into hundreds of different languages over the years.
Personally, I use 2-3 different translations for research, including Greek on the NT. However, I’m not a fan of some of the newer ones that are so-called “gender-neutral” etc. as that’s not what the old manuscripts called out. IF they can’t even get that right, then what else did they miss and/or deliberately mess up?
I stick to the older translations before “political correctness” set into the scene.
No matter what version of the Bible you use, your best understanding does not come from your intellect.
Your best understanding comes from reading the scripture, in prayer ask the Holy Spirit to help you to understand it, and listen with an open heart in meditation for the answer.
By using this method, you will find that you are guided in your search for understanding by phenomenal epiphanies. I warn you though as each answered question causes twenty more unanswered questions to surface.
I prefer KJV, and won’t attend a church that uses any other version. But no way have I ever thought it’s “infallible”. For just one thing, it’s translation of the Ten Commandments isn’t perfect. It’s translated, “Thou shalt not KILL”. Better translated from the original is, “Thou shalt not MURDER”. There’s a difference.
I’m Baptist preacher’s kid and attended seminary, and have never heard anyone say or imply that KJV is “perfect”. I figure some denominations, or sub-sets within denominations, go with “only-ism” — just haven’t run across them.
My grandfather was a true genius. He attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the early 1900s. He could read Latin and Greek but not Aramaic.
I recall his telling Daddy once that the KJV was a very accurate translation. Maybe the “Good News Bible” is more accurate but not sure.
Apparently, as of Oct 2017, it’s been translated into 670 other non-English languages.
Oh yeah? Well, WHICH English speaking people?
Language changes and evolves constantly. It's one of the least static aspects of human life. In a few brief decades even, it evolves drastically. If I asked someone to "burn a CD" thirty years ago, they would look quizzically at me, wondering why the hell would I want to throw a certificate of deposit into the incinerator.
English isn't the same thing that it was a hundred years ago, much less four hundred.
I find that there are a lot of people who want to feel better about themselves who can only do so by putting down others. Onlysim — of any kind — strikes me as a prime example.
I’ve run into a few people with this belief but IMHO KJV Onlyism is too silly for serious discussion.
No thank you. I’ve read the KJV Bible and much of its language is hard to comprehend by 2018 readers. I’ll take a good modern translation from the original ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek texts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible
The Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42) was the first major book printed in the West using movable type. It marked the start of the “Gutenberg Revolution” and the age of the printed book in the West. Widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities,[1] the book has an iconic status. Written in Latin, the Gutenberg Bible is an edition of the Vulgate, printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz, in present-day Germany, in the 1450s.
This whole discussion strikes me as a bit odd. Pretty much attacking a paper tiger.
Then something struck me.
I once had a visit from two young Mormon men. They were nice, and well intentioned. One of the first things they tried to do is get me to distrust the Bible, particularly the KJV.
They quoted a particular couple of verses which did indeed sound contradictory. I later asked my pastor about it and he said that the verses did sound that way but explained what they really said and I realized it was the two young men who were wrong.
The truth is, read side by side they're all pretty close.
I know there are KJV only churches and attended one myself for awhile. I’m not sure that was exactly what was believed, though. To me it seemed more like the belief was that the KJV was the best English translation to use for our time and place, and that the Lord brought it about to give us a translation we could trust in. After reading other versions, it’s what I’ve settled on, but I’ll still look at other versions and Bible dictionaries and commentaries. I’ve found the KJV to be best overall because it was translated before the rejection of God by modern liberal scholars and modern society in general, and it’s also not subject to copyright. Overall, I do believe the Lord has set the KJV above the other English translations.
Therefore, I'm always very suspicious of those who attack such an absolute classic of English literature by attempting to paint those who love the KJV as, get this... ignorant somehow.
I've never heard of "KJV Onlyism" anywhere but here on FR, being peddled by people attempting to push their own particular sect that does not use the KJV.
There are many perfectly fine translations of the Bible. Some who have less facility with the English language may struggle with the soaring, Shakespearean but somewhat archaic words and sentence structures. For those individuals it's a crying a shame that they're not literate enough to appreciate the KJV, but there are modern English translations that are quite accurate.
There are other, historical translations that are also perfectly acceptable, for instance that great work of the Protestant Reformer John Calvin, the Geneva Bible. We're also ever-grateful to them for introducing many practical things to readers of the Bible, such as numbered verses and a highly legible, modern typeface rather than Gothic lettering.
But, there are others who have mistranslated with an agenda, having distorted the Word to their own ends. Those are to be avoided. Those will remain to be named by others who will no doubt point them out by name, and thus the flame war that those who post this sort of thing are typically hoping for will be on.
The issue is with the synthesized eclectic critical Greek text as the underlying text from which essentially all modern translations, and abandons the Byzantine/Majority Greek Textform common to Christendom.
Furthermore many/most modern versions have imagined that by interpreting the Scriptures using a dynamic equivalency rather than a literal equivalent method, that they are doing the reader a divinely appointed service.
The KJV/AV uses the literal/grammatical/historical/cultural method to translate, as well as minimizing interpretive input to the bare minimum, thus more closely appraching truthfulness in translation.
The KJV/AV stands far above any modern version in its scholarship and simplicity of language, if one is willing to learn a little more of the richness of an English vocabulary.
Which apparently The author of this article misses. No sensible believer will accept the Ruckman/Riplinger KJVO viewpoint that somehow the KJV version is verbally inspired or infallible.
Deuteronomy 4:19 & Malachi 1:11.
The KJV, including the Apocrypha, was translated by 48 scholars, all in the Church of England, that portion of the Catholic church stolen from the pope by Henry VIII, who wouldn’t let him divorce his wife and marry Ann Bolyn.
It’s very good for a 48 man English Catholic translation, but were such a translation to come out now, most of us wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole, dry oak.