KJV-ONLYISM: The House Built on the Sand, Part 3

    

Now I am going to lay out a few problems with the textual basis of the King James Version: According to Third Mill.org,

    “Some 1611 KJO advocates claim that the basis of the 1611 KJV Bible was Erasmus' Textus Receptus (TR), a phrase coined some twenty-two years after the 1611 KJV was originally translated. However, it is more correct to state that they were based upon about a half dozen MSS which are in the Byzantine text family. Indeed, Erasmus had to fill in certain gaps in his TR by translating the Latin New Testament back into Greek and then back again into English, most notably in the latter portion of the Book of Revelation. Moreover, since the development of TR, thousands of more manuscripts and fragments have been discovered, including the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. The Qumran Caves Scrolls contained about 230 manuscripts referred to as "biblical scrolls." Partial and even complete copies of every book in the Hebrew Bible, except Esther, were located. Approximately, 90-95% agree with the Greek text of those which Erasmus used. Therefore, this leaves room for improvement on the 1611 KJV translation.         While there is actually strong agreement between the textual families, especially on major doctrines of the faith — and both should be studied and embraced & the minority text, not the majority text, has the preponderance of the evidence on its side. However, this is not to say the modern KJV or NKJV aren't good-faith translations. They are. But each can be improved upon."                                                                                                                                               That all may sound a bit confusing, but in essence, the truth is really that all English translations can be improved upon. There is no perfect English translation. We humans are fallible and flawed and cannot produce a reinspired Bible. As I mentioned earlier, the only absolutely flawless version of the Scriptures is what the original men wrote as they were divinely inspired by God thousands and thousands of years ago. Since then, the Bible has not been reinspired through the King James translators, but thankfully, God has blessed us with access to His Word in multiple translations that are very good and definitely reliable, as God has promised to preserve His Word and He cannot lie.  But anyway, there are no major differences in the manuscript texts. As Gleason Archer said, “99.9% of differences consisted of spelling differences and obvious slips of the pen”. He was talking specifically about the dead sea scrolls, but the point stands.