KJV: The Only Inerrant Word


As my wife said, “I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am”:

A lot of these points of contention would have been clarified if the author would have used only one version of the Bible, instead of using several (per)versions to make the Bible say what she wanted. Her points are well-taken, even in this modern world, but if DeMoss is going to have us living according to God’s standards for women, she needs to stick with the KJV and not “wrest scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16).

Wow.  Really?  More interested in what the KJV has to say than what the Bible has to say?

The publishing of the KJV was an awesome landmark in Christianity, and the scholars whose work led to it are sobering, motivating studies in true Christian commitment.  But we’ve had 500 years to develop translations that are not only more accurate reflections of the original Word, but are immeasurably easier to understand.

The longer we try to make the Bible of 1611, with its Queen’s English, apply to our lives, the closer we get to the situation that made the KJV so important in the first place: the vast majority of the people simply weren’t able to read or understand the Latin texts.  How many can read the KJV today and truly get the meaning that God wanted to convey?  If that wasn’t God’s desire 500 years ago, how could it be his desire now?

Update, March 2010

If anyone should have been slow to speak on this topic it should have been me. There is no excuse for saying the things I said or the way I said them. I believe my two friends in the comments would say the same. I’m keeping this post live because I don’t want to whitewash my history, but see this post for a more thoughtful take on the KJV.

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