brandplucked said:
Hi Jth, just a couple of thoughts in response to your posts. The example in Matthew 1:18 where the King James Bible says: "Now the birth of JESUS Christ was on this wise..." is the reading of the vast Majority of all Greek texts. In fact it is also the reading found in the NIV, ,NASB, NKJV and even one of the versions you say you like, the Spanish Biblia de las Americas.
But it's still not in those ten Old Latin manuscripts, which still doesn't help you prove that a proto-KJV existed in the Old Latin Bible.
You still have no inerrant Bible. Instead, you recommended two versions, Luther's German and the Spanish Biblia de las Americas.
Wrong. Read the post again, and this time,
pay attention. I said Luther, and the
Sagradas Escrituras, version Antigua. I've never read the
Bibila de las Americas, and I won't recommend something I haven't read.
Do these two versions always agree in the underlying texts or the resultant meanings found even when the texts do agree? Of course not.
Onlyism suffers a similar problem. They cannot find an older Bible that agrees with the KJV perfectly. Not too good for a people who proclaim so loudly about perfect preservation.
Jt, You do not believe The Bible (any Bible) is now today the complete, inerrant and infallible words of God.
Will Kinney, for all your love for the KJV and your faithfulness to Onlyism, you still cannot come up with an older Bible 100% congruent with the KJV, and therefore cannot prove it is "the complete, inerrant, and infallible words of God."
All you have are your own personal preferences.
And I do not beatify nor canonize them. You, on the other hand, want to make the personal preference of King James Onlyism into gospel truth, and attempt to gussy it up with a lot of impressive, religious-sounding packaging, but once the last bit of tape is cut away and the box opened, we find it empty.
I am not disputing the fact that the gospel is found in even the worst of versions out there, and that God can use them. He does. The issue is: Has God kept His promises to preserve His inerrant words in a Book here on this earth. Most Christians right here on this site, including you, do not believe He did.
Which is why you came on this board--to enlighten us. You're not doing a very good job making your case, though. Still no evidence beyond "educated guesses."
The German bible? Well, Luther's version was a lot better than versions like the NASB, NIV, RSV, ESV and Holman stuff, but it was not the inerrant words of God.
But you cannot prove that, can you?
God sees the end from the beginning. God did not use the German bible to spread the gospel to a multitude of nations in the modern missionary movement. He used English and the Greek and Hebrew texts of the English King James Bible.
That depends on how you look at it. The Luther Bible, as I said before, influenced a number of versions, in different languages--Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic), Dutch (and subsequently, Afrikaans), and English, to name a few. Your Tyndale was made in consultation with Luther, which later found its way into your KJV.
The merits and worthiness of your KJV are owed in large part to its predecessors, since the KJV did not arrive on the scene ex nihilo. Luther played a major role in that. Were it not for Luther, there would be no KJV.
Therefore, the perceived success of your KJV is but an aftershock borne from the earthquake that started in Wittenberg, September, 1522.
German is not even close to being the universal language of today
And English is losing its hold. Spanish is on the rise, so I suppose we need to start reading de Reina to get ahead of the curve.
Reina-Valera solamente!
and Germany is presently a spiritual wasteland.
I take it this assessment comes from your intimate familiarity with Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, and a few German settlements found here and there in South America. Or are you assuming, as Onlyists are wont to do, that there is absolutely no spiritual life in these lands?
The German language became the language of the Skeptics, the Textual Critics, and the Apostates.
But it is still the language of the Luther Bible and its derivatives (Zürcher, Elberfelder, Schlachter), from which many a German-speaking person reads as part of his devotions, whether he knows anything about Skepticism, Textual Criticism, or Apostasy or not.
You may be willing to write off a people for the sake of exalting your pet version, Will, but some of us have more compassion than that.
To me, this further demonstrates the cultural arrogance of Onlyism. Other lands and peoples are denied the perfect translation so highly prized by Onlyists. This exalts Anglos above others as a sort of "God's elect." They won't say it outright, but this is the logical conclusion. Ask them if translating the KJV into another tongue will yield a perfect translation, and the first word you will hear from them is "No," followed by what amounts to a religious Bob Barker talking about the runner's-up consolation prize.
Onlyism is by and large an Anglo-centric movement, which started in our own country. There are no other home-grown Onlyist movements I am aware of in other lands (Louis-Segond-seulement? Christian III-alene? Sola Diodati?). Those that do exist came about under the influence of Onlyist churches here in the States.
jth