@dustinsegers4534

3 years ago

Thanks for this video. I went to a KJV-only church and a TR-only seminary and I am very familiar with the arguments from the TR-only side. However, I read James White’s “The King James Only Controversy” back when it first came out in the mid 1990s and I think that inoculated me against much of their arguments but also allowed me to truly appreciate the “Byzantine-Priority” position coming from folks like Dr. Maurice Robinson, Art Farstad, etc. Here’s what I’ve concluded: 1. Whether you use a modern critical text or the TR, you aren’t going to get a different Christianity from either text. All of the essential doctrines are contained in both texts. 2. The Bible itself gives us no standard of how God was going to preserve his written word. The sheer number of manuscripts idea in the Majority Text position is not necessarily indicative of an original reading and that certainly isn’t a biblical standard. For instance, it appears that there was only one extant copy of the Pentateuch in Josiah’s day, yet God used that one text to bring repentance, revival, and to restore godliness to the people of Israel (2 Chronicles 34:14-21). There may have been more copies, but if there were, the Levitical priests were obviously clueless as to its existence other than this one lone re-discovered copy in the temple. 3. The KJV translators themselves expected their work to be updated and expanded upon. Their original work also had text critical footnotes indicating variations in the manuscripts, albeit much less than we have attested in our modern critical texts. 4. Finally, which TR? Erasmus produced 5 editions of his critical text of the TR, Stephanus had his edition, and Scrivner has his. None of them read the same. So which one is the preserved word of the living God? 5. Most importantly, Jesus and the apostles themselves didn’t hold to the idea common among some TR-only/KJV-only advocates that textual variation precludes inspiration (Also Bart Ehrman’s view). Instead, they sometimes freely quoted textual variations of the LXX or the Hebrew text or created paraphrases of the scriptures to suit their needs and they still considered that the inerrant word of the living God. You never get a hint from any of them that they were worried about the variations in the manuscripts that existed in their day or that the LXX they were quoting wasn’t exactly like the Hebrew passage that it was translated from. If it was good enough for the Son of God, it’s good enough for me. Truth is, we may be uncertain of various readings of God’s word here and there, for “his word is settled in heaven”, but I think a 99.5% certainty is good enough. Thanks again for your videos. You do a great job!

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