The King James Only Controversy by James R White 1995
Given this anniversary year I thought it might be good to talk about books on the KJV.
The book begins with a useful and interesting background chapter explaining the five distinguishable types of KJV fans. Chapter 2 gives a brief history of the KJV, which one find is not quite what some think it is. Chapter 3 looks at questions of manuscripts, biblical languages and the scribal process. In Chapter 4 he gives more on Erasmus, Stephanus and Beza, the Textus Receptus and the KJV. In Chapter 5 he tackles the King James Only camp starting with E.F. Hills and moving on to the incredible Gail Riplinger and Peter Ruckman. Chapter 6 compares verses from KJV with a newer translations, explaining the differences. (frequently NIV or NASB) with reasonings behind each translation. The book then continues in this vain until Chapter 9 where other problems with the KJV are broached. Chapter 10 is a nice brief chapter you could read on its own andwering questions such as "Were Westcott and Hort occultists?” Part two simply discusses specific verse. Some appear elsewhere in Part One some not.
Part of me feels that Riplinger and Ruckman are best ignored but someone has to do it and Dr White is the man. He pursues his agenda without flagging and so although one needs to skim read in places and not chase up every footnote it is good to have as a reference work. Quite a few little things were cleared up for me and ideally I will be going back to the book in future as different verses come up.
1 comment:
Unfortunately, Dr White's personal preference for the critical text leads many (more sensible) AV-only British types to reject his work (in general) and not read it, which is a pity, because they then fall into accepting the foolish extremism of Riplinger et al.
We might hope that Riplinger's recent condemnation of the Trinitarian Bible Society would be enough to open some eyes and to stop her awful publications being carried by various otherwise sound outlets.
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