165 thoughts on “Reader Submitted Photo: The Bible God Uses”

  2. How can you even have a reasonable conversation with people who hold opinions like this?

    Their assumption to know the mind of the eternal God and limit Him to a Bible translation done in England in 1611 is such inflated hubris that I doubt anything could ever show them the truth about their pride.

    1. PW, you can’t. And that is one of the earmarks of the extreme fundamentalists. “I’ve made up my mind. Don’t confuse me with the facts.” I know. I were there, and now I’m not. 😳

    2. I have talked to some Christians from the Northern Ireland version of IFB, who hold exactly the same views about the Bible and it is a bit like facing a wolf pack – except you can REASON with a wolf pack

  3. I’m stuck. I’m speechless, but the fact that I have to post words to say that I’m speechless, well…you get it.

  4. And by the way, if they’re going to tell me what Bible God uses, I also desperately need to know once and for all what music he endorses. Listening to 27 different mogs can yield 27 different answers as to which genre and style God rubber stamps, so some clarification would be awesome. I realize the style in which it is done, of course, is much more important than the actual content. Sorry for the rabbit trail… 😕

      1. Oh no, now THAT stuff I know he doesn’t like. I’ve heard too many mogs railing against it. They even used the aforementioned AVKJV1611 to provide support for their opinions. Now wait….you’re not suggesting that these men would somehow use a verse of scripture to bend it to what they want it to say – ARE YOU?!?!

    2. Originally the spanish Bible was called the Valera version. The name Reina was added until the early 1900’s. I think it is much more like the NKJV.

      1. Only if you were born and raised in Castillian-speaking Spain. For the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, the “vosotros” language of the RV seems like the “thee/thou” of the KJV.

        1. ¡Ustedes son todos un montón de herejes y se quemarán en la llamas del infierno!

          Yo tengo un Doctorado Emeritus Al Cuadrado en Teología del Instituto Biblico Bautista Independiente Fundamental No-Afiliado por Correspondencia….y he comprobado que la verdadera versión inspirada e infalible es la Nueva Versión Reina-Valera-Gomez-Sanchez-Perez-Rivera-Ortiz Internacional para Las Americas al Día en Lenguaje Actual del 2011!!!!

        2. !Hijole mano! Esta gente…. Todos sabemos que la versión verdadera en Español es la traducción casera de misioneros en Brownsville que se apega palabra por palabra a la King James, incluyendo la traducción: “Fantasma Santo” que corresponde al King James “Holy Ghost.” A que los traductores de sus Bíblias no tuvieron los cojones de traducír corectamente esta frase! :mrgreen:

        5. To quote the great Chicano philosopher, Paul Rodriguez:

          “You’re in America, dammit!

          SPEAK SPANISH!”
          😀

        6. Hay mas Americanos que hablan Espanol que Americanos que hablan Ingles. Es decir, en todas las Americas hay mas.

  6. Silly me, I figure that the Bible version that God uses is the one that I’m actually reading.

  7. Doubtless they will be shocked when (if?) they get to heaven, and God does not speak in KJ-period English. Or English, for that matter…

    1. True story, we had a guy in my fundy church who spoke normally in conversation, but when he was asked to pray, he prayed only in KJV English. We pray thee, we thank thee…etc. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but looking back on it is actually quite comical.

      1. Yeah, I know, right? I know people that do that, but they only do it for certain parts of the prayer, and vary back and forth between thee and thine and you and yours, etc. Not sure what criteria they are using to determine when using “thee” is holy, and when it’s just gratuitous. 😐

      2. I called out a fundy relative on that one a few weeks ago and got the usual “elevated language” response. I honestly didn’t care enough about it to pursue the matter further. 🙂

      3. Actually, that is very common in Spanish. In Costa Rica, for example, where people speak in “vos,” Church is performed almost exclusively in “tu.” Preaching, singing and praying.)

        Probably a function of trying to emulate american missionaries who never were able to master the nuances of “vos” style of Spanish. (THE language we will speak in El Cielo.)

        1. “Vos” in modern Spanish is used only in a relatively few countries. (Obviously, you know this, but someone reading these comments might not know.) I always assume God can understand any pronoun, though.

        2. Costa Rica is has a somewhat unique usage of Spanish. Pura Vida is an indescribably ubiquitous colloquialism, and I know when I was there I remember people saying “san” when they “meant” sin”, might’ve been a local pronunciation, but definitely was NOT being used to describe a saint (or San Jose) most of the times I heard it used. No clue about what churches there use, or what vos is, but I know they have a unique version of Spanish in Costa Rica.

      4. Switching to King James’ English for prayer was quite common in the church I grew up in, especially among (but not limited to) the older folks. It was also common in many of the hymns we sang, written in the 19th and 20th centuries.

        And yet they mocked the Catholics for Latin Mass, and claimed that the purpose of the Vulgate was to keep the laity from understanding the Bible!

    2. And yet, there are fundies out there who actually believe He and we will…

      I can’t roll my eyes high enough. 🙄

      1. Dost thou not apprehend that holiness mayest be best expressed with exalted, nay say rather separated, language?

        2. Thy rude speech doth incline me to beckon the very wrath of the Almighty down upon thee, that He might smite thee for thy brash and ignoble manners, and flay thy countenance with boils, yea the very plague.

          And there was much rejoicing.

        3. I wish FB had a King James setting on the language. I’d feel a lot better about wasting time on there.

        6. Now thou hath reason legitimate to bestow the name of “ass” upon a fellow man. (or various and other sundry terms)

        7. Or that rude term for going to the bathroom used in the OT by David. The KJV was revered in every way, but we definitely could not quote THOSE verses!

        8. …and that wood they uesd to make everything back then! Scandulous!
          Even now Fundie furnature makers use two hybrids of that type of wood to make Pulpit furnature.

          Pulpits are made of Fullashittim and trimmed in bullshittim from designs passed down from Billy the Sunday Baptist (John’s paternal second cousin once removed.) 😯

        9. dang george, I think you are full of pulpit material
          furniture… not fur-NAT-ure 🙄

          good help is so hard to find these days

  8. Being a KJV-onlyer merely reveals a high level of ignorance or a low level of intelligence (probably willful in either case).

    What strikes me is the fact that he created a school so that other parents would help fund his son’s education and then dumped the students who had not yet graduated once he had no need for them. This is blatantly dishonest and, well, evil. OTOH, he may have spared those younger kids continued exposure to his other beliefs that may have been far more odious than KJV1611!

  9. Isn’t the Bible in the picture a reprint of the actual 1611 KJV Bible? The one with the Apocrypha, the f’s and s’s switched, and which refers to Jesus as a “she”? If they actually read that one, who knows what kind of devious theology they would have?

    2. After doing some further research, it looks like I stand corrected. One 1611 printing refers to Ruth as “he” in Ruth 3:15. Also, one of the 1611 editions substitutes “Judas” for “Jesus” in Matthew 26:36. (There were two 1611 editions and numerous revisions/editions over the next century.) Seems like I remember reading somewhere that there was a printer’s error that used “she” for Jesus, but that could have been one of the later editions.

      1. The confusion is over the fact that the first two editions of the KJV were known as “The Great He Bible” and “The Great She Bible” owing tp the presence or absence of the letter ‘S’ in Ruth 3:15. The original 1611 has Boaz going into the city (which is what the Hebrew says), the second edition has Ruth (which is what makes more sense in context).

        1. The King James published today reads ‘She’. The English Revised Version of 1884 (according to my 1911 printing) returns to ‘He’, the RSV of 1952 went back to ‘She’, the NIV says ‘He’, the NASB ‘She’, as does the NKJV and the REB, not to mention the ESV. The Geneva seems to have had ‘She’ as well. At least, modern reprints do.

          Undoubtedly the funniest Bible printing error of recent years was an edition of the NIV that condemned the sin of “Sexual immortality.”

        2. I don’t know what sexual immortality is, but it sure sounds like something worth trying out.

    3. And then there was that one printing of the Bible that, in the Ten Commandments, said “Thou shalt commit adultery”. That Bible was printed in 1631 much to the dismay of King Charles I and to the ruin of the printer.

    4. An extensive (though not exhaustive) list of troublesome English Bible translations:

      “Adultery” Bible: A 1631 KJV, printed for Charles I by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, renders the seventh commandment “Thou shalt commit
      adultery.” Also called the Wicked Bible.

      Affinity Bible: A 1923 KJV contains a table of family affinities that includes the
      line “A man may not marry his grandmother’s wife.”

      “Breeches” Bible: The first Geneva Bible (1560) renders Gen. 3:7 “They sowed figge
      tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches.”

      “Bug” Bible: The first Coverdale Bible (1535) translates “terrors” as “bugs” in Ps. 91:5: “Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges
      by night.” In its defense, however, the word bugges at that time meant “bogie,” or ghosts.

      “Camels” Bible: An 1823 KJV translates “camels” for “damsels” in Gen. 24:61: “And Rebekah arose, and her camels.”

      Denial Bible: A 1792 KJV has Philip denying Christ rather than Peter in Luke 22:34.

      “Discharge” Bible: An 1806 KJV reads “discharge” for “charge” in 1 Tim. 5:21: “I discharge thee before God . . .”

      “Ears to Ear” Bible: An 1810 KJV renders Matt. 13:43 “Who hath ears to ear, let him
      hear.”

      “Fool” Bible: A KJV printed for Charles I renders Ps. 14:1 “A fool hath said in his heart there is a God.”

      “Forgotten Sins” Bible: A 1638 KJV renders Luke 7:47 “Her sins which are many are
      forgotten [forgiven].”

      Harwood’s Bible: English minister Edward Harwood (18th century) paraphrased NT in the genteel language of the day. For example, in Rev. 3:15–16,
      Christ tells the Laodicean church: “Since, therefore, you are now in a state of lukewarmness, a disagreeable medium between the two extremes, I will, in no long time, eject you from my heart with
      fastidious contempt.”

      “He” Bible; “She” Bible: The first KJV of 1611 renders Ruth 3:15 “he went into the city,” which is, according to the Hebrew, correct. The second printing incorrectly rendered it “she went into the city.” Nearly all subsequent English versions reproduced the error until it was corrected in the Revised Version, 1885.

      Incunabula Bible: Transposed numbers on the title page of this Elizabethan Bible
      dated its printing as 1495 rather than 1594.

      “Judas” Bible: One printing of the 1611 KJV has Judas rather than Jesus initiating
      the Last Supper in Matt. 26:26.

      Leda Bible: A 1572 Bishop’s Bible scandalously borrows decorative woodcuts from an edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, including one of Leda and the swan.

      “Lions” Bible: A notoriously error-riddled printing of KJV that, among other errors, renders 1 Kings 8:19 “Thy son . . . shall come forth out of
      thy lions [loins].”

      “More Sea” Bible: A 1641 KJV renders Rev. 21:1 as “there was more sea” rather than “there was no more sea.”

      “Murderers” Bible: An 1801 KJV renders “murderers” for “murmurers” in Jude 16: “These are murderers, complainers, walking after their own lusts.”

      “Placemakers” Bible: A 1562 Geneva Bible renders Matt. 5:9 “Blessed are the placemakers [peacemakers].”

      “Printers” Bible: A 1702 KJV renders Ps. 119:161 “Printers [princes] have persecuted me without a cause.”

      “Rosin” Bible: The 1609 Douay Bible translates “balm” as “rosin” in Jer. 8:22: “Is there noe rosin in Galaad?” See also “Treacle” Bible.

      “Sin On” Bible: The first English Bible printed in Ireland (1716) renders John 5:14 as “Sin on more” rather than “Sin no more.”

      “Standing Fishes” Bible: An 1806 KJV renders Ezek. 47:10 “The fishes [fishermen] shall stand upon it.”

      “To Remain” Bible: In 1805 a proofreader marked on some galleys that a comma was “to remain.” His instructions were mistakenly transferred to the
      text of Gal. 4:29: “Persecuted him that was born after the spirit to remain, even so it is now.”

      “Treacle” Bible: The first Bishop’s Bible (1568) translated “balm” as “treacle” in Jer. 8:22: “Is there no tryacle in Gilead?” See also “Rosin” Bible.

      “Unrighteous” Bible: A 1653 KJV leaves out the word “not” in 1 Cor. 6:9: “The unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God.”

      “Vinegar” Bible: A 1717 KJV titles Luke 20 “The Parable of the Vinegar [Vineyard].”

      “Wife-hater” Bible: An 1810 KJV renders Luke 14:26 “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother . . . yea, and his own wife [life]
      also . . .”

      This list was copied from The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style, ed. Robert Hudson.

      1. “Affinity Bible: A 1923 KJV contains a table of family affinities that includes the
        line “A man may not marry his grandmother’s wife.””

        Thus anticipating the trend toward same-sex marriages by about three-quarters of a century.

      2. Have you heard of the wife-beater’s Bible? I kid you not, there is actually a Bible called that. It is one of the KJV printings that has in the “notes” section an admonishment to husbands to encourage their wives to submit with beatings, if necessary.

  10. I’d be willing to bet a Polish sausage that’s NOT a 1611 King James but a 1769.

    I have a 1611 King James Bible. John 3:16 reads: “For God so loued ye world, that he gaue his only begotten sonne: that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perishe but haue euerlasting life.” Again, John 3:7 reads: “Marueile not that I saide vnto thee, Ye must be borne againe.”

    And I bet that the book illustrated above doesn’t contain the Apocrypha either, which the 1611 King James did.

    And Luke 23: 32 probably doesn’t say (note the punctuation), “And there were also two other malefactors led with him, to bee put to death.”

    1. I also have a 1611 reprint, and I’d love to turn it loose on a KJVO and see if they can deal with it. My guess is no. 😀

    1. Nope, I’m not able to kill the bolding w/ what I thought was gonna be a closing bold tag. Someone must be commenting like some CSS or something! 🙂

  13. On the road the other day, I was behind an RV that had a big sign on the back saying the exact same thing. I tried to take a picture but it came out all blurry.

  14. Why do Baptists think that an *Anglican* 😯 😳 Bible is the only true word of God? :mrgreen:

    Maybe they are not as Baptist as they think.

    2. It gets better. The KJVO argument was originally Seventh-Day Adventist. Benjamin Wilkinson was the first proponent. The only way it got into the Baptist churches was that the guy who brought it in hid Mr. W’s SDA connections.

      So you’ve got a bunch of Baptists using an Anglican Bible and defending it with SDA talking points…. Oy!

      1. KJVOs are Baptists who defend a translation done by Anglicans and Episcopalians, which originally contained an Apocrypha revered by Catholics and Orthodox alike. Not only do they use a SDA argument, but they would be happy in a Mormon church, which only uses this translation of the Bible.

  15. I go to a fundy church and I think the KJV is the best translation. I have seen enough good things come from it, in church and in my own life, to know that it is the version God uses.

    But I have also met enough godly, loving, intelligent, faithful Christians who were not fundys to know that the KJV is not the only version God uses.

    Yes, I have seen fundy preachers point out mistakes here and there in non KJV Bibles but I have yet to see how any of the mistakes change the overall truth of the message.

    And besides, could the KJV also have minor mistakes here and there? It’s worth a look.

    But I guess if us fundys keep criticizing the shortcomings of other denominations we can avoid taking a hard look at our own.

    Does the mote and a beam ring a bell?

    1. Jason, it’s not the KJV itself that is in the center of this. I am Presbyterian and I grew up with the NIV, NKJV, then later the NASB and the ESV. The King James is unparalled in its beauty and style; everyone should spend time reading and learning that language.

      But the majority of people I met in fundy churches were not able to read and understand the KJV. They owned them, they skimmed them, and preachers taught from them, but no one really understood what was going on. The language is so far removed from what they read and speak.

      That said, what makes my blood pressure go up is when I hear people arguing for hours on end that any other translation—and they ALL have their strengths and weaknessess—is akin to not having a Bible at all.

      The particular Baptist churches I was exposed to held the view that you could not possibly be a Christian, be saved, or really be reading the Bible if you were not in their denomination reading the KJV. That position is just like Muslims, JWs and Mormons take to their scriptures. It’s dangerous, idolatrous, and schismatic.

      Someone preferring or using the KJV exclusively is not an issue. It’s the hate that can flow out and toward a brother or sister in Christ when they are confronted with someone who does it differently.

      That said, we need to give super-extra love and graciousness to the people in those circles so they can see that the love of God and the work of the Spirit is much, much broader and deeper than just the KJV.

      1. Sarah, I used to think that the argument that the KJV is too hard for some people to understand was a lie. But I don’t believe that anymore.

        I said in an earlier post that maybe the reason why there are so many different Bible versions is because God knows that all people are different.

        And you are so right about all the hatred over the issue. The amount venom that is shot out is chilling.

        I have found that when we try to put God in a box He tends to break out. And it is humbling when He does.

        1. My dad always claims that he’s never met anyone who couldn’t understand the KJV. I always ask him when was the last time he taught a Sunday school class of 7th graders and asked them to read aloud from the KJV. Sure, there are 12 year olds who can read it (I was one of them), but the vast majority of people in the churches in which my husband served as youth pastor could NOT read it or understand it. My dad serves as a fill-in preacher when necessary, but his actual classroom contact with children I think ended 30 years ago with his own kids.

          Of course, then he trumps me by saying, “If they’re saved, the Holy Spirit will help them understand.” I guess he’s saying that anyone who doesn’t understand the KJV isn’t saved.

          Arguments like this make me want to pound my head on a table.

        2. Come to Philadelphia (or any other large urban center). You’ll find plenty of people who can’t even read the morning paper written in today’s English, let alone something written in the style of 400-year-old English.

        3. 2 Thes 2:6-7 is a good example for me:

          And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

          Huh? “…letteth will let…” Huh?

          It is hard for me to understand while reading the Bible on my own so I just skip over and move on.

          The ESV seems clearer to me:

          And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.

          I find The Bible more understandable when reading the ESV.

        4. PW – I now have a pat answer for the old “Holy Spirit will help them understand” argument. If that’s the case why don’t we all stick to the Greek and Hebrew and God can “really” get the glory.

          @Mounty – Exactly Right! Inevitably, when this topic comes up I think of an inner city kid who happens on to a dusty old KJV, and says, let me see what this is all about, and then quickly becomes uninterested because of the language barrier.

      2. I would say it doesn’t matter which version you use, but there are enough sermons preached based on misunderstanding a word or phrase in the KJV that sometimes it does matter (many of the strangest runs of preaching featured on this site are examples of just plain being wrong about what a word meant in 1611 English).

    2. English is my sencond language.

      Quite frankly I cannot read the KJV.

      I got hooked on the Living Bible early on; a paraphrase: double bonus, since I did not have to worry about the myth of inerrancy.

      1. Good point, Ricardo.

        One of my friends at my old church is from Brazil. She was still learning English and was using a Portuguese-English New Testament at church. My husband still laughs at the horrified look on my face when I realized the English part of her Bible was King James. We don’t talk like that anymore, especially in the South! This wasn’t going to help her with her English at all. We found an extra Holman Christian Standard for her.

        2. I beg thy pardon, I hath intended to say, “Forsooth, thinkeft thou that ye folk of ye north speaketh yet vsing ye tongve of ye souuereign James ye Firft?

        3. No, just saying we _really_ don’t like KJV talk here. (Well, except the KJVOs when they pray, but they don’t have anything to do with the rest of us.)

        4. Trust me, Northern USA doesn’t use archaic language (unless you’re trying to confuse people)

      2. Ricardo, English is also not my mother tongue, and although I do not have a problem with the KJV, loving the musical quality of the language, I fully appreciate your point. In my mother tongue there is a small crowd of “this text only” supporters, but they refer to a 1933/1953 translation.Proof that insanity crosses linguistic boundaries.. 😛

      3. I wonder what you mean by myth? I wrestled with inerrancy too for a while. But what I realized was that Christians were simply expressing the truth in a wrong way.

        Scripture is not inspired, Paul says, but *expired.* It is breathed out by God, and thus it is the very words of God. That’s as far as the Bible goes to explain the nature of Scripture, and that’s as far as we can go.

        Do you mind elaborating on the “myth” of inerrency? And are you familiar with the Chicago Statement?

    3. I have seen enough good things come from it, in church and in my own life, to know that it is the version God uses.

      But I have also met enough godly, loving, intelligent, faithful Christians who were not fundys to know that the KJV is not the only version God uses.

      Help me understand that please.

  16. I used to hear that all the time when hubby & I were still in fundy circles. “The King James Bible was good enough for Jesus, so it’s good enough for me!” Aargh!

    @Walter, we were behind an RV on a road trip years ago somewhere around Kentucky that had one of those scrolling electronic signs on the back. It was supplying us with bright green, red, and yellow pixelated, pithy church-sign statements that I’m assuming someone thought were clever. While it made the road trip more interesting, we couldn’t help but make sarcastic observations about the force-fed evangelism.

  17. “The person who translated the Bible into clear, excellent French prose is chiefly responsible for the collapse of Christianity in France. But the translators who put the Bible into archaic, sonorous and often unintelligible English (i.e., the King James Version), gave Christianity a new lease of [sic] life wherever English is spoken.”

    H. L. Mencken

  19. Jeremiah 8:8,”How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; THE PEN OF THE SCRIBES IS IN VAIN.” (KJV 1611)

    Jeremiah 8:8, “How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the Lord is with us? Look, THE FALSE PEN OF THE SCRIBE CERTAINLY WORKS FALSEHOOD.” (New KJV)

    Doesn’t this verse mean that all translations are with error? I can’t help but believe that God’s true thoughts are preserved only in the original languages.

    1. Having been a translator, an editor, and a copyist, I can tell you that all translations contain errors of translation, all printed texts contain typographical errors, and all copied manuscripts contain copying errors. Not that people don’t try to avoid these errors, especially with sacred texts, but humans are fallible.

    3. setfree – how do you get from “false scribes” to “only original languages”??

      When reading Scripture, always remember that you are effectively the secondary audience, and that it should be read, insofar possible, within the context of the mileu of the primary audience. In the case of Jeremiah, an audience most likely sitting in exile in Egypt, reading what has lead up to their tragic condition. Remember, this is where Jeremiah ends up after the Babylonians freed him.

      There is no way you can read comments about translations into the text.

      A text taken out of context becomes a pretext.

      1. I agree…so how on earth can a human being ever know what God really meant even if we did have a perfect translation. As a young person I argued with Fundy preachers that the Bible was not simple and easy to understand. In my mind they took passages out of context and formulated them on a piece of paper to conform to their own doctrinal beliefs. The Bible is certainly a mystery…and aside from being given miraculous understanding…we don’t have a clue. Maybe I did that with Jeremiah 8:8.

        1. The more I read the Bible, and the more I learn about it, the more mysterious it becomes. Even the most familiar passages have things I never noticed before, even on the 10th or 20th reading.

    1. Heh heh. I know what language that is, but I won’t tell until we see how many other readers recognize it.

        1. Here’s how Google’s Afrikaans-English robo-translator renders it:
          “Boy’s mom-I know it’s Middle English*, but I will treat that information in the general language here spreading.”

          Gives you the general idea, but also shows why computers haven’t replaced human translators yet.

          (*Close. It’s actually Old English (circa 700-800) rather than Middle English (circa 1300-1400)).

        2. Google translator did not quite get it.The second part of the sentence is.. “but I will not disseminate that information in the general language here”.

          Also, I should have known that early/middle English distinction. Best just call it Anglo Saxon.

    4. Its a passage from Beowulf, bilingual edition. “May the Almighty Father keep you and in His kindness watch over your exploits.”

  21. Use the Bible God uses King James 1611 A.V. I could have so much fun with this but why waste my time.

  22. Question! This never really came up since my family’s church was exclusively made up of white, English speaking people, but are there Spanish/German/French/Whateverish “equivalents” of the KJV for our foreign fundie friends? Or do they have to not only learn English, but archaic English in an attempt to escape hellfire for using the wrong Bible?

    1. There are two different trains of thought on this. One group of KJVers says that every language has it’s own equivalent to the KJV, and people who speak that language need to use that particular translation. Of course, this opens up a whole new set of questions, like which one is actually *the* KJV equivalent, and how do you decide? The other group of KJVers say that, yes, people who don’t speak English natively need to learn English and read the original KJV. I suppose they think people in other countries should also dress in Elizabethan garb and attend Renaissance fairs.

    2. I think this is a big problem for Fundies. One prominent KJV only Fundy preacher I know has settled the matter for his Spanish speaking community by reading the Reina Valera versions for himself. He claims the 1960 Reina Valera is a phony, but he endorses the 2010 Reina Valera Gomez as being the best as it “matches” up to the King James 1611 Version and other Textus Receptus based European versions in his mind. He basically has looked at the verses in the “Romans Road” and decided for himself which version properly translates the word “salvation” and “saved.”

      1. So his evaluation of a translation is based on two words?
        And he compares the passage he’s reading to another translation, not to the original text?

        Okey-dokey. 😕

        1. Yep…he’s only a high school grad with no other training whatsoever and an outspoken gay-hater.

  23. ACK!!!! My kids just came home from school and informed me that only Baptists who use the KJV are saved.
    Lovely..this lie will take me years to undo..nothing like a fundy education. 😈

    1. My sympathies!
      Almost afraid to suggest this here, but maybe get one of Stewart Custer’s books on the topic? Can’t remember the title, but he wrote stuff against that argument.

    3. If it makes you feel any better, it was crap like what your kids heard (in part) that started me on the path to questioning fundyism. If they’re intelligent, eventually they will realize that what was taught is NOT true. Of course, it helps if you point it out to them.

    4. Oy! you have to nip that in the bud asap. Read to them from another translation on a regular basis. You need to establish you are the parent, not the school. You are the first line of defense against the IFB cult. I feel for you… I finially got my children out of the IFB school ..in 10th grade…

    5. RJW may have a point here.
      Hearing teachers make monumentally stupid claims can be a powerful stimulus toward independent thinking.
      Of course, the danger is that the student might start assuming that everything the teacher says is false, which is almost as big an error as believing everything a teacher says.

    6. You should start persuading your husband to read books outside of fundyland. Might I suggest you start him off with “Prodigal God” by Tim Keller. It speaks a lot to fundy mentalities. God might use it to begin to pull the cultic blinders off.

      Oh, and most important..PRAY!!! (which I’m sure you do).

      I wish you the best in this tough situation.

    7. Don’t worry! I was in that boat! Jesus saved me from it, and now I’m ducking through a few more years at BJ before leaving to take an advanced degree in Biblical Languages. 🙂 I read the NIV every day. Jesus is good.

  24. This whole topic reminds me of what one of my Muslim friends told me about most Muslims reading the Koran. The real “hard core” Muslims believe that they should read the Koran in the original language, and they will do so enthusiastically because they have learned how to more or less sound it out. But quite a few of them don’t speak Arabic, the original language in which it was written. So a lot of times, when you see pictures of men in madrassas all reading or reciting the Koran in a group, they are merely making sounds. They have no idea what they are actually saying. So guess how they figure out what the Koran is telling them to do? You guessed it . . . . they rely on their religious leaders to interpret it for them. How different is that from hard-core KJV-only’s who rely on their pastor to tell them exactly what their Bible “really” means?

    1. The orthodox Muslim view is that there is no prohibition on translating the Quran or reading a translation, but that only the original text is authoritative when there are questions of meaning. You’ve got to admit that’s an improvement over saying that one translation written 400 years ago is authoritative.

      It is true, though, that there are Muslims (especially outside the Arabic-speaking world) who have the entire Quran memorized, but don’t know what it says, because they don’t understand the language. Even some Arabs have trouble understanding some of the original Quran, because medieval literary Arabic was substantially different from the modern spoken dialects of Arabic.

  25. Wait. a. second.

    The apocrypha was a part of the 1611 translation?? That heretical book that only Catholics read (so I was taught)? So how did it get kicked out of Protestantism?

    2. The Apocrypha, while included with some Bibles, are not regarded as canonical by all denominations. There are a number of books which are excluded from the Jewish Scriptures due (usually) to uncertainty about origin. Several books were included and read by the early Church as part of the Scriptures, leading us to conclude that though they were not part of the Hebrew canon, they were widely read. Each of the main branches of Christianity has its own (mostly the same) list of approved books; the biggest argument revolves around whether or not all the books included in the Septuagint, 1st Century AD Greek translation of the Scriptures, should be considered canonical. The Protestant position (simplified) is that the Tanak’h (the Hebrew canon of Scripture set in ca. 200 AD) should be the sole basis of canonicity. Most of the other denominational families (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Ethiopian, Syriac, etc) accept more of the Septuagint’s books. The Protestant position is more conservative than the others, in that it excludes from canon those things which were not regarded as canonical by the Jews of the time of Christ. In one sense this approach works fairly well – the bulk of Scripture quotations in the New Testament are from the Tanak’h. One thing to note is that the various Christian canons were closed fairly recently: the Council of Trent is regarded as Catholicism’s last word in 1546, for example. FWIW, virtually all Christian denominations agree entirely on the New Testament.
      This is a grossly oversimplified account, of course.

  26. My church is not KJO but we do use the KJV for our “common” text. The guy that was the most militant KJOer finally left the church and eventually divorced his wife… guess that falls under the catagory of having a stand on what is on the cover while knowing nothing about what’s inside…or knowing the title better than the Author.

    1. It’s frustrating to see people overemphasize extrabiblical things (like Bible translations) while missing things the Bible actually discusses.

  27. haven’t bothered to read the comments, so forgive me if i’m repeating what’s already been said:

    what exactly does God use the kjv for? does he stand alone on it? wave it in air? write in its margins?

    and does He use scofield (sp?) study notes to figure out what He’s gonna do next?

    1. “and does He use scofield (sp?) study notes to figure out what He’s gonna do next?”

      win.

    2. Hmmm…my fundy preacher used to say, “I’m standing on the King James only Old Scofield reference Bible” and wave it in the air. Recently I read on Wikipedia that Scofield was quite the rascal. After his conversion, he abandoned his wife and 2 daughters…she divorced him and he remarried. The guy was jailed for forgery and stealing at some point in his life. Yet he spread his dispensational beliefs all over modern fundamentalism through the KJV Scofield reference Bible.

    3. I suspect God is still busy cross referencing all the end times texts, so he can find out when he’s supposed to Rapture the Baptists. I just hope he’s able to decode it before he misses the deadline!

      1. The Venerable Bede? I don’t remember anything about him, but I have loved his name (with title or descriptive moniker) from the moment I heard it!

        2. The Venerable Bede (I think his official name is St. Bede the Venerable now) is one of my favorite saints. He recorded the first written English poem and wrote the Ecclesiastical (sp?) History of England.

          What most folks don’t know is that he also did the earliest translation of scripture passages into English about 900 years before the KJV. I always like to throw that one in when people start trying to accuse those eeeevillll Catholics of trying to keep the Bible from being translated into English.

          http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02384a.htm

  30. In shaking and tears our Mrs Fundy Missionary here in UK reprimanded me for explaining in the ladies’ Bible sutdy I was teaching that “meat” in Genesis refered to food in general, not steaks and chops in particular. I just wanted to be sure that the new Christian gals were not confused by this old English usage because it was important to understand that when God gave the animals and Adam and Eve the plants and fruit as meat. You’d have thought I’d blasphemed the Holy Spirit! I guess in her mind I had. She insisted that these gals were intelligent and could figure that out for themsleves. Why, she herself only finished 12th grade with a C average, but she could read the Authorized Version just fine. And I was just bitter over the things that had happened to my family in IFB churches in the past. Arrgh! I. Do. Not. Want. To. Go. Back. To. That!

    1. Oh, that’s a red flag! How can anyone tell a Bible teacher, “Don’t say that! They’ll figure that out for themselves!”? Teachers are supposed to teach! And to say, “Don’t tell the truth about something because it might show that the KJV vocabulary has changed from our modern usage and might make students start to doubt the KJV”! God’s Word is mighty and powerful; it doesn’t need our hiding the truth from students in order to prop it up. Good grief. I wouldn’t want to go back to that either.

    2. Maybe Mrs. Fundy Missionary thought you were being condescending.

      Anyhow, “meat” is a good example of how word meanings can either broaden or narrow over time. “Liquor” originally meant more or less anything liquid, but now it usually refers to beverages containing distilled alcohol. “Salad” in the early 19th century could mean any food eaten cold, but now it (usually) refers to a narrower category of dishes. “Starve” once meant simply “die,” but now to starve is to die from one specific cause (lack of food), not to die in general.

      Some words just change meaning, too. When I was reading some of Francis Bacon’s essays (from the early 1600s), I looked up “flashy” in the Oxford English Dictionary (Bacon wrote that certain kinds of books are “flashy things”). I learned that “flashy” orginally meant “splashing up water” (as with an oar or paddle). In Bacon’s time, it meant “weak and insubstantial” (like a watered-down drink), which is probably what he meant in the sentence quoted. Now, when people use “flashy,” they usually mean something that is ostentatiously showy, especially if in a pretentious or tasteless way.

      Looking at the above (“meat,” “liquor,” “starve,” “Bacon”), I realize it’s getting close to lunchtime. May I be excused? :mrgreen:

  33. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Please STOP saying God uses this or that version of the Word. He is GOD. He IS the Word! And for you fundy’s who say the KJV is the only way to go, you read the actual Greek and Hebrew translations. They are difficult to read but an eye opener for sure. It shows just how INaccurate the KJV really is. “God uses KJV”….wow…how ignorant.

  34. Another funny memory from wacko IFB land. I can remember sitting in church services and conferences and the speaker du jour would get the crowd revved up by throwing out a sentence or two about the KJV 1611 and watch all of the nuts scream, hoop, holler and hold up their Bibles, which were 1769 revisions. I always got a good laugh, because it was the equivalent of throwing raw meat to a dog. I have a 1611 like the one pictured, used it for a little while when I was in wacko IFB-land. Now I use the NKJV

  35. Visited my mom today and she was telling me that at church (my old fundy church) that pastor had set aside last Sunday and this Sunday to preach about the KJV, good thing was, she said about half the congregation didn’t show up last Sunday, I was glad to hear that. My group is perfoming at an SBC, which is close enough for her to drive too, so they are skipping services tomorrow and coming to hear us.

    I’m tempted to write a scathing letter to the old pastor, but it would probably just add to his martyr complex.

    1. Yes, it would. And you might get to be used as an illustration in his next sermon. For that matter he might enjoy reading the letter to his entire congregation…spare your Mom.

  36. I would guess that what most KJV fundies do not know is that the KJV bible they have is not the 1611 edition, but the 1769 Cambridge edition. The Authorized King James Version went through numerous revisions between 1611 and 1769 and contained the Apocrypha.

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