202 thoughts on “Fundy Tweet of the Week: The Russian KJV”

    1. Aww, yiss! Can I have an NIV butt cushion? I’ll add something more substantial to the discussion than a specific butt cushion request after my interview for a second job. XD

        1. Aww, you can have an honorary butt-cushion. It’ll make you sound & feel important, even if you did nothing to earn it!

  3. But wait the KJV is how God meant for us to read it, shouldn’t them Russians just learn English then?

    1. Right – anyone who is not English-reading cannot ever hope to be right with God

      1. You probably don’t realize how true your comment really is. Gipp was on the John Ankerberg and was asked, if a man from Russia wanted to learn about God would he have to learn English, and Gipp said YES! ….you just can’t make this stuff up!

        2. It follows, then, that non-English speakers know nothing about God.
          For example, Moses, Jesus, Peter, Paul, Martin Luther, etc.

        3. Not quite, Big G. Most of the rabid KJV peeps get around your logic by adopting a sort of linguistic dispensationalist argument. They say that Hebrew was God’s perfect language in the OT and that anyone who wanted to read the Bible had to learn Hebrew. Then, in the NT times, it was Greek. Then, as of 1611, it was English. Ta-da! Problem solved!

  4. I am being glad that these so good English writing student have translated Bible.

    1. Yes, thank you. I was wondering about that bit of grammar (or lack thereof). Doc, you might want to try something more like “are now in.” Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pray for the poor people of Russia who will be seeing these videos.

      1. Are these the videos that show Gipp making some point about Bible translations by putting creamer in his coffee?

        I guess they want to test the patience of Russian converts.

        1. Not to derail, but…facial hair is embarrassing? Why don’t they show men using it, then? And why do products of this sort always show people who’ve been waxed smooth rubbing it on their skin?

          You want me to shell out? Show me the product actually working!

      1. Hoyt Axton wrote the song, but Ringo’s cover sold (vastly) better.

        My favorite version is Brave Combo’s “No, No, No, Cha Cha Cha,” but it doesn’t seem to be on YouTube.

        1. I’ve been surprised at times with all the songs Hoyt Axton wrote or co-wrote, for a wide variety of singes and genres.

        2. Hoyt was never hugely successful as a recording artist, but he was a heck of a songwriter.

  6. Why would Russian speaking people need to know what “the best” English translation is?

    2. So when they start sending us missionaries they will know which version to use. (WHICH IS GOING TO HAPPEN ANY DAY NOW, AMERICA! AND WE SHOULD BE ASHAMED THAT THEY ARE SENDING US MISSIONARIES. WE USED TO SEND THEM MISSIONARIES.)

    3. I understand there’s a big ole religious revival going on in Russia right now. But it doesn’t involve either English or the KJV. Lots of icons and incense, though.

  7. Hmmm. Translating a translation into another language. Think they are losing meaning in the process? Or possibly inserting meaning that isn’t in the Scriptures?

    2. Nearly all the quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament are a translation of a translation (from the Greek Septuagint.) In fact, when you read those quotations in English, you are reading a translation of a translation of a translation.

      1. Which just proves that translations can be inspired, which proves the KJV is inspired, amiright, brother?!

    3. Okay, I misunderstood. What has been translated into Russian is not the KJV, but the videos extolling the KJV.

      And the arguments against other versions are simply bull****.

      The difference between the two textual legacies (Antiochus versus Alexandrian) amounts to only about a page of Greek text. And the differences do not amount to very much, either.

      Those who use the Alexandrian texts do so because 1) they recognize that the believers in Egypt were as authentic as the believers elsewhere, and 2) the Alexandrian texts are so much older.

      Yes, we have fewer of the Alexandrian texts. That is what we would expect. People make copies. Copies, on occasions, have errors. And errors tend to be compounded.

      But there are NO heresies that can be proven to come from one source only.

      And despite the focus of the first video on the manuscripts, the KJV is not in agreement with all of the so-called Received Text (Textus Receptus). The KJV was translated from a very few sources, more recent copies, not even the oldest of the Antiochus. Yet they consider the KJV perfect, even though the Antiochus mss have many variants!

      But they get through that by assertion, and by pleading a special miracle, that God magically preserved just the exact manuscripts to be used.

      1. “What has been translated into Russian is not the KJV, but the videos extolling the KJV.”

        Yes, which takes us back to the question, “Why would Russian-speaking people in Russia need to know which Bible translation into English is the best?

        Until you’ve answered that, it doesn’t even matter that Gipp’s arguments are ignorant and ridiculous.

        1. Simple. According to my FIL (IFB pastor), the KJV may very well be the only true translation for the entire world, not just the English-speaking world. He hasn’t completely made up his mind about this, but he’s thinkin’ on it!

      2. rtgmath, I think you have it right. Fundies *must* have a perfect book, perfectly preserved, even if it flies in the face of all evidence to the contrary. How else are they going to clearly demarcate “us” and “them”? Well, I guess they do have some evidence–from the Bible itself. (Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.”)

        As with most errors in Christian doctrine, the roots of KJV-onlyism can be traced to a misunderstanding or under-appreciation for the Incarnation and/or the Trinity. This is my opinion, but I think KJV-onlyism is a form of the ancient heresy of docetism.

        The fundies I am familiar with get really uncomfortable with the thought of Jesus as fully human, subject to hunger, weariness, sadness, even normal human growth.
        They are so afraid of relativism they crowd out the human element in nearly everything in which the human element is essential. Never mind to them that Christ came and took a fallible, kill-able human body (in every way like ours except without sin–I take that to mean that while he did not sin, his body was subject to all the ordinary infirmities and weaknesses we endure throughout life) in order to show us God. If this is the case, why cannot the Bible still tell us something true while also being an imperfect product of fallible human beings?

        They simply cannot even entertain the thought that the Bible might contain mistakes, human error, etc. To them, there is no real human part in the writing or formation of the Bible. No synergy. The writers and copyists and selectors of texts (of the manuscripts on which the KJV are based, only) were merely channels of divine power. The thought that God might have relinquished some of his vice-grip control in favor of human freedom is beyond their imagination, since it does open the door to some measure of error and messiness. News Flash! That’s life, y’all.

        If you show them the variant readings of even the TR, not to mention the enormous variants in the textual tradition overall, they just trot out their Deus ex machina. There’s no way to resolve their story of events without recourse to just asserting: God said he would preserve his word. The KJV is the Bible we have in hand. Therefore, the Bible we have in hand is proof that God perfectly preserved his word. Problem solved. Errr . . .

        All this rambling just to say–great comment!

        1. Great response! Your analysis of their discomfort with Christ’s humanity is spot on.

          I have occasionally thought about this, but your post spurred me to think about it some more. Thank you!

          They want a perfectly invulnerable Savior. They are uncomfortable with the baby in the manger. They want a God of Wrath, as Zeus throwing lightning and thundering in the heavens. They do not want a Man of Sorrows.

          Do they even think about what Christ suffered in his 40 days without food in the desert? No. After all, Christ was different from us.

          Do they think about the idea that “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance?” Not too much. They are too busy thinking about how God will judge the world, turn it red with blood, and at the last cast sinners into an eternal hell with not so much as a thought for what they will suffer.

          They would deny it, of course. But they minimize Christ’s connections with us and maximize His Deity. I have even heard sermons on how as a boy Christ knew everything (but not on how He “grew in wisdom”).

          They disengage themselves from the horror and meaning of the crucifixion, because after all, Jesus was God; he could bear the pain and wrath and know it wasn’t for eternity. That the Father “forsook” His Son was only a temporary thing, a prescriptive element in a play designed to appease the Father’s wrath and allow us to be saved. They have even decided that, no matter that God is God, God was constrained to bring salvation in this one and only one way. God could not write the rules otherwise.

          Which may explain why they do the Lord’s Supper so infrequently. After all, except for “getting saved,” it doesn’t have much to do with our daily lives, now does it. Exodus and hating gay people is so much more relevant.

          Which seems to me to wind up de-deifying God and making Him pretty much a computer program, responding to input and emotionlessly giving output depending on what buttons are pushed and who pushes them. Christ is reduced to doing things to make sure prophesy is fulfilled, not because he was human and was thirsty.

          “Am I a God at hand, with the Lord, and not a God afar off?”Jeremiah 23:23

        2. Just to modify my comments in the interests of fairness–I know some fundies probably have a better understanding of the implications of the Incarnation, but those in my experience fear the humanity of Christ. My thoughts here are based only on my experiences and knowledge, so, as they say, your mileage may vary.

          Anyway, the teaching of St. Gregory Nazianzen on this is pretty clear, and I think beautiful. Writing against the heresy of Apollinarius (who held a kind of docetic view of the nature of Christ), he said, “That which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His God-head is also saved.”

          According to catholic/patristic teaching, salvation (making whole) is only possible because the erring and faulty human nature is somehow compatible with the divine nature. There *is* some compatibility between human and divine, otherwise the Incarnation is impossible. (By the way, this accounts for the high regard that Catholics and Orthodox have for Mary as the Mother of God, or Theotokos, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Maybe Fundy Universities should think of including Patristics in their course of study. They might learn a thing or two.

        3. Oh, and yes, I agree with you that this relates directly to one’s view of the Eucharist. And one’s view of icons and other material sacred objects (relics and the like).

          Which is correct–finitum non capax infinitum, or finitum capax infinitum? Can the finite and infinite communicate, share, understand, grasp each other, in some real substantial way, or not? If not, then how the Incarnation? And how salvation?

          If so, then . . . ??? The implications are incredible and freeing.

        5. Well, three- or four-point pocket hankies aren’t in the KJV either. That hasn’t stopped fundies from making them into essential preacher-wear, though. 🙂

          (I can’t remember if the accepted theological view is three-point or four-point. Not trying to start a rancorous debate, but does anyone know?)

        6. Four points, for the four persons of the Holy Tetrad: The Father, the Son, The King James Bible, and the Pastor.

        8. Sorry BG. I read your last comment wrong (not enuf caffeine on my system yet) Your comment is true, and you are right to list them in order of increasing importance

  9. Do you think it’s becasue they sensed a kindred spirit (a common playbook for dealing with opposing ideologies if you will) in Russia and it’s Ukranian supporters here in recent events?

  10. “Stupid is as stupid does.” -Forrest Gump’s momma

    I do not limit God’s ability to use the gospel no matter how man pollutes it, my frustration is with the whole KJV idolatry that men like BULL GIPP try and pass off as legitimate scholarship.

    1. Believe it or not, my bigger concern is how the IFB gets so much about the Bible and the historic Christian faith and practice dead wrong. I don’t give two hoots and a holler which translation is used if the end product is essentially bad religion.

  11. . . .and are being in Russian speaking countries.”

    And are being WHAT? Distributed? Watched? Denounced? Burned? Eaten? With Sam Gipp, one never knows.

    1. How many “Russian speaking countries” are there, anyway?
      I can think of two:
      1. Russia
      2. Brooklyn
      I might accept certain parts of Alaska as qualifying, too.

      2. I was just thinking the same thing. He probably assumes, like my old boss, that all the countries on that side of the world are Russian. My old boss was bidding on a job in Romania and kept saying if we got the job we’d have to learn a little Russian to communicate!

        1. You could sell tickets to watch your boss trying to speak Russian to Romanians. Romanian is not even a Slavic language. It’s much more closely related to Italian than to Russian.

          (Of course, a fair number of older Romanians do know Russian, because it was taught in schools during the “Iron Curtain” period. But they don’t like being reminded of that.)

        2. Exactly. The church I still belong to (though I haven’t attended in some time) is Greek Orthodox, but the priest is Romanian. He, and especially his Presvytera, are particularly touchy about the Romanian relationship with Russia. And they are genuinely shocked at the level of ignorance about these kinds of things among the general U.S. population.

          That reminds me of something else as well–my oldest daughter’s godfather is Georgian (as in the country, not the U.S. state). I once witnessed someone making the mistake of calling him Russian. They got an earful of history back in energetic reply.

          Even if some of these countries happens to speak some Russian or have previous ties to the old Soviet Union, they usually resent being identified as Russian.

        3. Stalin was Georgian, but it may be better not to bring that up when meeting a Georgian person for the first time.

      3. To be fair to the Gipper, there are sizable Russian speaking populations in many former Soviet republics. See the current brouhaha in Ukraine for details.

        Also, as pointed out above, Brooklyn.

        1. Haha…yeah, and (4) northeast San Francisco.

          You wouldn’t happen to be from Sac would you? I’m in Vacaville, and go to Sac for various reasons quite frequently….we should do lunch or something.

        2. No, I’m not from Sacramento, but when I worked in Moscow I had friends who grew up in Sacramento and learned Russian there.

        3. Ah, ok. Well, bummer. Haha. If you ever get over this way, let me know, and we can set up a lunch meeting or whatever. 🙂

        4. SteveA-I was going to bring up SFO. There is a great Dim Sum restaurant down from the Polish Deli in the Russian district of ‘Frisco.
          I was somewhat surprised at all the Russian language newspapers and speakers I came across.

        5. Ah, yes, and I just realized I typed “northeast”, when I meant “northwest”.

          Anyway, yes, the area surrounding the ROCOR cathedral (wherein are displayed the relics of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco) is known as “Little Russia” (Google Maps even recognizes it — just put in “Little Russia SF” and it’ll show you the area I’m talking about.

        6. I didn’t know NE or NW, I just got on and off the bus when my daughter told me too.

          That sounds like I’m a doddering old man being led about. Not true, in spite of rumors to the contrary.

      5. Good point, wouldn’t it be much better to translate it into Mandarin or Hindi? Considering the number of people that would be able to hear it. I guess doing so, however, would be too difficult considering those are more complex oriental languages (of the devil).

        Though from my perspective, it’s good its reaching fewer people. Less chance of those many people being taught idolatry to the n-th degree.

      6. There are four countries where Russian is primarily spoken (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan) and virtually every FSU/Eastern Bloc country has Russian as a widely spoken language.

        Unfortunately, this isn’t contained to Russia.

      7. There are a surprising number in my neck of the woods as well. I teach English as a second language, and our second-largest population is from Russia or Ukraine. Our little community is even home to a Slavic church.

      1. I don’t know how ancient Hebrew sounded, but modern Hebrew sounds like people clearing their throats.

    3. Sorry, my first fundie Mog told me we all would be speaking English in Heaven.

      In case you ever forget, remember the call letters of First Baptist of Hammond radio station – WRTW – (Were Right Their Wrong).

        2. I think there may be some overlap between the set of people who are seriously weird and the set that consists of Big Gary.

  13. I took the liberty of Google translating some handy phrases for the KJV-Russia Outreach:

    mano gawd Божий человек
    aginnit против этого
    culottes юбка-брюки
    soul winning душа победы
    convert slip конвертировать квитанции

    1. Those are actually fairly decent translations.
      Do you think they used Google Translate for the whole video translation project?

        3. That must not have been this year, because Cesar Chavez’ birthday is March 31, and Easter this year was April 20.

    2. What fun! Here’s some more:

      Track Rack: трек стойки

      Christ-Honoring Music: Христос-честь музыка

      Old Black Book: старый черный книга (Hmm, google translate seems to struggle a bit with gender. Or maybe it’s just that google recognizes that the King James is MASCULINE!!)

      Three to Thrive: три процветать

      Old-fashioned, autonomous, indigenous, pre-millennial, pre-tribulation, Independent Fundamental Baptist Church: Старомодный, автономная, коренные, предварительно тысячелетнее, до скорби, независимых фундаментальных баптистской церкви. (Russians would actually like this, given their proclivity for unnecessarily long names for things. They would probably just call the church the НФБЦ.)

      Pisseth against the wall: мочащегося к стене

      1. LOL – my eys saw “the НФБЦ” and read “the Hell”.
        Sounds about right for “Old-fashioned, autonomous, indigenous, pre-millennial, pre-tribulation, Independent Fundamental Baptist Church”

  14. Why don’t they just make the Russians learn English so they can watch the videos?

    2. Most English textbooks for Russian students actually do teach a fairly forced/stilted and somewhat archaic form of British English. One will find such gems as: “We attended at the theatre. There, we learned of a proverb: ‘It never rains but it pours.'”

  15. The idea of “Dr.” Sam Gipp as a Russian translator sort of boggles the mind.
    The “Doctor” has only middling command of his native language.

  16. I propose we call this work the Ivan the Terrible Translation. Works on so many levels.

    1. Or “Samuil’s Terrible Translation.”
      (Samuil, or Самуил, is Russian for “Sam.)

      1. Oh crap, George didn’t let me scroll down far enough before posting this. First thing that came to my mind, what a twisted and perverse generation we are

  18. I watched the videos. Just the usual stuff here. Doctor Gipp’s argument is based on a couple of assumptions that have some Big Time problems:

    1. The KJV is the perfect and final authority for all faith and practice–God only speaks to us through the KJV.

    Doctor Gipp’s mistake is that he doesn’t realize that for a perfect book to give us perfect doctrine and practice, it must be perfectly interpreted. In other words, even if we have a perfect book, it is essentially useless without a perfect interpretation.

    So, where is the *final* authority? The book or the interpretation? “Understandest thou what thou readest? How can I, except some man should guide me?” That’s straight from the KJV!

    2. The Alexandrian “Critical Text” is from Egypt, a place the Bible always uses as a bad example, and is therefore bad. The Antiochian “Textus Receptus” is from Antioch, the place where believers were first called Christians, and therefore good.

    The real textual scholarship is available for anyone with the desire to learn. Baseless assumptions like this are astoundingly simplistic and, well, wrong.

    3. Doctor Gipp assumes that the KJV, the book, has some kind of special inherent spiritual power–God’s VERY Word. This leads to fetishism of a book, turning the KJV into a leather-bound talisman that brings the reader into a special relationship to God that readers of other Bibles can never enjoy.

    At any rate, the Russians already have an archaic version that they seldom read except in church–the Slavonic. Of course, they are Orthodox, not IFB, so they’re going to burn in a literal eternal devil’s hell anyway.

    1. If you accept that the KJV and “God’s Word” are identical, then you have to read John 1:1-4 as:
      In the beginning was the King James Version, and the King James Version was with God, and the King James Version was God. The KJV was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through it, and without the KJV not one thing came into being. What has come into being in the King James Version was life, and the life was the light of all people.

      1. Nice translation! Especially the “and the King James Version was God” part. Very much in keeping with Gippian scholarship.

  20. I had no idea that Babelfish was still in being a real actual life thing that existing!

    1. You have to have the right Betelgeusian connections but there’s still a few out there

  22. Gippy better take a few elocution lessons or people may think he has a “KJB only” stance

  23. Everyone should know that God’s only Word in Russian is the archaic (to the point of being barely comprehensible) Russian Synodal Bible. Essentially, this is the closest thing Russians have to their very own KJV. I speak Russian fairly well and I have difficulty reading portions of it. Like the KJV, it was translated with an eye to the past and making it sound “churchy.”

    1. Isn’t there an archaic language (if memory serves, Old Church Slavonic) that (now) exists only in Orthodox liturgies?

      1. There are several different Slavonic recensions or variations–what is generally used is not technically Old Church Slavonic, but a slightly updated version. Still, even Russian-speaking people need special training to read and understand even the more recent variants.

        This is similar to what occurs in the Greek Orthodox Church. The official liturgical language is an older variant of Greek, the same Greek of the N.T. times, and is not so easily read or understood by modern Greeks. The whole Orthodox liturgical language thing is an ongoing battle. Traditionalist want to retain Slavonic and liturgical Greek even if it hinders comprehension. (IS TRADITION! ORTHODOX DO NOT CHANGE!) “Modernists” want the liturgy and liturgical books written in current language. Even here in the U.S., there is a heated argument between supporters of liturgical translations that mimic KJV-style language (thee-thou) and modernized English (you-who).

        It’s kind of funny in a way.

        1. Hello fellow Orthodoxie! 🙂

          Anyway, yeah, I was part of a brief effort to examine these issues and reach some conclusions, in preparation for a new liturgical translation effort aimed at becoming* the Officially Approved Translation for the forthcoming united American Orthodox Church.

          It didn’t go anywhere, because it was kind of a one-off thing, and the organizer (the most excellent Archimandrite Irenei (Steenberg)) got too busy with other things, and it didn’t really have any episcopal oversight or emphasis. Plus the fact that it was (IMHO) kind of a “cart before the horse” kind of thing.

          But we met a few times, and I learned a lot of fascinating stuff. I hope somebody kept notes, because if they ever do get around to jurisdictionally uniting the Church in America, and said unified hierarchy ever decides to do an “official” translation (two very long shots), said notes should serve as a great primer for the translation committee.

          The fact is, IMHO, when you have the Spirit guiding, and ample access to the original materials, it doesn’t really matter whether you use “thee” or “you”, or even if everyone uses the same translation or not. Certain translations should be set “out of bounds”, I think, but beyond that, the translation really should serve the liturgical purpose. So you might even have two different translations used by the same parish — one for the readings, and one for the hymnody. Or some such.

        2. Hi Steve! Χριστός ἀνέστη. I hope you’re taking every advantage of Bright Week!

          I was in the OCA for 7 yrs. or so (before attending the GOA parish to which I now belong), during the time when Abp. Dmitri of blessed memory required all of his parishes to use his KJV-style translation. We had been using the standard OCA translations, which as you probably know are similar to the RSV (thee-thou for God, pretty modern otherwise). Anyway, the change really didn’t bother me too much. I’d cut my teeth on the KJV and had no problem chanting and understanding +Dmitri’s version. Others with a non-KJV background were not so happy.

          At any rate, thanks for your hard work, and here’s hoping y’all can get some translation agreement happening, but, as you say, I won’t hold my breath. (“Unified hierarchy”–that’s a good one! 🙂 ) You know the Orthodox way–unity in essentials; bitter argument and mutual condemnations in non-essentials!

        3. I meant to add–most of the priests I know who champion modern translations argue that the language of the Bible and the liturgy should be the same language of the homily. As one priest said to me, “Would I preach my sermon in Koine?”

          Oh, and an additional fun fact for Doctor Gipp to consider when he’s making his Alexandrian/Antiochian distinction–Koine, as a Greek dialect, has close ties to Alexandria.

        4. Forgot to add the footnote:

          *if a whole host of other issues ever get resolved AND we manage to win out against several other similar efforts. LOL We were not deluding ourselves as to our chances, though.

        5. Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! (Or perhaps given the thread subject, Воистину воскресе! might be more contextually appropriate. Or maybe Воистину воскрес! :P)

          As for “unity in essentials….” and the rest….Haha too true…too true. *goes and weeps in a(n icon) corner*

    2. Yup.” KJV? We have our own inspired Word of God!!” Most Baptists/Pentecostals here (Rus/UA) just about worship the written WORD – their version of it, that is. Most modern translations (mostly NT at this point) are written off as being ‘liberal perversions. 😉 Sound familiar?

  24. In the early days of computing a group put together a language translation program. To test it they translated “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” from English into Russian, and then from Russian into English. The result came back as “The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten”.

    1. Ha! A German friend once told me that “he must increase but I must decrease” in the German Bible reads: “he must increase but I must lose weight.”

    3. According to my father, that’s a pretty accurate summary of how that went down. And he spent his entire professional career feeding and caring for systems like that one. He has interesting views on subjects like accurate translations.

  25. I wonder if he is aware (or would care if he is) that the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church is working on an official translation for modern Russian, using the Byzantine text type, to replace the slightly (*cough* 1200 years old *cough*) outdated Slavonic translation currently in use, which was translated by Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Greek missionaries from the Church at Thessolonica — yes, the same Church that St. Paul and his team started and addressed in the Epistle of the same name.

    And yes, that St. Cyril is the one after whom the Russian script, “Cyrillic” is named, because he and his brother (the aforementioned Methodius) invented it so they could write the Scriptures and the Liturgy down for the people of Rus, who didn’t have a written language at that time.

    I wonder if “Dr.” Gipp is aware of that effort or history? Or if he cares?

    Eh….probably not.

      1. That’s why Gippster doesn’t acknowledge it — it sounds to similiar to us baby blessing, sprinkle-tizing heretics that believe the Lord’s Table is open to everyone and women can preach.

      3. Methodists have never paid much attention to saints (except the ones mentioned in th New Testament), but I think “St. Methodius Methodist Church” would be a wonderful name for a local church.

        2. I often pass the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church. It makes my mind boggle to see Baptist next to Catholic in a church name. (We also have a Sixth Presbyterian Church, the only church I know of that admits to not being First.

        4. They probably figure if they can keep you confused with fractions, you won’t notice where your money is going.

  26. Russian missionaries come to the (future) U.S., immediately set about developing phonetic alphabets for Native languages and working with Native authorities to translate the Bible into their languages.

    American missionaries come to Alaska, tell Native kids they have no right to speak their own language, collude with the government in attempts to destroy Native languages and turn Natives into funny-looking poor people dressed up as whites.

    American missionaries go back to Russia to extol the virtues of the KJV . . .

    American missionaries may have been more numerous and busier, but I don’t think that’s actually a good thing!

    1. Hahahahaha* excellent analysis!

      *I laugh lest I cry

      This is one of the many many reasons I became Orthodox. We may do missions glacially slowly, but we do it right.

      1. Hey, I dunno. Our Franciscans and Jesuits were no slouches in the missions department. We got around to Asia and Africa centuries before the fundagelicals did.

        Not to mention Latin America. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

    2. It’s become more and more fascinating to me recently how much the IFB preaches against the one world government mentioned in Revelations, yet they’re one of the biggest groups to go around trying to make every one else’s systems be run the same as theirs. It’s a whole lot easier to run a world wide government when everyone speaks English regardless of where they live, runs their governments the same way, dresses the same way, and might as well all come from one nation.
      To that I say “no thanks.” I go to France, I’m learning French and using it as much as possible. Begging forgiveness when my born in America brain isn’t handing me the right French or momentarily forgets it all together, forcing me to speak English. I’m learning French customs, dressing appropriately, and not expecting others to change themselves to my American ways. We went to Mexico on a missions trip. We spoke Spanish or we spoke nothing at all.
      Thank the Lord my church supports a Bible translation group that not only doesn’t expect that people group to learn English but translates the Bible into their language from the original Greek and Hebrew text. Some times I’m proud of the church I go to.
      Some times.

      1. If that group is the Wycliffe Bible Translators, also known as the Summer Linguistics Institute, their linguistic and translation work is pretty widely respected. (I have this on the authority of my brother, who is a professor of linguistics.)
        Unfortunately, they have an unsavory reputation in many countries (particularly in Latin America) due to some of their missionaries’ coziness with the CIA and other covert agencies.

        1. Nope, that’s not them. They’re pretty small right now. I don’t think they have much more than the one building in our area. Pretty sure they’re just starting out but at least they seem to be starting out on a pretty good footing.

    3. I can’t lay my hands on it just now, but somewhere I have a book that quotes early Orthodox missionaries to “Russian America” (Alaska) saying that the native languages are beautiful and sophisticated, and then quotes nineteenth-century American Protestant missionaries saying that those same languages have absolutely no value, and should be expunged as quickly as possible.
      Of course, the Orthodox missionaries bothered to learn the local languages, while the Protestant missionaries (of that era) did not.

      2. Did you find the letter from the superintendent of schools for the territory (IIRC), basically saying that all Native students should be forbidden to speak their own languages because he can’t be arsed to learn any?

        2. Yes, that’s the one!

          “I will condemn thousands of children to a life of dreading school because that’s the place they are told that absolutely everything about them is wrong, because learning an agglutinative language is haaard waaaaa and bilingual people don’t exist, they’re like unicorns.”

          I think people should make a spitting noise in the middle of his name, the way you’re supposed to beat on the table whenever somebody says Haman’s name during Purim.

    1. As far as I’m aware, the NKJV is just an “update” of the KJV. As I understand it, they took the KJV, went through it word by word and sentence by sentence, and if they came across anything that they deemed “archaic”, they updated it, with reference to the original set of texts used to translate the KJV.

      1. Close. The NKJV is an actual full translation, but the translators tried to make it sound as much like KJV as possible without the archaic language. The OT is translated from the 66/67 Stuttgartensia, which uses B19a; the KJV was translated from a newer ms. (although both are Ben Asher family). They did consult the LXX and Dead Sea Scrolls, as noted. The NT is translated (unfortunately) from the TR, but the translation notes indicate where the text differs from NU and M (note: the TR varies quite significantly from the Byzantine M).

        2. Dr. Farstad may have been using colloquial language in that interview. I’m sure he didn’t mean to deceive anyone or contradict what is in the introduction of the NKJV. The NT text is the same (although since the TR has been updated about 8 times depending on who’s counting, that is kind of relative). The OT text is not the same, although it comes from the same text family.

        3. So if I’m understanding this correctly the NKJV is already superior to the KJV translation just by being a translation of original texts instead of a “translation” of an older English Bible? Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I’m not then ay, caramba!

          On another note I added NKJV to the spell check dictionary and the spelling it suggested before I added the word was “JUNK.” Uh, Chrome? You forget that suggestion for the KJV too.

  28. I fail to see why native Russian speakers should be able to defend the use of KJB in English-speaking countries.

    If the videos are well done (given the source, seems doubtful), they could enlighten about the issues involved in the struggle over the Scriptures.

    1. Oh, Doctor Fundystan, you know that every country has it’s own collection of lovable fundies. So yeah–they are definitely not needing our help in forming new ones.

  30. I just read his last 100 or so twitter posts and now my brain hurts.

  31. While I generally agree with most of the comments posted so far about Mr. (yes, Mister) Gipp’s rantings, I would posit that he should be best ignored, so as to not encourage him nor his followers to continue in their ignorance. They tend to feed off of those who would oppose them.

    1. I’m not really trying to oppose him, by which I mean I don’t expect to change the mind of any of his followers.
      It’s just fun to laugh at pompous blowhards, and it’s satisfying to call things and people what they are.

  32. well since the articles are out in Russian, probably start by dropping the a, an, and the…lol

    Not sure how that translates. But old paths, i guess. Why don’t those Russians just learn the King’s English like Jesus spoke?

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