As I continue to prepare for my upcoming History of the
Bible series, I’ve been watching some of the Youtube videos of James White’s
debates with both Biblical skeptics and KJV fanatics. In doing so I’ve come to a realization,
although I’m sure someone else has noticed this already, to me it was still
worth noting. The skeptics and the KJV
fanatics are two sides of the same coin.
Now, they certainly won’t say that, and would likely have a hard time
having a civil conversation, but that doesn’t change the fact that both groups
are over-reacting to the same historical fact that we don’t have a perfectly preserved
New Testament text, a fact which has been known since at least Erasmus first
published his Greek NT over 500 years ago, but one that both groups never tire
of using as some sort of “secret” that the Church doesn’t want you to know.
The
skeptics, like Bart Ehrman and John Shelby Spong, look at the textual history
of the NT, see that there are certainly uncertainties, (which any rational
Bible believing scholar readily admits without fear) and erroneously and
over-zealously concludes that the entire NT is therefore untrustworthy, that
Jesus never claimed to be God, that the resurrection and the virgin birth are
myths, and that the Church has been part of some Dan Brown-like conspiracy to
hide the truth from the rubes that still believe such things.
The KJV
only fanatics, like Peter Ruckman and Sam Gipp, look at the textual history of
the NT, see that there are certainly uncertainties, and erroneously and
over-zealously conclude that the only solution is to posit a perfect
re-inspiration of the Bible in the form of the KJV, thus concluding that
whatever mistakes the KJV contains don’t actually exists, that all further
scholarship and all modern translations are perversions of the devil, and that
the only option for the Church is blind faith in the KJV to the extent that
even foreign missionaries should teach illiterate tribes English so that they
can read the KJV instead of doing new translation work.
That both
of these positions are clearly unnecessary and exceedingly dangerous is
clear. If either group had their way,
the Church as we know it would be destroyed and be replaced by something that
either has no soul, because it has lost its faith to doubt, or no mind, because
it has had to silence its intellect to exist.
The history
of the Bible isn’t a fairy tale full of perfect people, but it also isn’t something
to be afraid of. For those who wish to
maintain both their faith and their intellect, the study of the history of how
the Bibles we have today came to exist is both enlightening and enriching. Don’t let the skeptics or the fanatics scare
you away, the truth is not our enemy.
* On a personal note. This observation of the connection between these two groups occurred to me as I lay in bed, rather than hoping I remembered it the next day, I got up to post it to my blog. I assumed that somebody else had noticed this before be, and of course they had. Two days later I was watching a debate between Dr. Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace, during which Wallace drew the comparison between skeptics like Bart and KJV Only advocates. Thus my "original" observation lasted only two days before I found out it had already been made by a NT expert, oh well.
* On a personal note. This observation of the connection between these two groups occurred to me as I lay in bed, rather than hoping I remembered it the next day, I got up to post it to my blog. I assumed that somebody else had noticed this before be, and of course they had. Two days later I was watching a debate between Dr. Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace, during which Wallace drew the comparison between skeptics like Bart and KJV Only advocates. Thus my "original" observation lasted only two days before I found out it had already been made by a NT expert, oh well.
No comments:
Post a Comment