Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 402 | Is KJV the Only Way?

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

Were you or was someone you know raised to believe that the King James Version of the Bible is the only "correct" version? People have many different reasons for believing this about the KJV, and today we'll delve into the history and theology of the matter to see if there's any truth to the KJV-only way of thinking. --- Today's Sponsor: Annie's Kit Clubs have the perfect subscription box for both boys, and girls. Kids develop actual skills, mastering real-world building, or new crafting techniques while expressing their creativity. Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE & save 75% off your first shipment! --- Show Links: Evidence Unseen: "The King James Version Only?" https://bit.ly/3slg5Sh The Gospel Coalition: "The King James Only Controversy" https://bit.ly/3anALD1 Got Questions: "What is the KJV Only Movement?" https://bit.ly/3wNmBEB --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Hope everyone's having a wonderful day, a wonderful week so far. Today we are going to discuss KJV-onlyism. Now, maybe you don't know what the heck I'm talking about. Maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe you were raised in this world. Maybe you are a believer in KJV-onlyism right now. Maybe you know it. Maybe you don't. but I've gotten a lot of questions about this subject. When I posted about it very briefly on Instagram a while ago, I got a ton of you asking me, can you please do an episode on this? So I am.

And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I still think this is going to be beneficial for you because you may run into people who believe this. And you should know kind of what they're talking about and you should be able to rebut it. And that's what we're going to do today. But I do want to give a fair assessment of what it is. and I want to give, I want to fairly lay out some of the arguments and also talk about the fact that there's a spectrum of KJV onlyism. I can't put everyone into the most extreme camp. But basically, KJV onlyism is the belief that the KJV, the King James Version, is the only correct translation of the Bible.

It's the only trustworthy translation. All the other translations have been watered down in order to gain cultural relevance, but the KJV is the only inspired translation. The argument goes that everyone should be reading. I have run in to many people who believe this, whether it's on Instagram or whatever. This has been a long debate, by the way. This is not like a new thing that's cropping up. This is something that has been argued, has been defended by certain people within Christianity, in particular evangelicalism for a long time. And there are just new generations of people that latch on to it, it seems. If you don't know, like I said, KJV stands for King James Version. It may also be referred to as AV or authorized version. It's most commonly

thought of as the old English translation of the Bible. So if you've got like an old family Bible, typically it's in this King James version. So let me read you a verse from the KJV so you know what I'm talking about if you don't already. So Galatians, 3-1, that's just a random verse that I decided to pick, O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ have been evidently set forth crucified among you? I feel like I have to say it with flourish in an English accent.

Now, if you're listening to this, say you're not a Christian, or you're a new Christian who was not raised in the church or you were raised in a particular denomination, maybe more like a fundamentalist Baptist Church who uses this translation, you might think that this is the only translation that exists. Like it might be news to you that not every biblical translation has these kinds of words and this kind of language in it. Maybe you think this is just how the Bible sounds. But there are many other translations too. There are more modern translations. So there's a version called the New King James Version, the NKJV, which is

similar, but more modern. So that would read like this in Galatians 3-1, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified. So still kind of wordy or wordier than we're used to, but there's no haths or yees or shawls or things like that. And then you've got an even more, I would say readable colloquial translation, which is the ESV. This is the version that I prefer, the English standard version. Oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

So even less wordy, easier to read, easier to understand, like I said, more colloquial. And then there's another popular translation called the NIV or the new international version. You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before your very eyes, Jesus Christ, was clearly portrayed as crucified. So even less wordy, a little different word used from publicly to clearly. We're going to talk about at the end of this, the difference in translations, why I prefer the ESV, why I recommend certain translations over others. And so we'll talk a little bit more about the differentiations between those versions at the end of this episode. but in going back to this KJV only as a belief system, the KJV is the old English translation that was commissioned by King James the first and was published in 1611.

There are people who read it for a few reasons, who don't necessarily fall into this category of thinking that KJV is the only inspired version. So you might read KJV just because you genuinely like it, like you think this version is the best version. It's what you're used to. You appreciate it style. Or you could fall into the second category, or I guess you could fall into both. You believe it to be superior to other translations not just because you like it, but because of the scholarship that's associated with it, with its translation. Or you could be in this third category, which is what we're focusing on today, which I would say is the most extreme category, that you believe that it is the only truly

inspired text, English text, and that all other translations are unreliable, they're uninspired, and even sinful. And it's this third category that is most commonly referred to as King James Onlyism. And again, if you haven't heard of this, you might be thinking, there's no one who believes that, yes, there are. I guarantee you there are people who are listening to or watching this podcast episode who believe that and are going to be very upset about this episode. because if you talk to a lot of people who fall into that third category, it is a belief system in itself. It's almost like another part of, it's almost like another religion. Trevin Wax wrote about this issue for the gospel coalition back in 2007 and you're thinking,

wow, there's a long time ago. People have been writing about this since at least the 1970s, if not before that. Theologian James White has done, I think, at least recently some of the most extensive research on this issue. So we'll be drawing from them. We'll be drawing from D.A. Carson, who has been right, who wrote about this a long time ago and has been in this, working in this realm for a long time. So we'll be drawing a lot of insight from what they have already written. The reason that third camp that we talked about believes that KJV is the only translation that is truly inspired is because of a few reasons. that they typically state.

And again, this is from the work of some of the teachers that I just mentioned a few minutes ago. Number one, the text from which KJV was translated versus the text from which other translations were translated, which they claim is more authoritative. So they claim that the text that the KJV originally used to translate into English were better. They're more authoritative because they're more,

accurate. They're more reflective of the original text. The second reason they typically give is that other translations water down Jesus' divinity in other parts of the gospel. They even change the meaning of the gospel by leaving out important words and phrases and mistranslating verses in a way that misses or manipulates their original intent. You'll often see them use like a side-by-side comparison of the KJV versus another translation to try to say that, look, every translation besides the KJV is leaving important stuff out and your understanding of the gospel and if scripture is going to be lacking unless you're using the KJV. And then they also talk about the third reason they give for being a KJV-onlyest is the

untrustworthiness of the linguistic scholars who have translated the other versions as opposed to the linguistic scholars who translated the KJV whom they see is more reliable. So true KJV-onlyers believe that the Greek texts from which the creators of the KJV translated were and are not only the most reliable, but also the only inspired texts. These texts are commonly referred to as the Textist Receptus, which was a 15-16 compilation of the Greek New Testament completed by Erasmus using what's called the Byzantine text. So KJ, the only proponents, believe these texts are more reliable than the text used by other translators, which are most commonly referred to as the Alexandrian texts. They say, again, that other texts are corrupted, other translations just don't get it right.

They're not inspired. They will point to different verses, like I said, that seem to show the serious discrepancies in different translations that water down the meaning of the message. But the problem with these arguments is manifold. The Byzantine text on which the textist receptus, Erasmus' compilation of the New Testament in Greek, is based on which the KJV translation is based, are not actually the oldest manuscripts, and they're not as close to the original manuscripts

as the Alexandrian text, for example. So scholars have argued since the late 19th century that translations should actually draw not just from the Byzantine texts and not just from the Alexandrian text that we have, which are commonly accepted by scholars as the oldest texts and the closest to the original, those Alexandrian texts, but also from the Western and the Cessarian texts. James White says that these are four categories of ancient texts, and they should be thought of as textual families, which he says are groups of text that all seem to come

from the same source or scribal group. So KJV only believers argue that we should only rely on the Byzantine texts, but according to D.A. Carson, all of the Byzantine texts, none of them were any older than the 12th century, whereas the Alexandrian text traced back earlier than that. So KJV only believers argue that we should only rely on the Byzantine text, but according to D.A. Carson, these Byzantine texts were only as old as about. the 12th century, whereas, as we've already stated, that Alexandrian text actually traced back earlier. James White says this. Cambridge scholars, Brooke Foss, Westcott, and Fenton John

Anthony Hort argued that we should use alternate manuscripts from the 4th and 5th century. Westcott and Hort based this view on two primary arguments that are still used today by textual critics. First, the church fathers never quote the Byzantine before AD 325, Carson writes that church fathers before the fourth century unambiguously cited every text type except the Byzantine. He adds, there is no unambiguous evidence that the Byzantine text type was known before the middle of the fourth century. Likewise, white writes, the fathers who wrote during the early centuries give no evidence in their citations of a familiarity with the Byzantine text type. Therefore, this textual family is later than the other families. Second, the

Byzantine text harmonizes verses from the Alexandrian and Western text. Fee argues that the Alexandrian text is earliest because it contains readings that are terse, somewhat rough, less harmonized, and generally more difficult than those of the other text types, though on closer study, they regularly commend themselves as original. He adds, the Byzantine text contains some 38 major harmonizations as compared with one harmonization in the Alexandrian text. Scribes rarely make the text more difficult to read. Instead, they typically smooth out difficult readings. Therefore, this group is most likely earlier than any other. So this is actually, part of this is a paraphrasing of what James White has written. This is from someone else

who is drawing from James White's work. So that observation alone means that the textist receptus based on these Byzantine documents on which the KJV is based cannot be seen as the singularly singularly most reliable translation or arguably even the most reliable translation. It doesn't mean it's not a good translation at all, but these facts dispute the claim that it's inspired perfectly by God or that it's superior to all other translations. Some people even think that God inspired Erasmus in that interpretation or in his translation. and we just don't see evidence of that. Plus, James White also points to

other reasons that we should question this claim of KJV being the exclusively correct, only trustworthy translation. Number one, Erasmus himself didn't believe the textus receptus was inerrant. Erasmus was quoted saying this, you must distinguish between scripture, the translation of scripture, and the transmission of both. what will you do with the errors of the coppius? And so he understood that he was a fallible human being. Christians believe the only inerrant word of God is the original text. However, because we believe in God's sovereignty, and as we look at the preservation of manuscripts

over time and we study the process of how the Bible has been translated from the original text, we have very good reason to believe that we have a Bible that has been translated extremely reliably. The truth is that textual variants in the New Testament are extremely minor, representing only 1% of the text. There is a biblical critic, Bart Ehrman, who writes this. To be sure, of all the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, and of no real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us. Christian textual critics Daryl Bach and Daniel Wallace write,

we noted the kinds of errors that are to be found in the copies. The vast majority of them are quite inconsequential and less than 1% of all textual variance both affect the meaning of that verse, though none affects core doctrine and have some plausibility of authenticity. Also, there's another contention that is used to push back upon KJV-onlyers. The original KJV Bibles had 6,637 notes in the margins explaining a more literal translation of the original Greek and Hebrew that couldn't be readily observed and their translation, which at the time was pretty common English. It was colloquial.

So that means that the original KJV translators did exactly what. more modern translators have done. They looked at the most reliable documents they had at the time and translated them in a way that would make the most sense and be the most applicable and accessible to their readers. Obviously, they were very careful. They cared about accuracy. With that many footnotes, it's obvious that they valued accuracy, but they also valued style. They valued accessibility. They valued making the Bible digestible to the reader. In the same way, later translators translated the Bible in a way that makes sense with how language has evolved so that people could continue to access the Bible. I actually had someone say to me in my

Instagram DMs that if someone can't understand the KJV, it's maybe because God didn't mean for them to understand and read it. So hang on. Like if you have that mentality, are you honestly saying that only people who know English should be reading the Bible that we can't translate it into other languages or else it's corrupted? And if that's your argument, why wouldn't you use the same arguments to say that maybe God never meant for people who didn't understand the original Greek in Hebrew to read the Bible? That maybe he never met for English people to read the Bible. Why is it only the King James version that's the only translation? That's the only translation. That's the only translation someone must be able to read and understand to be considered chosen by God.

That is silly, superstitious nonsense that has no grounding in logic or truth. And so you can kind of see, again, how this kind of cultish mentality actually affects people's faith in theology. So the KJV was translated into an English that people living in the 17th century could understand. And there was never any expressed intent, by the way, by these translators to say that this translation is the only translation that people can use forever and ever, especially since they knew as finite people, they could be prone to error. Erasmus's text may be imperfect, as Erasmus himself said, and that they could only do the best that they could. Another reason the KJV exclusivity argument doesn't hold up is that not all KJV Bibles are created equal.

They differ from one another. James White writes this in his book on the subject. Most people are not aware of the substantial use of textual notes and alternate readings in the original 1611 KJV. Most modern editions do not contain these items. Finally, we will note that not all King James Bibles today have the same text. That is, printed editions of the KJV differ from one another, presenting additional difficulties for the most radical proponents of a human translation's infallibility. He adds, the KJV carried by the average KJV only advocate today looks very

different than the addition that came off Robert Barker's press in 1611. So if that's the case, if you believe that the KJV is the only inspired text or the only inspired translation, in English translation, then is yours that you're carrying around today? The KJV Bible that you have that I'm sure wasn't printed and published in 1611, like, is that just as inspired? Is that just as incorruptible, incorruptible as the version that came out in 1611, if it differs? Like, who decides which version, the version of KJV today or the version of KJV in the 17th century

that is truly the most reliable text. And so you can kind of see the logical problems with that assertion. Another reason why this doesn't hold up is that thousands of ancient Greek text of scripture have been discovered since the KJV was translated and published in 1611, including in the Byzantine textual family on which the textus receptus is based. In fact, D.A. Carson says this. To keep a correct perspective, it is important to know that the TR, textus receptives, is not exactly the same as the Byzantine tradition.

The Byzantine text type is found in several thousand witnesses, while the Texas receptus did not refer to one hundredth of that evidence. So KJV-onlyers are simultaneously saying that the Texas receptus from Erasmus is the only reliable, you know, reliable translation on which we should be translating the Bible into English or the New Testament. into English, and also we have to rely on these Byzantine texts, but there are actually discrepancies between this text is receptus and the Byzantine texts. Another point to make is that the message is more important than the translation. The message is more important than the translation.

Now, I know some people are going to freak out about that, and I'll, you know, I'll get into more of that when we talk about translations at the end. But what I mean is not that the accuracy of the translation is not important because it is. But there should be a scholarly balance that strives for as accurate a rendering as possible of the original text with the clarity demanded by modern language and modern understanding. That doesn't mean that we change the meaning of the text

or we leave out passages or we take out that which culture finds unpopular or inconvenient. It just means translating it in a way that can be understood by people today. Now, what about the arguments that say that modern translations remove the deity of Christ from the Bible or the disputed text in which modern translations seem to leave out important words? And when I say modern translations, I'm talking about within the past, like, 130 years thereabouts. I'm not talking about like in the past few years, just newer than the KJV. So there are a number of verses in which the KJV includes the word Lord before Jesus Christ, where other translations don't.

So KJV onlyists will say, oh, other translations are trying to take out the deity of Christ. But here's the point to that. Here's what I would say to that. It should be noted that there are places where the KJV does not mention Jesus' deity and other translations do, or they make it not as clear. So if you look at John 118, the KJV says this, No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the father, he hath declared him. The NASB, the New American Standard Bible, which was translated, I think, at the beginning of the 20th century, right around the turn of the century.

No one has seen God at any time, the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the father, he has explained him. So KJV says son, NASB says God. Titus 213, the KJV says, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Well, the ESV, the English Standard version, says this in Titus 213, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. So whereas the KJV seems to differentiate between our God and our Savior, ESV doesn't.

It says God and Savior Jesus Christ, 2 Peter 1-1. KJV says, Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained, like, precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ. So there again, we see that differentiation, which a translation, for example, like the new international version in IV, does not make,

to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, have received a faith as precious as ours. So these are just three examples. The truth is, each of these translations, especially the ESV and the NASB, are simply trying to translate the Bible as accurately and as clearly as possible from the original text. There is not some conspiracy to take away the deity of Christ in these translations, or to minimize the work of the blood of Christ, or to erase the Trinity. Those are other claims that are made by KJV-onlyists. The reasons for discrepancies and translations between the ESV, for example, and the KJV and many verses, is because the ESV translators relied on texts that were from other text families and the Byzantine

texts, many of which are actually older and are much more closer to the original. So God has worked through a variety of translations. There were scriptures before the KJV. People didn't only hear the gospel or read the Bible for the first time after the publication of the KJV Bibles in 1611. Now, can we absolutely credit the KJV Bible with granting accessibility that wasn't there before for translating the Bible in a way that was understandable for the people at the time? Yes, I think so, 100%. I think the KJV, from what I've read, has good scholarship and is a good translation to use, but there's no evidence that it's the only translation to use.

And as I said, I personally like the ESV better. I like it better than the KJV. I like it better than the NIV. And this is where we'll talk about the different translations. For those of, a lot of you have also asked me about this. Can you explain the different translations? And we could spend hours and hours talking about this. And I'm not a textual scholar, but from what I've read and what I understand,

there are a variety of translation methods. And some are, in my opinion, better than others. The ESV is a word-for-word translation that tries to capture the rhythms, the idioms of modern language. It's much more readable and colloquial, in my opinion, than both the NKJV, the new King James version and the NASB, the New American Standard Bible. But it's more literal than the NIV, the new international version. So the KJV, the NKJV, and the NASB all have the same translation method. as the ESV. So that method is accuracy while trying to meet the demands of modern language. But they're all created by different people at different times with different scholarship.

Sometimes like in the example of the KJV drawing from different but very similar texts. And so there's going to be a bit of wording discrepancy. but not a significant enough difference to actually change the meaning of the text. That's why it can be good to have or to at least look at multiple versions of a text at once. If one version is more confusing or too wordy in that particular verse, you can look at how another version words it. I do that a lot on Biblegateway.com. It's really helpful. You don't have to have one kind of every Bible. Bible gateway is a really great way to compare and contrast. And actually, I think Biblehub.com actually shows the different translations

of the verse, like all stacked on top of each other so you could just see it that way. The truth is, God has been extremely good and extremely gracious and so incredibly sovereign over the translation process so that as many people as possible can read and know and understand and believe. Now, I do believe there are better. translations than others. Not all translations are of the same reliability because they don't use the same methodology. For example, I don't recommend the NIV as your go-to translation. It is known as a thought-for-thought translation. So its goal is readability, and sometimes it is at the expense of accuracy. Now, this is a problem more so with the 2011 NIV than the 1984 NIV. If you've got one of

those adventure bibles that a lot of us had growing up, that mine is just like soaked in pink and green highlighter because it was from when I was like eight years old, we had the 1984 NIV, which is actually no longer in print. And one of the strange and controversial things about the new 2011 NIV translation is that they opted for gender neutral terminology, even in places where the original text specifically intend one gender. So, This calls into question the objectives of the translators. Were they really going for accuracy or were they going for cultural sensitivity? I am always going to opt for the translation that prioritizes the former over the latter.

That doesn't mean, however, that it can't be useful at all, that the NIV can't be useful. Like I said, it's an extremely readable version, which is why it is so often used, especially for younger kids. There are times, if I'm talking to a new Christian or if I'm talking to a new Christian or if I'm talking to a non-Christian and I want to reference a verse that I will use the NIV instead of the ESV because the ESV can be a little bit more wordy than the NIV. But if I'm actually going to recommend a Bible, I'm personally going to recommend the ESV. I really like the ESV study Bible specifically. You can just type in wherever you get your books, ESV study Bible. It's this huge, this just huge book, huge Bible full of references and notes and all of that has so many

great resources, so many great answers to your questions. Now, we also understand, though, that commentaries that study Bibles and the commentaries and study Bibles are not infallible, they're not inerrant, they're made by people, and it is their opinion in a way. And so everything that you read in a study Bible, you still have to compare to scripture and you still have to carefully study the context of each verse before you just accept, human commentary is something that is absolutely authoritative. However, they can answer historical questions for you. They can help you understand the text better.

They can help with cross-referencing. And so I do highly recommend a study Bible. I think the ESV study Bible is very reliable. The John McArthur Study Bible is also reliable. Now, what's interesting is that you can see the particular, I don't want to say bias, but the particular view of something like eschatology, the in times come out. in particular commentaries, John McArthur versus the ESV.

So again, that's just something that you have to be aware of, that you're going to see those kinds of human perspectives come through, just in the commentary, not actually in the text of the Bibles, but just in their comments and their references and their answers to questions in those kind of study Bibles. But still, I think super helpful to have biblical scholars offer their insight in verses to help us better understand. And then say you're reading,

in the ESV, and you are like, okay, I need to like better understand this first, got the commentary and all that, but I need to, like, I need another, I need another way to think about this. You could go to the NIV. You could even, you could even, now I know this is going to be controversial, you could even go to something like the message. Now, I do not recommend the message as you're so called translation of choice. And here is why I say so-called translation. Because the message is not a translation. It is really a paraphrasing of the translated text and taking many liberties with phrasing, interpretation, emphasis, et cetera. In fact, the guy who created it, Eugene Peterson did so because he said he felt his congregations just couldn't relate to the Bible. The publishing company who

published it, said that the other biblical translations were, quote, losing their impact. Well, that's not only not a true statement. That's not even a, that's not a good statement, because it's saying that the message, that version of the Bible, which is not anywhere close to the original inspired text, and adds much of its own flair and its interpretation onto the text, is actually more relevant than God's infallible word, which God promises will not return void. It's the same problem with the passion translation. First, again, it's not a translation. It's a compilation by one person, Brian Simmons, who strives to communicate his desired meaning

of the text by paraphrasing the Bible to fit his meaning and his intentions. However, like I said, could you use the message or maybe even possibly the passion translation side by side, an actual translation like the ESV or NASB, just to, to see if it gets your mental wheels turning and helps you understand the passage? I think so, yes. I think that you can do that. Those should not be the texts and the versions that you rely on. But they could help you think maybe about synonyms of a word that's used or a restructuring

of the syntax in a way that is more clear to you. But do not rely on those versions for your understanding of the Bible because there's just there are too many liberties taken with them. I also like my key words study Bible by AMG publishers. It underlines keywords and verses in Telzeum. Their original Greek or Hebrew. So what they mean and where else they're used in scripture, that's super helpful in understanding the verses I think. Something I used to do, but I don't do as much anymore, but I do still recommend if you are reading your Bible and say you are going through a book, but you want to slow down. Like I know there are times that we, you know, we imbibe a ton of text every day. You're trying to get through the Bible

in a year, which I think is great. But say that you really just want to slow down, which is honestly what I prefer to do and chew on the text and go through one or two verses a day. You could, this is something I've done, write out a keyword and then next to the keyword in a verse come up with synonyms or come up with an explanation for that word. So I'll give you an example. if we use Hebrews 111 in the ESV. Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. So if I wanted to break that down

and think about it in a different way, I could write down the word faith and then I could write next to it. Okay, different ways to think about faith or that word, trust, belief, holding onto something without being able to see it clearly, holding fast, moving forward, without knowing definitively what's right in front of you.

These are all descriptors for faith. I could write down the word assurance. okay, I know that means confidence, trust, surety, guarantee, down payment, even, promise. And then I could just take some time to think about that. Like, I really like down payment. The Holy Spirit is also talked about as the down payment of our inheritance. There's all kinds of cross-referencing you could do when you break this down. And then I could write down hoped for, wanted, desired, longed for,

looked toward a reaching out for something that you want to be there. So sometimes I create like a misreferral, picture of what a phrase like hoped for could mean or look like. And then you've got conviction, confident knowledge, unwavering belief to know and believe beyond a shadow of a doubt. And then that phrase not seen. So yet intangible, something that you trust is there, but have not laid eyes on. So if you look at this kind of expounded and maybe amplified version or rendering of this verse, you would understand it to mean something like faith is the confidence in that which is longed for and the unwavering belief in that which we trust is in front of us but haven't yet seen with our eyes.

Now, maybe that's helpful to you. Maybe it's not. It'll be more helpful when it comes from your own brain. And that's not trying to reinterpret scripture or add to scripture or to superimpose our opinion on scripture. That's just our subjective way to break down a verse in a way that lands. we didn't add to the interpretation or meaning to the text or make it more culturally relevant. We're not trying to de-contextualize it.

We're not trying to make it mean something that it doesn't. We have just expounded upon it in a way that we're not claiming is infallible, expounded upon what's already there, not for the purpose of retranslation or even improvement, but simply to deepen our understanding and challenge our thinking about what this verse means. So all of this to say, God has so beautifully allowed for the scholarship of the translation of many versions of the Bible. Some, like I said, because of methodology and because of purpose, are better than others. But KJV is not the only way.

Really be careful with that. You may like the KJV, and that's great. But since there is no real substantive evidence of its exclusivity and supremacy, please don't use it as a bludgeon to make people feel bad. or to make people feel that God is only reachable through ye and thou and hath. I mean, it's just not true. It's just not true. Read your Bible.

Get an ESV study Bible. Get you a good, reliable study Bible. Pray for wisdom, which God promises to give believers who ask without reproach in James 1.5. And, hey, if you need another translation to look at that verse side by side, because reproach is kind of a weird word. The NIV says without finding fault, which I think in this case is a fair alternative.

So see, it can be so fun to look at different versions of the Bible to add to our understanding. All right, that's all I've got for today. I will see you guys back here soon.