My Position
The Bible in its entirety is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God (Psalm 119:169; John 17:17; 2 Timothy 3:16); about this there can be no disagreement among Bible-believing Christians. Furthermore, it is my conviction that the text of the Bible has been divinely preserved in the Masoretic Hebrew (and Aramaic) text of the Old Testament and the Traditional (Byzantine) Greek text of the New Testament (Psalm 12:6-7; 119:89; Matthew 24:35; 1 Peter 1:24-25); I understand that this sets me at odds with the mainstream of contemporary Christian scholarship.
I personally use the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible in English. I do so because I believe it is an outstanding translation based on the best Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek readings. That being said, I am not “KJV Only” in the current sense of that appellation. I do not believe the KJV is a perfect translation, nor do I believe it holds any priority over the Hebrew/Aramaic text of the Old Testament or the Greek text of the New Testament. I certainly do not advocate that Bible-believing Christians separate from believers who use Bible versions other than the KJV.
Nevertheless, after many years of personal study, I hold the conviction that the issue of the correct Biblical text (in the original languages) is not a trivial or peripheral matter; since it involves the very words of God, it is a matter of utmost importance! Furthermore, many (if not most) of the presuppositions of modern textual criticism are unbiblical. By this I mean the foundational presupposition, from which modern critics reason their way to a conclusion about which reading among multiple variants is most likely to be authentic, is in conflict with the testimony of God in His Word. This foundational presupposition of modern textual criticism is one of godless naturalism applied to the transmission of the text of Scripture.
For example, Fenton John Anthony Hort, the father of the modern theory, asserted that “there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes”. This assertion flies in the face of the testimony of Scripture itself, for the Apostle Paul asserted that “many . . . corrupt the word of God” (2 Corinthians 2:17). If “many” were corrupting the text of the New Testament in the 1st century, the presupposition that manuscripts allegedly dated to the 4th century (e.g., Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) contain readings that are closer to the original autographs solely because of their supposed antiquity is undercut.
(This page is under construction…)
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