This is the one hundred and ninety-fourth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video clip of Jack Hyles, pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, saying that true salvation can only come through the King James Bible.
KJV onlyism interested me as a teacher specialising in helping 5-7yos who had failed to start reading to crack this vital skill. I read that the KJV has a reading age of 11yo, but the R/A of the average brit is 8yo. There’s an IFB KJVO church in my village, and knowing they get a few kids for their club, think that getting kids to memorise KJV verses is like getting them to read Shakespearean english when they haven’t cracked ‘The cat sat on the mat.’ yet. A prominent anglican said recently the language of the Liturgy is above the reading comprehension level of 43% of brits. I guess the standard fundy answer is the delusional ‘Ah, but the holy spirit interprets The Word to readers!’
Thank you for your comment. Actually the language of the day was not as the KJV was written. It was done so for some specific reasons. For one the use of pronouns can easily confuse the reader and case of singular and plural pronouns even more so. You are so right that the use of the Holy Spirit is so important in the understanding and learning of the KJV and of course the knowledge that the KJV is the only widely commercially available Bible that is a Word for Word translation from the original Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek texts from the “majority texts” (that’s the text that include 5,366 codex from the early writings (although some New Agers will say that the text is from the 10th century, but have no proof thusly. All the rest of the bibles are either “thought for thought” or “dynamic equivalent” or “paraphrase” which means these translated words are not God’s Word’s translated at all, but merely man’s interpretation of what some man thought the text says and then written into what “they” believe the result to be. Hmmmmm who might we think would do such a thing and then resultantly confuse the reader? Of course. It’s better to work at learning English, translation, and understand the Truth than to have someone feed me an error. We work at learning literary works, why would we not want to do the same with God’s Word, when God says in double digit places that this is what He wants us to do. :-). Dr. D.
Ah, yes, King James Onlyism at its best.
Is every English word in the 1769 revision translated word-for-word?
Other translations are just that —- “translations.” You seem to imply that non-KJV translations just make it up as they go; just interpretations, not translations.
Even the very best translation is only as good as its source material. We have no idea as to the integrity of that material as we only have access to copies of the original texts, with little way of knowing to what extent they may have been altered in copying, whether intentionally or otherwise. Even then there’s the issue that the earliest gospel, Mark, is written decades (there is uncertainty as to just how many) after the events they purportedly describe, by an anonymous author, writing in different language to Jesus and his followers, and almost certainly without access to eyewitnesses.
So I’m afraid KJV or not, you’re going to have a tough time convincing people not indoctrinated in Christianity that there’s actually much in the way of plausible texts.
So how did one get um saved before the KJV of the Bible existed?
Exactly. I was asking this very question back back in my Evangelical days. I only used the KJV, but I knew that this belief was nonsense.
This also begs the question what if you don’t speak English?
Heck if 1600s English was so important why did God have Jesus be born in the first century in ancient Israel instead of 17th Century England?
It doesn’t matter which translation of the bible one uses. If people would read it with an open mind, they would see how barbaric the god of the bible is. We need to reject Fundamentalist views of salvation because they are based on the bible supposedly being the verbally inspired and inerrant Word of God. Once people actually read the bible without Fundamentalist biases, they will reject Fundamentalist views of the bible and hence what they previously thought was God’s view of salvation.
Therein begins a journey from Fundamentalism (Evangelicalism) to progressive Christianity to Christian Liberalism (or to other religions), then to agnosticism or to atheism. Once a Fundamentalist view of the bible is seen to be absurd, then there is a journey away from the Fundamentalist understanding of the book and its views of salvation.
Have a wonderful day, Bruce!
I’m a Christian and have in the past been angry at God because He didn’t do things the way I think He should . But that doesn’t mean He isn’t God . Just like sometimes I’ve been angry at gravity because it doesn’t always do things like I think it should , like when I drop something heavy on my foot . But that doesn’t mean that gravity isn’t real or that it doesn’t affect my life .
Even though we cannot see gravity, we can see the effects of it. Every time. Without fail. Even in those “oh, shit!” moments when we wish it would fail, it doesn’t. It is absolutely consistent, always. In a way, it’s similar to air – we can’t see it, but we know it is there because of its concrete, measurable effects. Every time, without fail. Both work the same way for everyone, every time. The same cannot be said about gods, who supposedly works in “mysterious ways,” but not the same way for everyone, every time. In fact, it is hard – indeed, impossible – for many of us to even see that any god does anything. Funny, I’ve never been angry at a god – not a Hindu god, not a Christian god, not a Muslim god, not any god. Nor have I been angry at Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, leprechauns, or any other mythical beings. What would be the point? They don’t exist.
It’s funny how many of these homophobes don’t know that James I of England was gay or bisexual. He had various male favorites, and he called George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, his “sweet wife.”
Thank God for raising up King James to commission this Bible! To think that for 1600 years everyone went to hell for lack of the KJV. It breaks the heart.