They belittle the KJV and yet claim to respect it?

One complaint by the modern Bible versions defenders that is particularly hard to take is that the KJV is an inferior translation, and that its translators were inferior scholars. Even without knowing much about the actual historical facts, don't you have to ask how, if it were such an inferior production, it could have been regarded as the pinnacle of the English Bible translations and admired as a great work of literature as well for over two hundred and fifty years? Don't you also have to ask how on earth those who defend the modern versions nevertheless say that they respect the KJV and have nothing against anyone's depending on it? It's all the worse of course that this denigration of the translators is added to the assertion that they had inferior Greek manuscripts to work from. Is there anything at all left to respect of the KJV? Yet they say they do respect it.

There is something peculiarly painful -- I want to say wounding -- about this position. Even without being KJV-only I would think a person with the most rudimentary knowledge of the history of the English Bible would feel the hurtfulness, the injustice of such a position. It denigrates not only the KJV translators and the tradition of Greek texts they depended on, it dismisses the whole sequence of English translators that led up to the KJV (since their work was the foundation the KJV built on), it implies that Christians for centuries prior to the KJV had no trustworthy Bible to depend on, and in fact that Christians of all nations for over a millennium were deprived of the most trustworthy Greek texts, and worst of all it implies that God didn't get around to preserving His word as He had promised to do, until Westcott and Hort.

Here's a page from David Cloud's site where the contention that the KJV translators were inferior is addressed.

Westcott and Hort's (alleged) false and heretical beliefs.

Quotes that demonstrate the false beliefs of the fathers of the modern Bible versions abound in the KJV-only literature, but they are contested by the versions defenders as being taken out of context, and sometimes contested as out and out lies.

Thomas Holland gives a typical list of quotations:

From Crowned With Glory by Dr. Thomas Holland:

[Page 38]. . . should we not know something of the beliefs of Westcott and Hort [the fathers of modern textual criticism]?

• Westcott denied biblical infallibility. 76

• Hort stated that those who believed in biblical authority were perverted. 77

• Hort taught that Revelation 3:15 proclaimed Christ was the first thing created, agreeing with the Gnostic teaching that Christ was a begotten god. 78

• Westcott denied that Saint John ever claimed Christ to be God. 79

• Hort stated that the ransom for our sin was paid to Satan. 80

• Both men denied the doctrine of eternal damnation, stating hell is not a place of punishment. 81
  

Notes:

76. Arthur Westcott, The Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1903), 207.

77. Hort, 400.

78. F. J. A. Hort, The Apocalypse of St. John 1-3: The Greek Text with Introduction, Commentary, and Additional Notes (1908; reprint, Minneapolis: James and Klock Publishing, 1976), 36.

79. B. F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John: The Authorized Version with Introduction and Notes (1881; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 297.

80. F. J. A. Hort, The First Epistle of St. Peter 1:1-2:17: The Greek Text with Introductory Lecture, Commentary, and Additional notes (1898; reprint, Minneapolis: James and Klock Publishing, 1976), 77.

81. B. F. Westcott, The Historic Faith (London: Macmillan, 1885), 77-78. Hort, Life and Letters, 149.

Here is a site calling these quotations false, saying the quotes have been taken out of context among other things. http://www.westcotthort.com/quotes.html

He discusses the claim that Westcott denied biblical infallibility here: http://www.westcotthort.com/quotes_scripture.html This page of complete quotes and commentary does seem to show that Westcott has been misread by the KJV-onlies, as he here affirms a belief in "the absolute truth" of scripture, and is objecting to the word "infallibility," which from other quotes given here he finds to be inadequate to describe the inspiration of scripture.

As for stating that evangelicals were "perverted," what Hort actually said was: "The positive doctrines even of the Evangelicals seem to me perverted rather than untrue," apparently not in reference to "biblical authority" and in fact without identifying which doctrines he had in mind (same page linked above.) This was said from the point of view of an Anglican.

On another page, http://www.westcotthort.com/quotes_son.html the accusation that Hort believed Christ to have been created is answered. Apparently he is merely discussing the ways the Greek can be read.

This site is still under construction and I have not found the site owner's answer to the charge that Westcott denied that John claimed Christ is God, or that Hort claimed that the ransom for sin was paid to Satan. Likewise the section on Heaven and Hell is not yet on board, so the charge that both men denied that hell is eternal punishment is not yet answered there. There is a forum page where the unfinished topics may be discussed, but I haven't explored it yet.

it seems best to be cautious and say that rather than lying, most likely many KJV-onlies simply misread W&H, probably having had some trouble with Westcott and Hort's ways of expressing themselves, their Anglican frame of reference and their intellectuality.

My own observation is that they write like intellectuals, not like believers. Where they affirm belief in any particular tenet of the faith, it seems to have been arrived at intellectually, not through faith. They simply do not sound like believers. They sound most of all like 19th century liberals, who could often sound orthodox while meaning something completely different by their words. But maybe I'm also judging them unfairly from outside the Anglican tradition, and based on very few quotes after all.

I do think that it would be best to drop all the accusations of the character and beliefs of Westcott and Hort for the sake of the argument against the Bible versions, because when the KJV-onlies get their quotes wrong they make the case all the harder to prove despite their many other good arguments. Dean J W Burgon and other critics of the work of Westcott and Hort in their own generation did not accuse them of wrong beliefs, they argued strictly against the work itself, always the best policy in any dispute.

Caveat: I've done only the most cursory checking of the facts involved here and consider this subject unfinished.

Addendum: I just have to add another link to David Cloud's site, because over and over he seems to me to be the most scholarly, careful and reasonable defender of the King James Only position. http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/fbns-index/versfbns.htm
(Disclaimer: I am not a Fundamental Baptist, I am a Calvinist, so I can't agree with everything Dr. Cloud writes.)

Both the KJV and the Modern Bible Versions cannot be God's pure word; logically, either one or the other has to be corrupt.

From Crowned With Glory, by Dr. Thomas Holland:

p. 14. One notable distinction deals with the number of verses contained in the Textus Receptus that are not contained in the Critical Text, and therefore do not appear in most modern versions based on that text.

[The Textus Receptus is the Greek text that underlies the King James Version; the Critical Text is another set of Greek manuscripts that underlie the modern Bible versions.]

This, of course, does not prove a certain translation correct and another incorrect. These verses are Matthew 17:21; 18:11; 23:14; Mark 7:16; 9:44, 46; 11:26; 15:28; Luke 17:36; 23:17; John 5:4; Acts 8:37; 15:34; 24:7; 28:29; Romans 16:24; and 1 John 5:7. Additionally, Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 are contained in the majority of Byzantine manuscripts and the Traditional Text. However, most Alexandrian manuscripts do not contain these verses, and therefore are so noted in the Critical Text.

[The Byzantine manuscripts make up the general class of Greek manuscripts the Textus Receptus is based on, that underlies the King James Bible, and the Traditional Text is another term for the Textus Receptus which is derived from the Byzantine group of manuscripts. The Alexandrian manuscripts are those the modern Bible versions are based on, and the Critical Text is the specific version of those manuscripts that is used for the translations.]

This leaves the Christian who believes the commands of Scripture in a dilemma. Three times the Bible warns against adding to or taking from the word of God (Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:6; and Revelation 22:18). Either the Greek texts that remove these passages are corrupt or the Greek texts that add them are corrupt; one cannot be biblical and believe that both textual lines are pure.

Hard to dispute that, it seems to me.

The modern Bible versions are judgment on the church

Dean John William Burgon, who wrote passionately against the Bible revision of 1881, is my hero these days. Reading his Revision Revised is balm -- because it is truth. I read a bit in it every day lately. A good man, a man writing for God's honor and the good of God's people. Naturally such a man will be slandered. Naturally the devil is going to target him. What's amazing is how well the attack has succeeded. The churches pay him no attention. If anyone has heard of him, what they've heard is some kind of slanderous hearsay, such as that he wrote a conspiracy theory. He wrote no conspiracy theory. He wrote a masterful denunciation of the work of Westcott and Hort.

This too must be God's judgment, that their work has survived and come to dominate the church over the entire world, while the work of Burgon is barely heard of and treated like trash.

Economic Judgment Against America continued

Hurricane Ike did to Galveston, Texas and other communities what at first it had looked like Gustav was going to do again to New Orleans. Not that Gustav didn't do its part in the onslaught of God's judgment against this nation that is only just beginning and that most are ignoring.

The economic fallout continues. Gas prices have mercifully dropped some recently, but food prices continue to rise and the housing crash continues. Now there's this $700 billion dollar bailout of bad mortgages.

If this isn't yet economic depression, depression must be very close.

UFOs

Was just listening to the weekend edition of the Albert Mohler radio show on local Christian radio, which is a collection of different shows he's aired over the week. Today's included segments on Ray Boltz's homosexuality, the Anglican church's apology to Charles Darwin, and prejudice against large families, each of which was a topic on his radio list this week.

There was also a brief discussion on UFOs which a caller raised toward the end. If you want to listen to that segment, all I know is it's probably on one of those shows on the list for this last week. He doesn't seem to have discussed it on his blog at least not recently. So this is the best I can do for a reference to his opinions on the subject.

As to the topic itself, I don't know whether to be surprised or not that Dr. Mohler considers it only in terms of how it is presented in the mass media, that is, as showing the possibility of other life forms in the universe. The caller who had raised the topic was referring to the same network show I had also seen a few nights ago covering many sightings of UFOs and some of the UFO abduction claims over the last few decades. I was pretty bored with it because it presented only the usual ideas about "extraterrestrials" and their supposed "advanced technology," and I turned it off before the end.

Years ago I came to the conclusion that UFOs are demonic apparitions of some sort, which I thought was a fairly common idea among Christians, but maybe it's not. In the early 90s someone lent me a book about UFOs by Jacques Vallee, a well known investigator of such phenomena, who had come to the conclusion that they had more in common with nonphysical phenomena:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Vallee

In the mid-1960s, like many other UFO researchers, Vallée initially attempted to validate the popular Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (or ETH). Leading UFO researcher Jerome Clark[4] argues that Vallée's first two UFO books were among the most scientifically sophisticated defenses of the ETH ever mounted.

However, by 1969, Vallée's conclusions had changed, and he publicly stated that the ETH was too narrow and ignored too much data. Vallée began exploring the commonalities between UFOs, cults, religious movements, angels, ghosts, cryptid sightings, and psychic phenomena. These links were first detailed in Vallee's third UFO book, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers.

As an alternative to the extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis, Vallée has suggested a multidimensional visitation hypothesis. This hypothesis represents an extension of the ETH where the alleged extraterrestrials could be potentially from anywhere. The entities could be multidimensional beyond space-time, and thus could coexist with humans, yet remain undetected.

Vallée's opposition to the popular ETH hypothesis was not well received by prominent U.S. ufologists, hence he was viewed as something of an outcast. Indeed, Vallée refers to himself as a "heretic among heretics".

Vallée's opposition to the ETH theory is summarised in his paper, "Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1990:

Scientific opinion has generally followed public opinion in the belief that unidentified flying objects either do not exist (the "natural phenomena hypothesis") or, if they do, must represent evidence of a visitation by some advanced race of space travellers (the extraterrestrial hypothesis or "ETH"). It is the view of the author that research on UFOs need not be restricted to these two alternatives. On the contrary, the accumulated data base exhibits several patterns tending to indicate that UFOs are real, represent a previously unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common concept of "space visitors." Five specific arguments articulated here contradict the ETH:

1. unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth;
2. the humanoid body structure of the alleged "aliens" is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel;
3. the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race;
4. the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and
5. the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives.

Although Vallee does not have a Biblical view of these things, his scientific approach identifies phenomena that fit very well with the interpretation that they are demonic in origin.

Most of the world apparently continues to believe the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (if they believe in UFOs at all of course).

There are now ministries that interpret UFOs as part of the great deception to come upon the earth in the very last days, to seduce humanity to follow the Antichrist.

David Cloud's review of James White's The King James Only Bible Controversy

David Cloud has written a great deal on the Bible versions controversies, but I linked this one in the post below because it says what I've figured has to be the case for most Christians these days, how the new versions are supported by partisan bias in the absence of any real exposure to the other side of the argument. This is an important point in Dr. Cloud's review of James White's The King James Only Bible Controversy. I decided it needs to be showcased here so I copied out a few passages I particularly appreciate (my emphases in bolding and purple): http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/examining01.htm

My first thought, as I looked through this book, was that this is a strange piece of writing. The world of Bible translation is becoming increasingly, bewilderingly perverse, yet James White aims his gun not at the Bible corrupters but at men who are attempting to defend God’s Word against the onslaught of end-times apostasy. Almost each passing year brings to light an English Bible version more corrupt than its predecessor. This is on the commercial side of Bible translations, yet the corruption is also evident in the field of professional missionary translation. The United Bible Societies, working hand in hand with the Roman Catholic Church, have almost completely given up on "formal equivalency" translation and have dedicated their vast resources to the production of paraphrase-type Bibles created with the presumptuous dynamic equivalency method of translation. The same is true for Wycliffe Bible Translators. White sounds no warning of these matters, though. His readers are given the impression that the onslaught of modernism in the field of Bible texts and translations is a matter of minor consequence compared to the great "error" of believing God has preserved His Word in the Received Text and in Received Text translations which have gone to the ends of the earth during the past five centuries of great missionary endeavor. . . .

Further, I did not read in White’s book long before I realized that it is misnamed. It should be titled The Ruckman-Riplinger Controversy, because White paints the entire movement in defense of the King James Bible with the brush of these two individuals.

White’s book appears, at first glance, to be an unemotional, objective, scholarly approach to the topic of Bible texts and versions. In reality, it is a slander upon defenders of the King James Bible and the Received Text underlying the KJV and other great Reformation Bibles. He implies throughout that every KJV defender is either a raving lunatic or an ignorant extremist. He ignores or passes over slightly, even flippantly, the great issues of the KJV defense, focusing, instead, upon indefensible representations.

The King James Only Controversy is straw man, smokescreen apologetics at its best. This is serious, because many men who read White’s book will become severely biased against "King James Onlyism" and, as a consequence, will never make the effort to read for themselves the many important materials written in defense of the Received Text and the KJV. It reminds us of a statement made by Dr. Alfred Martin, former vice president of Moody Bible Institute, in his doctoral thesis at Dallas Theological Seminary in 1951:

"In spite of the notable work of Burgon, Hoskier, and others who supported them, the opponents of the Westcott-Hort theory have never had the hearing which they deserve. How many present-day students of the Greek New Testament ever heard of the two men just mentioned, and how many ever saw a copy of The Revision Revised or Codex B and Its Allies, to say nothing of actually reading these works? ... THE PRESENT GENERATION OF BIBLE STUDENTS, HAVING BEEN REARED ON WESTCOTT AND HORT, HAVE FOR THE MOST PART ACCEPTED THE THEORY WITHOUT INDEPENDENT OR CRITICAL EXAMINATION. To the average student of the Greek New Testament today it is unthinkable to question the theory at least in its basic premises. Even to imply that one believes the Textus Receptus to be nearer the original text than the Westcott-Hort text is, lays one open to the suspicion of gross ignorance or unmitigated bigotry. That is why this controversy needs to be aired again among Bible-believing Christians. There is little hope of convincing those who are unbelieving textual critics, but IF BELIEVING BIBLE STUDENTS HAD THE EVIDENCE OF BOTH SIDES PUT BEFORE THEM, INSTEAD OF ONE SIDE ONLY, THERE WOULD NOT BE SO MUCH BLIND FOLLOWING OF WESTCOTT AND HORT" (Alfred Martin, A Critical Examination of the Westcott-Hort Textual Theory, Th.D. Thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, May 1951, pp. 4,46,47).

This was the condition that Alfred Martin witnessed in Christian education in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is much worse today. The reason why most students at colleges and seminaries are not presented with both sides of the Bible text-translation issue is because of men like James White, who do everything in their power to make the defenders of the Received Text and the King James Bible look like fools. I believe these men have a lot to answer for before God.

Let me say at the outset that I am convinced that James White’s book on Bible versions is a dangerous book. This is because it is dead wrong and it is leading men and women away from the preserved Word of God, yet it is very popular. It is hastening a process that is destroying absolute truth in churches.

Yes, this is what I've come to believe about the overall state of things, and it confirms that the seminaries don't teach the other side at all, which I supposed must be the case some posts ago, when I so strongly wished that they would all carefully read Burgon, because it seems to me if they did they'd have to overthrow, or at the very least begin to question, assumptions that have been passed down uncriticized for a century by now. Too many have not read Dean Burgon but know whatever they know only by hearsay.

Since they don't read the other side, they treat critics like James White as The Authority and anyone who questions them is impatiently brushed off. White mentions Burgon once in his entire book, only to point out that he seemed to have supported the idea of a revision, but Burgon's work as a whole is a masterful dismantling of the whole Westcott-Hort undertaking, from their Greek text to their abuse of the English translation to Hort's "theory" which according to Burgon is nothing but a purely imaginative construct without the slightest relation to reality.

I haven't read further in Dr. Cloud's review yet. My own take on James White's book, from my position of less certainty about these questions, was a constant irritability. His approach is patronizing. He talks down to the reader. His avuncular air leaves no room for the slightest objection to anything he says. He occasionally stops to psychoanalyze what he projects to be the mental set of those who disagree with him, which is pretty silly psychobabble ("We" think this or that etc). As Dr. Cloud points out, most of his argument is aimed against the intemperate methods of Gail Riplinger and Peter Ruckman, which is a huge waste of time for someone who recognizes the error in their attitude and wants to get to the substance of the topic. When he does deal with the relevant material he is always begging the question. Instead of attempting to prove that the Westcott and Hort manuscripts are superior, he assumes it and explains things based on that assumption. I know I need to provide examples but I think I'll just say this much to this point.