The words of the Bible do not lose their
inspiration (i.e., truth) when copied from the originals or translated into
another language. When copying is correctly done or translating accurately made,
the words of the copy or translation derive their inspiration from the original
words and can be spoken of as true, pure, inerrant, etc. The words of God do
not lose their truthfulness through copying and translating, so they do not need
to be “re-inspired”.
Dave
Mallinak claims “If we argue that the English version is inspired,
then we must necessarily believe in double-inspiration.” But he misunderstands.
The average folk who speak of their translation of the Bible as inspired
do not speak in theological terms, but are using non-technical terminology related
to the trustworthiness of the Bible and not the mechanics of how it got that
way and continues to be so.
Any edition of the King James Bible that contains
the same words is a faithful representation of the KJV – regardless of minor
differences in punctuation and spelling, typeface or text format and such like
matters.[i]
Proponents of the King James Bible shoot themselves in the foot when they argue
over matters like the spelling of “musick” versus “music”.
“The historic and biblical view is that inspiration
took place once (over a period of time), never to be repeated again once the
canon was closed. Therefore the term ‘double inspiration’ has the tendency to
raise a red flag for many people.” – What exactly
does Ruckman believe about double inspiration
An individual influenced by Ruckman’s views said,
“The italics in the King James Bible were inspired of God to be there and they
are advanced revelation.” This shows an
ignorance of both inspiration and translation. The italics are simply words
included by translators when it took more words to sensibly translate into the
target language than there is an exact correspondence in the source language.
Certain
disciples of Ruckmanism have gone so far as to create a text to “prove”
the 1611 King James Bible is mentioned in the inspired word of God: “We call it
the Authorized Version, Numerical. It is identical to the regular Authorized
Version in words and meaning. The only differences are the written out number
words are changed to digits, with brackets around the digits for clarity
(basically just a spelling change), and the text is broken at sentences,
questions, and the digits.” These Gnostics have found the key to the Scriptures: “It appears the Lord hid a key in the
Scriptures nearly 2000 years ago that He kept hidden until 2009.”
Among those who believe the KJV is advanced or new
revelation are some who believe most or all of the following: that the KJV was
given by inspiration; that the KJV is superior to the Hebrew and Greek texts
upon which it was based; that the KJV is advanced revelation over the Hebrew
and Greek text (and therefore is used to correct Greek or Hebrew manuscripts);
that Bible translation into other languages should be based on the KJV rather
than Greek and Hebrew manuscripts; and finally, that a person can only be saved
through hearing the gospel from the King James Bible.
Finis.
[i] An error in translation is
when the translation fails to convey the meaning of the host language.
No comments:
Post a Comment