DeSoto’s detailed review of Ward’s “Authorized”

The following links are to Taylor A. DeSoto’s detailed review of Mark Ward’s book, Authorized.

• A Review of “Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible”: Introduction -- “Interestingly enough, Ward’s audience seems to be those that do not read the KJV rather than those that do.”
• Authorized Review – Chapter 1: A Strange Start -- “In the first chapter of his book, Ward makes a compelling argument for the benefit of retaining the KJV, and highlights the damage that modern versions have had on unity in the church and Christian apologetics.”
• Authorized Review – Chapter 2: Jokes & Anecdotes -- “Ward attempts to convince his reader, with anecdote, that the passage is impossible to understand in the KJV.”
• Authorized Review – Chapter 3: Not so Difficult to Read -- “The reader should take notice of the conflicted messaging in Ward’s book exemplified by the quotations above, which is why I’ve decided to highlight the rhetoric so heavily.”
• Authorized Review – Chapter 4: Learning Words is Difficult -- “Okay Mark Ward, you say that ‘people’ are the best gauge for determining readability, but when a person tells you that people living in jungles can understand it, you don’t believe him?”
• Authorized Review – Chapter 5: The KJV as a Second Language -- “He reveals most clearly what he has been getting at up to this point, that the KJV as it exists now should not be read any longer...the objective has become clear: to convince people not to read the KJV.”
• Authorized Review – Chapter 6: Reading the KJV is Sinful -- “In opposition to how he views himself in the opening words of the chapter, he is being extremely quarrelsome, even divisive.”
• Authorized Review – Chapter 7: Don’t Be a Berean! -- “See yet another example of Ward admitting he cannot understand an English passage (Psalm 16:6), despite claiming to read other languages fluently and being a ‘language nerd’.”
• Authorized Review – Textual Criticism and the Scholarly Guild -- “Ward demonstrates either a) that he does not know much about textual criticism or b) that he isn’t willing to give his reader an accurate picture of textual criticism.”
• Authorized Review – Does Authorized Need to Be Updated? -- “I could make a list of Ward’s use of uncharacteristically difficult words that he apparently understands better than the much simpler vocabulary of the KJV...If I were to take Ward’s vernacular argument and apply it to his book, there would be many places that I would recommend an update. ”
• Authorized Review – Mark Ward’s Compelling Response to Pastor Joel Beeke -- “It is common for opponents to address Pastor Beeke in their attacks on the King James Bible, because he is one of its most stalwart defenders.”
• Authorized Review – Decidedly Different: An Admission That Doctrine is Affected -- “It should not surprise anybody that this kind of thinking allows post-Barthian and higher critical scholars to heavily influence the field of textual scholarship. ”