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Burning the bible

North Carolina church - Halloween Book Burning

My question is Why King James is the right one??

My answer : it’s NOT !!!  ( You can’t reason with some folk - so “don’t worry ” about it. )

Agreed! After long conversations on the old Sydney Anglican’s forums about “Todays New International Version” I’m convinced that we have a variety of good bibles we can use, and that the TNIV is a very ‘readable’ version if you are after concise readability. However on the other hand, a KJV only protagonist left all manner of conspiratorial and quite frankly, whacky comments about why the KJV was the ONLY VERSION Christians should use.

One particular argument I remember was about how the KJV was less informed than later versions that included some more textual families from archaeological digs in Egypt. However, the KJV only guy argued that “God wouldn’t leave His Word in the hands of his old enemies the Egyptians!” (or something to that effect).

Wow! I thought the gospel and especially Acts of the Apostles and New Testament confirmed that now ALL people from ALL nations could be friends with God through Jesus. But apparently, the message of KJV only is more important than this gospel thing. ;-)

If you meet people in this camp, just put everything down and run like the wind...

Hi Dave,

There are some interesting quotes about why we shouldn’t venerate the KJV above all others here :

http://www.nccg.org/nccm/KJV1.html

Also, buried somewhere in my library collection is the great classic study by GEORGE ELDON LADD ( “The New Testament and Criticism” ) - which included this quote :

”The Holy Spirit chose as the language of the New Testament revelation the colloquial language of everyday people, not an ancient classical idea. The modern insistence upon the supremacy of the King James Version of 1611 represents a reversal of the action of the Holy Spirit by insisting that for us the best idiom for the word of God is not the modern colloquial idiom, but the ancient classical language of Shakespeare.”

Nice quote, and my thoughts exactly. In fact, this seems to be a fairly universal theme of the Holy Spirit. The ‘drunkenness’ at Pentecost may have been the inappropriateness of the disciples declaring God’s word in a non-Hebrew, vernacular, “common” tongue (rather than the miraculous speech in every individual language group from around the area, it could be they spoke in languages “other than” the official Hebrew temple language one used in the Synagogue). In other words they were mistakenly assumed to be drunk because their behaviour was *inappropriately common*, not because it was miraculous.

The Jewish crowd expected to be hearing the priests conducting the liturgy in leshon ha-kodesh, Hebrew, the Temple language, the H language. They had this expectation in spite of the fact that leshon ha-kodesh was unintelligible for most of them at that time. Nevertheless, it was the cultural expectation of the entire crowd. They were not expecting to hear ordinary people boldly prophesying in the L languages (Aramaic and Greek) in this situation.

When the disciples began prophesying in the profane “other tongues” (the native tongues of the crowd) with a boldness and authority given by the Spirit (apophtheggesthai), some reacted in amazement (2:6-12), while others, angered by the violation of the diglossia, ridiculed the disciples as drunks (2:13). Drunkenness does not impart the ability to speak unlearned languages; it decreases verbal ability and frequently causes speech to become slurred. On the other hand, inebriated persons usually lose their inhibitions. People in an inebriated state engage in behavior they would not dream of doing while sober. Only an inebriated person would be so uninhibited as to ignore the sacred/profane distinction inherent in the Jewish diglossia. Peter answered the charge of drunkenness by citing the prophecy of Joel: the time had come when ordinary people would receive the Spirit and prophesy about Jesus with a boldness, authority, and inspiration given by the same Spirit. Luke describes the commencement of the Spirit-empowered witness of the early church—a witness that violated Judean expectations and norms connected to the Judean diglossia.

http://www.alliancenet.org/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID307086|CHID560462|CIID1415640,00.html

http://www.alliancenet.org/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID307086|CHID560462|CIID1415642,00.html