The Agony of Scribes placing themselves ABOVE DOCTRINE Dr Mark Ward with Wes Huff
Titus 1:13
“This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith;”
King James Version (KJV)
Colossians 2:8
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
King James Version (KJV)
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Why do English Bibles Differ?
Issues with English Bible Translations
| Dr. Mark Ward with
https://youtu.be/O9DUWXorbI4?si=_OdImCEiKofMSMYu
81,414 views Jun 19, 2025
Dr. Mark Ward holds a Ph.D. in New Testament Interpretation from BJU Seminary and is currently a YouTuber and web designer. Before going out on his own, he was an editor for Crossway, a writer/editor and presenter for Logos Bible Software, and a Bible textbook author for BJU Press.
Educational Philosophy and Core BeliefsBJU's philosophy is rooted in fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, positioning itself as a counter to secular higher education and religious liberalism. The university's mission is to foster Christ-like character through a scripturally disciplined, others-serving, God-loving, Christ-proclaiming, and heaven-focused approach. It emphasizes a liberal arts education integrated with a biblical worldview, where academics, fine arts, and social refinement build faith rather than undermine it. Core beliefs include the preeminence of Christ in all activities, adherence to young-earth creationism, and rejection of evolution as an "unsupportable and unworkable hypothesis." The King James Version of the Bible is required in services and classrooms, though the university clarifies it does not hold the same authority as the original manuscripts.
Faculty view their roles as ministries, prioritizing spiritual guidance alongside teaching, which contributes to institutional stability despite low salaries and a minimal endowment. BJU's seminary, founded in 1932, defends cardinal doctrines of the faith while rejecting ecumenical ministry trends. In counseling and student life, the philosophy stresses fidelity to the Bible as the infallible standard, calling for conformity to Christ's image and opposing misuse of substances or behaviors.
Faculty view their roles as ministries, prioritizing spiritual guidance alongside teaching, which contributes to institutional stability despite low salaries and a minimal endowment. BJU's seminary, founded in 1932, defends cardinal doctrines of the faith while rejecting ecumenical ministry trends. In counseling and student life, the philosophy stresses fidelity to the Bible as the infallible standard, calling for conformity to Christ's image and opposing misuse of substances or behaviors.
See the major scandal plagued institution.
Both of these men are perfect examples of our APOSTATE Seminaries. Please refer to my Blog with background references on this here in these studies:
The Great DIVIDE - King James Bible and the LXX
https://www.thethirdheaventraveler.com/2025/07/blog-post.html
Let us Examine Ourselves: Doctrine Matters
https://www.thethirdheaventraveler.com/2025/01/let-us-examine-ourselves-gospel-kjv.html
Setting Scribes above Doctrine
https://www.thethirdheaventraveler.com/2025/04/case-study-setting-scribes-above.html
- Rebuking a Catholic Apologist placing Philosophy above God's Word
https://www.thethirdheaventraveler.com/2025/07/rebuking-catholic-apologist-using.html
- OVERALL THE THEME OF THIS ENTIRE VIDEO IS TO UNDERMINE AND DOWNPLAY THE KING JAMES BIBLE WITHOUT COMING OUT AND CONDEMING IT. THIS IS THE PARADIGM OF THE LAODICEAN CHURCH AND ITS LEADERSHIP TODAY.
- I want to focus on the centerpiece of this video I am exposing on time stamp 28:00
- where Dr Ward tells us that the ESV is a better translation and hangs choses 1 Kings 18:21 and the word, "HALT".
- Transcript below:
- Dr. Ward tells us that HALT is really the word, "LIMPING" and that halt means stop so the ESV is a better translation for the modern day English speaker.
21 And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? I
- Let's tell the audience the truth here:
1 Kings 18:21
“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.”
King James Version (KJV)
KJV PRONOUNS
- HALT in the context of 1 Kings Chapter 18 literally means TO HESITATE and WAIVER or VACILLATE.
Let's go through this: The HEBREW Strongs is H6452 - Hesitate. The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon 2618 is hesitate or skip or pass over in the context of avoidance of firm decision. In the OXFORD English Dictionary page 1246 it means in the context of 1 Kings 18 to WAIVER VACILLATE.
vacillate /văs′ə-lāt″/
intransitive verbTo be unable to choose between different courses of action or opinions; waver.
"She vacillated about whether to leave."
To change between one state and another; fluctuate.
- The meaning "waver between two opinions or courses, fluctuate in mind or opinion"
already kind of touched on and and you mentioned it as the title of your book but what about kind of these older
25:02translations you know I quoted 1 Chronicles in the the King James Bible what are some sort of idiosyncrasies
25:10with the King James Bible because there is a a large portion you know I I don't think it's as maybe as large as it it
25:15looks like online but of people who advocate exclusively for the King James Bible for various reasons what are some
25:21of the issues that come with going for a early modern English translation as
25:27opposed to an exclusively modern English translation like the ESV like the CSB you know these others that we've been
25:33talking about what are the drawbacks and and maybe even what are the positives okay King James version i've got mine
25:39here i grew up with it and let me in order to answer your question let me let me tell uh a narrative i uh used to work
25:46for a Christian textbook publisher for nine years i was a Bible textbook author and we were serving Christian schools
25:52and homeschoolers that used multiple different Bible translations we actually used the King James because that was the
25:58least objectionable but and it's just kind of tradition one of my jobs was to make sure that I wasn't making a point
26:05in my Bible textbook for an eighth grader using an NIV they go "What that's not what it says." So I needed to check
26:11multiple translations and you know as Paul says that was the very thing I was eager to do i love checking multiple
26:17translations so I was reading along in First Kings 18 uh 21 it was and I was
26:23reading in the ESV even though I've got the King James right here and the ESV has Elijah saying something that I
26:31didn't expect so I grew up with the King James and I heard many sermons on this
26:36passage elijah says "How long halt ye between two opinions if the Lord be God
26:43follow him but if Baal then follow him." And the people answered him not a word and I was reading the ESV i've got it
26:49right here and it said "Not how long halt ye between two opinions but it said,"How long will you go limping
26:57between two opinions?" And I just thought "That's not right." And I was pretty far along in my seminary studies
27:03at that point and I was like "Well the King James translators weren't dummies the ESV translators weren't dummies it's
27:09very unlikely that there's some kind of textual variant here like some Hebrew manuscripts say halt and some say limp."
27:15So I looked up the Hebrew to see what's going on and sure enough the Hebrew says limp it did not say halt and I thought
27:22ah that just can't be right i just don't expect the King James translators to make an error on something this simple
27:28so I thought well I'll search the King James for the word halt and sure enough in the New Testament you'll have
27:35passages where Jesus is in the King James healing the halt and the blind and
27:40and I just slapped my forehead at my desk duh how long halt ye between two
27:46opinions in King James English in 1611 Elizabethan English that meant how long
27:51will you go limping between two opinions they're actually not disagreeing I had always taken taken halt to mean halt who
27:57goes there you know cuz that's how they talked in ye olden days uh and I've since discovered that many many other
28:03people have taken it the same way almost nobody gets it right when I asked them I've asked hundreds of people the only people who have gotten it right are Old
28:09Testament scholars who happen to know what's going on that you know feminists and uh whatever bad people you want to
28:16choose have not gotten to the the controls of English and changed it so that halt no longer means limp and now
28:21it means stop no that's just what happens in English and I I suddenly realized the problem with an older
28:28translation is not not even necessarily mainly that there are words I know I don't know because yes I can look those
28:34up in the dictionary why I should have to look them up in a dictionary when I could just say you know a word we all
28:39know you know that's another issue but at least I can recognize I'm misunderstanding the problem comes with
28:45words I don't know i don't know i call them false friends and I'm not the only one to call them that and in my book Authorized I detail this i give I think
28:5235 or or so examples i have another book coming out uh Lord willing in 2026 with
28:57Lex Press KJV words you don't know you don't know is the provisional title where I talk about 38 more and I teach
29:02people how to fish i don't just give them a list and say just memorize these i I try to form in people the ability to
29:10recognize when something sounds a little funny maybe language change is the reason when you're reading the King
29:16James version so that's an obvious weakness of using any text that is hundreds of years old the example you
29:22gave earlier from the Apostles Creed the quick and the dead well that's in the King James the word of God is quick and
29:28powerful sharper than any two-edged sword and if you go away thinking well that means that it's very fast well
29:35you're just wrong you you misunderstood what the King James translators were saying because they weren't talking to you they were talking to people who
29:41spoke their English not people who speak our English and if we had just one or two or even 10 of those examples I I
29:47would say that the value you ask about the strength of using an older translation the value is building continuity with tradition being able to
29:54understand Charles Spurgeon's sermons and Puritan works better you know those are all good things the idea too is I I
30:01think it's it's a good thing to hold on to a translation for such a long time that it just tends to be become trusted
30:07by default culturally speaking that has happened with the King James version but we're not just talking about 10 examples
30:13i have a series on my YouTube channel that I started with 50 false friends in the King James version and then when I
30:19got to 50 there were more so I went up to 75 and then I went up to 100 and then
30:25I actually decided to move on from the King James only debate so at the end of December last year I dropped one final
30:32video that had 50 more so the series is 150 false friends in the King James version and those together occur over
30:393,000 times these are words you don't know you don't know if the point of the
30:46Bible is having God's word then I don't care what translation you have you might as well have it in the Latin Vulgate and
30:52if you want to talk about traditional translations that is the one you know ring to rule them all if it's not the
30:57Septuagent the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible uh in English speaking lands however the however the one ring
31:02it tends to be the King James if if your goal is having it then have the King James but if your goal is understanding it you don't want to use the King James
31:08exclusively at least because there are words in it you know you don't know be bism chambering emerald and there are
31:14words you don't know you don't know halt remove command study i could go on and
31:19on and on and I have like adnauseium on my channel if you if you like this kind of nerdy thing there is way more of it
31:26than any one person should ever have to sit through on my channel and what's motivating me here is both helping King
31:33James readers understand what they're reading and yes encouraging them to pick up other translations at least in
31:39addition to the King James further I would say and I'll end with this I don't think the King James or any old
31:45translation that no longer uses current English should be the pulpit standard or
31:50the institutional standard in schools mission boards camps god's word is too important why bother teaching memory
31:56verses to kids that they're literally not going to be able to understand i have done that when I was younger and I
32:03just never want to have to do that again if I'm going to teach God's word I want to use it in a form that's accessible because my Bible teaches me 1
32:10Corinthians 14 edification requires intelligibility that's what I found years ago when I I read your book i
32:15shortly after it came out that made a big impact on me going through these words that I recognized and realizing oh
32:22right of course they don't mean what I think they mean and I think you know the the push back that I've even encountered
32:27and I I know you've encountered it too Mark is that people can look at a dictionary they can look up these words
32:33and but I think the thread there is not that you can't do that it's that you won't know to do that and my my dad who
32:41was a pastor for many years he pastored a small town a small Baptist church in central Ontario and had a congregant
32:48come up to him say "I have never heard the things you're preaching about i've never I've I've read the Bible multiple
32:54times an elderly gentleman over the course of his life and it was simply because he'd only ever read the King James and he just never realized that
33:01the things that the text was saying was what they were saying he was very diligent you know very uh even studious
33:08to a certain degree but he just didn't know to look up certain words and how
33:14important it was for simple understanding what the text means at
33:19face value i will say that when I read your book um and I was very excited and I you know was talking to some people
33:25about it and I I asked my wife's grandmother about some things she knew
33:31what halt meant and that surprised me but she is a very intelligent woman and
33:37I was kind of taken a back i you know thought I was making a you know an interesting tidbit point and she said
33:44well that could mean lame right the one person who probably knew in light of that do we recommend the King James
33:51Bible Mark do we encourage people to read this someone asked me this last
33:56Sunday in what translation they they should get you a newer believer and it
34:02was the one that came to the forefront of their mind they said "Well I have a King James." What I'll tell you what I said what do you say in those kinds of
34:08moments if that is the Bible that they currently possess it does really depend on who's asking me and why i grew up in
34:15King James only and I had a good experience christian school teachers that loved me a pastor who was faithful
34:21to his church and his wife you know it wasn't cultish but I was warned as I
34:26left that Christian school my senior year and went off to a Bible college Christian college that was not King
34:32James only they're going to try to take away your King James don't let them do that and I insisted as a 16-year-old you
34:38know no no I will never let that happen and in a way I was completely wrong but in another way I was right i still have
34:43it in fact I have the King James more than I had it back then cuz I understand it better than I did if someone is
34:49asking me should I include the King James in my regular rotation of Bibles
34:55that I read or check in study I would say absolutely go for it in fact please
35:00do it because the King James is the leading example of the Tindale tradition
35:05and you're not you're just not going to understand the implicit dialogue among
35:12translations the conversation over how do we handle certain the difficult passages unless you look at the one ring
35:18that has ruled them all for all these decades you know a little aside here I read a story the story of the the
35:23formation of the New International Version which happened back in the 60s and the the author John Stack who was
35:29one of the translators said "We all grew up on the King James and we found it incredibly difficult to kind of get out
35:36of its shadow and try to think what is the best way to communicate this particular verse." Now in current
35:43English I think that's a good reason to pick up the King James and use it in your study however if it's a new
35:49believer saying "What translation should I read for the first time?" If it's even somebody who is you know a teenager in
35:57the Lord as it were an adolescent and not gotten around the block very many times there's just no way I'm going to recommend that they use the King James
36:04and read through it this year any more than I would recommend the Tindale Bible or the Wikliffe Bible the Tindale Bible
36:10is that much harder to understand because of changes in English and changes in spelling conventions the Wikliff Bible is even that much harder
36:16to understand but it's really the same case you could come back to me and say "Well they're all English what are you objecting to?" Well yeah but what the
36:23point I've tried to make over the years is Elizabethan English like Tindelian English and like the English of Wikliffe
36:30can be usefully regarded as different languages you know there's this ven diagram overlap um among them they're
36:37not entirely different but at every place where they differ potential misunderstandings or lack of understanding will occur and the point
36:44of reading a translation is understanding what God said in the Hebrew and Greek as best you can so why would I recommend that you face this
36:50unnecessary difficulty added on to the difficulty that's already present in the Bible peter said there are some things
36:56Paul wrote that in the King James he says are hard to be understood well that's absolutely true and it's already
37:02hard enough why would we add this added difficulty unnecessary difficulty of getting past archaic language i I think
37:09the answer can only be tradition and as a Protestant as an evangelical don't hear me saying tradition is all bad i
37:15think there's a lot of good traditions out there i think the King James is a good tradition but at those places where that tradition actually runs up against
37:22what the Bible teaches edification requires intelligibility i have to go with the Bible against my traditional
37:28Bible translation you know it's rare that I find myself recommending the King James to people who who needs to know
37:34that it exists people know that already they can get it freely in their apps and and use it i'm more often having to tell
37:41people try a different kind of translation than you've used if you've used only formal then move to a more
37:47functional one if you've only used functional translations you've been in a big mega church and they all use the New Living Translation sprinkled with the
37:53message well you really ought to spend a lot of time in a formal translation there's a lot of value there because it
37:59is closer to the form of the Hebrew and Greek it will help you get around in study literature as well those are
38:05that's some of the strength of it but recommending the King James you know that's comparatively rare for me yeah
38:10saying the Apostles Creed is a tradition but saying it in modern English is a
38:16tradition that's able to be intelligably understood so can a nonoriginal language
38:22reader who say maybe even only speaks and reads English have confidence in a
38:28modern English translation that they themselves can't vet let's just openly
38:34acknowledge again you can't vet it and who gave us this situation god did god
38:39could have made it so that everybody who gets saved immediately has the gift of tongues with regard to Hebrew Aramaic
38:46and Greek and their biblical forms he didn't do that he could have made it a requirement for salvation that you learn
38:53the original biblical languages he did not do that god's people have encountered the Bible God's word in
38:59translation for its entire almost its entire existence i like to point this out the very fact that God used Greek a
39:06very different language from Hebrew for the New Testament means that effectively everyone who's ever read the Bible has
39:14done so without the knowledge of a native speaker in its two major languages does that make sense so there
39:21are very few if any people in the whole history of the world who once the New Testament came out were native speakers
39:27of biblical Hebrew and native speakers of co Greek at the same time everybody since the New Testament has come out has
39:33had to encounter God's word in translation that's okay you're going to have to trust somebody and God is the
39:39one who gave us this situation so let's let's nail that down first and then you you ask "Who do I trust?" Well you I
39:47that's where I go back to my to my institutions and actually I think rather than multiple Bible translations
39:53decreasing trust you know I I I wrote an article once that acknowledges a rising tide can sink all boats people can start
40:00to think well there are so many translations because everybody wants to monkey with the translations to make
40:06them say what they want but if you will come with an open mind to the major institutionally produced translations
40:12made for evangelical Protestants and ask yourself rigorously are they really saying anything different i think over
40:18and over and over again you're going to have to say they're saying exactly the same thing especially if you zoom out to
40:25the you know maybe not even the forest level rather than the trees level but maybe something like the to use an
40:31obscure word the cops level the glade you know look at a clump of trees
40:37they're going to say the exact same thing the story of Joseph in Genesis is going to be exactly the same the story
40:43much more importantly of Jesus in the New Testament is going to be exactly the same some of the tiny little nicities of
40:49how something is said some of the ways in which we've figured obscure
40:54differences between the Septuagent and the Maseretic text stuff that you talk about and you talked about with Joe
40:59Rogan a little bit yeah that's going to be a little different but if you zoom out even just a little bit the picture is the same i think that ought to build
41:06trust i think uh another point here my favorite professor and I had a lot of
41:11great professors in seminary but my word nerdiest professor the the Greek one uh Randy Ley who diagrammed the whole New
41:18Testament in Greek great guy and taught me Greek linguistics he pointed out if
41:23you look around you know we've got a lot of major differences in Christianity even within evangelicalism you've got
41:28your more charismatic people and your much less charismatic people you've got your Presbyterians and your Baptists
41:34you've got your Calvinists and your Armenians but there's no English Bible or no Greek New Testament that's the
41:41Calvinist one and the Armenian one and the Cessationist one the continuationist
41:46one and the Episcopalian one and the Methodist one no even the ESV which yeah
41:52is like historically associated with the reformed world because that's what Crossway you know does in its books when
41:57people have tried to argue to me oh there's a place where the complimentarians you know monkeyed with
42:02the text uh I just don't find it persuasive the the one place where maybe you could kind of score a little point
42:09against them they just revised it back to the King James Standard in the 2025 edition so whenever people try to find
42:17some grand conspiracy by some denominational viewpoint or theological viewpoint they don't like in a
42:22translation they're wanting to criticize I look at it carefully and I just come away saying I I'm just not seeing it i
42:29don't think that translations are ideologically motivated we're human we're fallen we're finite that can
42:34happen but there's been a lot of winnowing a lot of checks and balances i a lot of good reasons to just trust the
42:41major evangelical Protestant translations that are on the shelves at our local Christian bookstore it's a really good point to highlight the fact
42:46that God used the Greek language compared to the Hebrew language and how
42:52different those two languages are from one another they're not even in the same family streams linguistically and yet
43:00that is what the New Testament authors wrote exclusively in and far more often
43:05than they're not are quoting the Greek translation of the Old Testament you know you mentioned the Septuagent earlier that being the major stream
43:12there were more than one but major stream of the Greek translations of the Old Testament and I found it really
43:18interesting bringing me into more of an awareness of what might be going on in certain areas where when I was doing my
43:25own studies and finding places where the New Testament authors appeared to be in one sense it looked like they were
43:31almost coming up with their own translation of the Hebrew and then in other places in the same book exclusively translating or exclusively
43:38referencing the Septuent and appearing to do that over and above maybe what the
43:46Hebrew had said previously so there being this factor of God is using these
43:51languages and then to see that the early Christians are you know totally fine
43:58with translation in fact they're promoting it get this into the Latin get this in the Coptic get this in the old
44:04church Levonic and the Georgian on and on and on and on which allowed the gospel to go out very far there wasn't
44:10the same sort of mentality that the Islamic tradition had of keeping it in a single language and everybody has to
44:16either learn that language or memorize it phonetically in which it becomes almost like a religious ritual rather
44:22than actually understanding what's going on i think that's very important but the push back mark would be that there are
44:28these differences because something like the King James is based on a different Greek base text so anticipating maybe
44:37some people who have some background in understanding what are we talking about
44:42well let me say first of in regards with what we just said hoping that the listener is not or the viewer is not
44:48hearing us say that all translations are created equal i think it's assumed that there are good translations and there are bad translations and then there are
44:54heretical translations and we're not advocating that the Joseph Smith translation is the exact same as the ESV
45:01but in general like I said recently on the flagrant podcast the best Bible is the one you're going to read right and
45:07so the one you're going to read is the one you should read and so if that's the NLT compared to the NASB then that's
45:14great that's the one you find more easy to read but when we're dealing with something a little bit more complicated
45:20what is the difference between the Texas receptus and the critical text and why
45:25do certain groups maybe make a lot of that yeah you know I devoted years of my
45:30life to this controversy and my main answer to that question historically has
45:36been to say I don't want to let's agree or disagree if you prefer the Texas
45:41receptus i don't regard the differences between any given available major Greek
45:47New Testament edition and any other as theologically significant so I am very
45:54much willing to see this as a Romans 14 issue where if for whatever reason your conscience leads you to one Greek New
46:00Testament over another and I usually find this is the case with people who can't can't read Greek and I'm not
46:05insulting i always have to say that like again this is what not what God has called us to do i don't think he's called everybody to learn Greek uh you
46:11know would that all the Lord's people were Greek scholars that'd be great but that isn't what we're called to so I usually find it's a conscience issue
46:18with people who bring this up and there's no way to really have an intelligent discussion about it not
46:25because they're dummies but because as with me in many other fields I'm just I
46:31just can't have an an argument with a specialist something in chemistry or biology or medicine i have the layman's
46:38general education level of knowledge about this thing but I'm just going to have to leave it to them all the base pairs or all of the chemical bonds are
46:46done right you know it's it's got to be that way with Greek if you are really exercised about the differences between
46:53two Greek New Testament editions but you can't read Greek at least acknowledge that and take a big step back of
46:59humility that's a big thing I'd say second I'd say the same argument I just used there is no Greek New Testament out
47:06there that's adopted by the Presbyterians because its readings where it differs from other Greek New
47:11Testaments those are Presbyterian readings clearly there's no Calvinist Greek New Testament or Armenian Greek New Testament there's no Catholic one or
47:18Protestant one in fact you know the major scholarly edition is used by a bunch of of the Greek New Testament the
47:24Nessalon 28 is used by a bunch of people whose views I don't like and disagree with we're not actually t tending to
47:32disagree over the Greek New Testament and and really we're not even usually disagreeing about how to translate it
47:37we're tending to disagree over then what does it mean what does it mean for the church right now that's where the
47:42disagreements come in so I just want to tamp down the tendency people have to tribalize and fight over this like
47:48Christians have plenty of good reasons to disagree and I think even to divide i am divided from some other people who I
47:55do think I'll spend time in eternity in heaven with cuz right now I think what they're saying is not right it's not
48:00sound doctrine when it comes to the Greek New Testament that's not the reason we're actually differing that's a big thing I want to say i do think that
48:06effectively all talk about the Texas receptus if that's reached the ears of your viewers because we've gone kind of
48:12from beginner to advanced now talking about the Septuagent talking about the Texas receptus effectively all talk
48:18about the Texas receptus arises from the King James only movement it's people who love the King James as well they should
48:24people who want to hold on to it in ways I don't think they should because they want to use it exclusively and say that
48:30every other translation is a corruption those are the people who are talking about the Texas receptus and the reason
48:35they're doing it is that it's actually something healthy combined with something unhealthy the healthy thing is
48:41that they're recognizing well it's not doctrinally sound for me to say that this given translation is inspired by
48:49God so instead I have to go back to its source and say what makes this translation superior to all others is
48:55that it uses a pure source and everybody else uses a corrupted source it's actually healthy to recognize it's not
49:02the translation itself that's inspired because God never said he would inspire any translation in any language um it's
49:07the original the Greek and Hebrew that are inspired but it's unhealthy then not
49:12only to to claim that you've got the pure Greek New Testament and everybody
49:18else is corrupted but I think it's unhealthily unhealthily confusing the issues when people say that they are
49:25Texas receptus only they'll only use translations based on it but then the question I've been asking for years and
49:30years and never getting a clear answer to finding only frustration is well what about the New King James what about the
49:36modern English version those are modern major you know translations of the Texas
49:41receptus and the Greek New Testament uh of the Greek New Testament Texas receptus and why don't you use them if
49:48your real concern is the Texas receptus then those ought to be acceptable to you and I get a lot of bluster and
49:54non-answer from people over that to the point where I I have finally kind of just stopped asking um I'm I've let my
50:01case on that land on the internet and people will make of it what they will i don't think that there are hardly any
50:08people in the world who really in their hearts truly care about the Texas recepts i think there are some uh I
50:13think almost all of that is uh an unwitting not dishonest but unwitting
50:19desire to hold on to the King James because I've met you know I can count on two hands the number of people that I've
50:25met who strongly prefer the Texas Receptus but are also fine with the New King James or the modern English version
50:31effectively everybody who wants to use the Texas Receptus also wants to use the King James exclusively and tell me that
50:37my Bible is Satan's Bible um that's divisive and not true and I've done a lot of work on my YouTube channel to try
50:42to graciously educate people on those issues it might also be useful to say that there isn't necessarily one Texas
50:49receptus throughout history um you know I have my uh Arasmus my 1522
50:55is the third edition um of Arasmus that I got years ago when I was in seminary it's a Latin Greek diglot but working
51:03through it it is one of five editions that Arasmus put together and then there was an update by Stfan then Basa uh and
51:10then the final kind of iteration was a 19th century one done by by Scrivener
51:15which is usually what people refer to when they talk about the TR is the 19th century Scriber publication which is him
51:22going back and looking at all the readings that the King James translators chose and in one sense it is a Greek version of an English version of a Greek
51:28version right but these are complicated issues that if you're not really digging
51:33into the different streams of text criticism which as someone who's even very involved in that can be messy um
51:41can be complicated and so there's an air of you know humility and in reality the difference between the modern critical
51:47editions that the English Bible is translated from the ESV is translated from compared to the TR the Texas
51:53Receptus it's pretty minuscule in in the grand scheme of things and a lot of the
51:58kind of choices that the individuals who I agree with you that I wouldn't necessarily agree on on all of their stances on every particular issue even
52:05some of the readings that they choose to put into something like the Nessand or
52:10the the United Bible Society text there's a level of giving the benefit of
52:16the doubt to well-intentioned good-meaning godly individuals who are
52:22trying their best and even if they're not believers they're not that doesn't mean that they're purposefully being
52:27manipulative to try to corrupt the text any more than they are to come up with
52:33the the text of Homer's Iliad in order to render that in the most upto-date
52:39possible English that an individual could read um as we just kind of land the plane here uh Mark what advice would
52:47you give to those who want to dig more into the word what would be your one or
52:52two pieces of advice for someone who's listening to this they're saying "Oh this is interesting but maybe feeling
52:58you know oh is this more complicated than I really want to get into?" How would you encourage them and maybe spur
53:04them on to dig into some of the stuff let me give two pieces of advice one
53:09will be forest advice and one will be trees advice big picture the most
53:15important thing that any teacher Bible teacher of mine and I've had many good ones ever did for me was to take me up
53:21high into a hot air balloon and show me the whole sweep of scripture i believe that the Bible tells one story the story
53:28of what God is doing to glorify himself by redeeming his fallen creation and the
53:33aspects of theology that we sometimes called redemptive historical views of scripture or certain aspects of the
53:39biblical theology movement i think have been incredibly healthy and so helpful for me there were so many times when I
53:45would hear sermons from uh from the Old Testament and I'd think to myself you know I don't think the preacher knows
53:51what this passage is about but I don't either and when I was in my younger years I got a lot of moralizing and
53:57spiritualizing and even allegorizing from the Old Testament uh from otherwise conservative Bible believing folks and
54:03it wasn't until I started to see this picture presented to me by the redemptive historical biblical
54:09theological view that I realized oh okay I need to make sure that I recognize the
54:14individual contribution of every Old Testament narrative for example and also the poetry and wisdom to the overall
54:20narrative and trajectory of scripture leading from creation and fall to redemption in Christ that is utterly
54:26massive for me and I've never lost the love of the beauty of that like I live
54:32in the Pacific Northwest and I had I used to travel an hour every day back and forth to work at Logos Bible
54:37Software on the bus and we would drive through the mountains and I never got tired of it no matter how many times I
54:43took the trip because it's unbelievably beautiful up here i feel the same way about the one story of scripture i've got a video about that on my channel
54:49there are so many other people who talk about it i love Von Robert's book uh God's Big Picture Tracing the Storyline
54:54of Scripture if you don't know what I'm talking about pick up that book it's awesome that's my forest advice my trees
55:01advice is actually that if you want to get into the details but if you don't feel you have the facility or the time
55:08to study Greek and Hebrew and I'm not discouraging you from studying those but realistically most people aren't going
55:14to get past day three on Duolingo i I have not with Arabic right you know other things I've tried i had to be in a
55:20classroom to do Greek and Hebrew and I had to work at it for years and years but if you want to get a lot of the
55:26benefit of that the ability to look at fine details and interpret individual
55:32words and phrases and clauses with care i actually think that digging into
55:38linguistics is the way forward with that linguistics and lexography and don't let those big words scare you my favorite
55:44way of introducing people to how language works is my the best
55:49popularizer I know in all the academic world and that is John Mcuarter he's an atheist he is not a Christian he
55:55occasionally uses salty language that I don't use myself um and he has a different view of the history of
56:01language you know how it originally was formed than I do because he's a naturalistic materialist when I where
56:06I'm a I believe that God didn't just create language but has used it apparently since before Adam had it you
56:12know we see God speaking in Genesis 1 before man is created but John Mcuart the way he talks about words it really
56:19is like that old famous overused illustration of the boy who wants to learn about jade and so the master gives
56:26him jade and he holds on to it all day while the master talks about a thousand other things and then he comes in on the fourth day and the ma the master hands
56:32him something that looks like jade and the boy immediately says "This isn't jade." He can just tell by the feel i
56:38feel that way about linguistics there are fun ways to get into it um Ann Kerzon and some others uh Steven Pinker
56:46again not Christians at all who talk a lot about language about usage um and do it in really engaging ways i think
56:52that's a great way to gain a sense for how much weight you should place on an
56:58individual word when you're reading your Bible i think conservatives like me and you Wes our tribe's tendency I feel is
57:06to place more theological freight on individual words than they tend to bear
57:11and and if you want to gain a sensibility for how to accurately parse those trees those twigs uh you got to
57:17learn about language that's my forest advice and my trees advice for those who want to get into uh studying the Bible
57:23that's great appreciate that and let me just also say as a shameless plug if you do want to learn the biblical languages
57:28you can go to Bibling Lingo and use code Wes 10 to get a to get a discount on
57:34that app which will help you in a journey of biblical Greek and Hebrew and
57:40I even as someone who has been studying it for years now have have wished that I had something like the resources that
57:47exist in an app like Bibllingo to be able to just walk you through at your own pace and help resolve maybe some of
57:53those issues of vocabulary and syntax and grammar that can seem daunting mark I want to thank you for coming on the
58:00channel to help us walk through some of these things where can the listener the viewer find you um the two major hats
58:07that I wear right now are YouTube so that's Ward on words at YouTube and then
58:13Forward Design which is forwarddesigner.net and uh I am trying to support my Bible
58:19teaching ministry by designing and hosting church websites for me that feels like a way I can serve the body of Christ while um at the same time feeding
58:26my family because all three of my children are addicted to eating and wearing clothes though not shoes necessarily especially in the case of my
58:32daughter uh those are the two major places where I'm at word on words on YouTube and then forwarddesigner.net that's great and once again cannot
58:38stress enough if you want to dig into some of the issues that we've talked about authorized the use and abuse of the King James Bible is uh genuinely a
58:46great resource and I would recommend you go subscribe to Mark Won on words really
58:52appreciative of your wisdom and knowledge in this particular area and I've been meaning to have you on for a while really glad that the opportunity
58:59uh finally happened so thank you Mark appreciate it thank you Wes i I've been praying for you actively i'm really glad
59:05to see what the Lord is doing in your ministry too appreciate that need all the prayer I can get
26:36passage elijah says "How long halt ye between two opinions if the Lord be God
26:43follow him but if Baal then follow him." And the people answered him not a word and I was reading the ESV i've got it
26:49right here and it said "Not how long halt ye between two opinions but it said,"How long will you go limping
26:57between two opinions?" And I just thought "That's not right." And I was pretty far along in my seminary studies
27:03at that point and I was like "Well the King James translators weren't dummies the ESV translators weren't dummies it's
27:09very unlikely that there's some kind of textual variant here like some Hebrew manuscripts say halt and some say limp."
27:15So I looked up the Hebrew to see what's going on and sure enough the Hebrew says limp it did not say halt and I thought
27:22ah that just can't be right i just don't expect the King James translators to make an error on something this simple
27:28so I thought well I'll search the King James for the word halt and sure enough in the New Testament you'll have
27:35passages where Jesus is in the King James healing the halt and the blind and
27:40and I just slapped my forehead at my desk duh how long halt ye between two
27:46opinions in King James English in 1611 Elizabethan English that meant how long
27:51will you go limping between two opinions they're actually not disagreeing I had always taken taken halt to mean halt who
27:57goes there you know cuz that's how they talked in ye olden days uh and I've since discovered that many many other
28:03people have taken it the same way almost nobody gets it right when I asked them I've asked hundreds of people the only people who have gotten it right are Old
28:09Testament scholars who happen to know what's going on that you know feminists and uh whatever bad people you want to
28:16choose have not gotten to the the controls of English and changed it so that halt no longer means limp and now
28:21it means stop no that's just what happens in English and I I suddenly realized the problem with an older
28:28translation is not not even necessarily mainly that there are words I know I don't know because yes I can look those
28:34up in the dictionary why I should have to look them up in a dictionary when I could just say you know a word we all
28:39know you know that's another issue but at least I can recognize I'm misunderstanding the problem comes with
28:45words I don't know i don't know i call them false friends and I'm not the only one to call them that and in my book Authorized I detail this i give I think
28:5235 or or so examples i have another book coming out uh Lord willing in 2026 with
28:57Lex Press KJV words you don't know you don't know is the provisional title where I talk about 38 more and I teach
29:02people how to fish i don't just give them a list and say just memorize these i I try to form in people the ability to
29:10recognize when something sounds a little funny maybe language change is the reason when you're reading the King
29:16James version so that's an obvious weakness of using any text that is hundreds of years old the example you
29:22gave earlier from the Apostles Creed the quick and the dead well that's in the King James the word of God is quick and
29:28powerful sharper than any two-edged sword and if you go away thinking well that means that it's very fast well
29:35you're just wrong you you misunderstood what the King James translators were saying because they weren't talking to you they were talking to people who
29:41spoke their English not people who speak our English and if we had just one or two or even 10 of those examples I I
29:47would say that the value you ask about the strength of using an older translation the value is building continuity with tradition being able to
29:54understand Charles Spurgeon's sermons and Puritan works better you know those are all good things the idea too is I I
30:01think it's it's a good thing to hold on to a translation for such a long time that it just tends to be become trusted
30:07by default culturally speaking that has happened with the King James version but we're not just talking about 10 examples
30:13i have a series on my YouTube channel that I started with 50 false friends in the King James version and then when I
30:19got to 50 there were more so I went up to 75 and then I went up to 100 and then
30:25I actually decided to move on from the King James only debate so at the end of December last year I dropped one final
30:32video that had 50 more so the series is 150 false friends in the King James version and those together occur over
30:393,000 times these are words you don't know you don't know if the point of the
30:46Bible is having God's word then I don't care what translation you have you might as well have it in the Latin Vulgate and
30:52if you want to talk about traditional translations that is the one you know ring to rule them all if it's not the
30:57Septuagent the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible uh in English speaking lands however the however the one ring
31:02it tends to be the King James if if your goal is having it then have the King James but if your goal is understanding it you don't want to use the King James
31:08exclusively at least because there are words in it you know you don't know be bism chambering emerald and there are
31:14words you don't know you don't know halt remove command study i could go on and
31:19on and on and I have like adnauseium on my channel if you if you like this kind of nerdy thing there is way more of it
31:26than any one person should ever have to sit through on my channel and what's motivating me here is both helping King
31:33James readers understand what they're reading and yes encouraging them to pick up other translations at least in
31:39addition to the King James further I would say and I'll end with this I don't think the King James or any old
31:45translation that no longer uses current English should be the pulpit standard or
31:50the institutional standard in schools mission boards camps god's word is too important why bother teaching memory
31:56verses to kids that they're literally not going to be able to understand i have done that when I was younger and I
32:03just never want to have to do that again if I'm going to teach God's word I want to use it in a form that's accessible because my Bible teaches me 1
32:10Corinthians 14 edification requires intelligibility that's what I found years ago when I I read your book i
32:15shortly after it came out that made a big impact on me going through these words that I recognized and realizing oh
32:22right of course they don't mean what I think they mean and I think you know the the push back that I've even encountered
32:27and I I know you've encountered it too Mark is that people can look at a dictionary they can look up these words
32:33and but I think the thread there is not that you can't do that it's that you won't know to do that and my my dad who
32:41was a pastor for many years he pastored a small town a small Baptist church in central Ontario and had a congregant
32:48come up to him say "I have never heard the things you're preaching about i've never I've I've read the Bible multiple
32:54times an elderly gentleman over the course of his life and it was simply because he'd only ever read the King James and he just never realized that
33:01the things that the text was saying was what they were saying he was very diligent you know very uh even studious
33:08to a certain degree but he just didn't know to look up certain words and how
33:14important it was for simple understanding what the text means at
33:19face value i will say that when I read your book um and I was very excited and I you know was talking to some people
33:25about it and I I asked my wife's grandmother about some things she knew
33:31what halt meant and that surprised me but she is a very intelligent woman and
33:37I was kind of taken a back i you know thought I was making a you know an interesting tidbit point and she said
33:44well that could mean lame right the one person who probably knew in light of that do we recommend the King James
33:51Bible Mark do we encourage people to read this someone asked me this last
33:56Sunday in what translation they they should get you a newer believer and it
34:02was the one that came to the forefront of their mind they said "Well I have a King James." What I'll tell you what I said what do you say in those kinds of
34:08moments if that is the Bible that they currently possess it does really depend on who's asking me and why i grew up in
34:15King James only and I had a good experience christian school teachers that loved me a pastor who was faithful
34:21to his church and his wife you know it wasn't cultish but I was warned as I
34:26left that Christian school my senior year and went off to a Bible college Christian college that was not King
34:32James only they're going to try to take away your King James don't let them do that and I insisted as a 16-year-old you
34:38know no no I will never let that happen and in a way I was completely wrong but in another way I was right i still have
34:43it in fact I have the King James more than I had it back then cuz I understand it better than I did if someone is
34:49asking me should I include the King James in my regular rotation of Bibles
34:55that I read or check in study I would say absolutely go for it in fact please
35:00do it because the King James is the leading example of the Tindale tradition
35:05and you're not you're just not going to understand the implicit dialogue among
35:12translations the conversation over how do we handle certain the difficult passages unless you look at the one ring
35:18that has ruled them all for all these decades you know a little aside here I read a story the story of the the
35:23formation of the New International Version which happened back in the 60s and the the author John Stack who was
35:29one of the translators said "We all grew up on the King James and we found it incredibly difficult to kind of get out
35:36of its shadow and try to think what is the best way to communicate this particular verse." Now in current
35:43English I think that's a good reason to pick up the King James and use it in your study however if it's a new
35:49believer saying "What translation should I read for the first time?" If it's even somebody who is you know a teenager in
35:57the Lord as it were an adolescent and not gotten around the block very many times there's just no way I'm going to recommend that they use the King James
36:04and read through it this year any more than I would recommend the Tindale Bible or the Wikliffe Bible the Tindale Bible
36:10is that much harder to understand because of changes in English and changes in spelling conventions the Wikliff Bible is even that much harder
36:16to understand but it's really the same case you could come back to me and say "Well they're all English what are you objecting to?" Well yeah but what the
36:23point I've tried to make over the years is Elizabethan English like Tindelian English and like the English of Wikliffe
36:30can be usefully regarded as different languages you know there's this ven diagram overlap um among them they're
36:37not entirely different but at every place where they differ potential misunderstandings or lack of understanding will occur and the point
36:44of reading a translation is understanding what God said in the Hebrew and Greek as best you can so why would I recommend that you face this
36:50unnecessary difficulty added on to the difficulty that's already present in the Bible peter said there are some things
36:56Paul wrote that in the King James he says are hard to be understood well that's absolutely true and it's already
37:02hard enough why would we add this added difficulty unnecessary difficulty of getting past archaic language i I think
37:09the answer can only be tradition and as a Protestant as an evangelical don't hear me saying tradition is all bad i
37:15think there's a lot of good traditions out there i think the King James is a good tradition but at those places where that tradition actually runs up against
37:22what the Bible teaches edification requires intelligibility i have to go with the Bible against my traditional
37:28Bible translation you know it's rare that I find myself recommending the King James to people who who needs to know
37:34that it exists people know that already they can get it freely in their apps and and use it i'm more often having to tell
37:41people try a different kind of translation than you've used if you've used only formal then move to a more
37:47functional one if you've only used functional translations you've been in a big mega church and they all use the New Living Translation sprinkled with the
37:53message well you really ought to spend a lot of time in a formal translation there's a lot of value there because it
37:59is closer to the form of the Hebrew and Greek it will help you get around in study literature as well those are
38:05that's some of the strength of it but recommending the King James you know that's comparatively rare for me yeah
38:10saying the Apostles Creed is a tradition but saying it in modern English is a
38:16tradition that's able to be intelligably understood so can a nonoriginal language
38:22reader who say maybe even only speaks and reads English have confidence in a
38:28modern English translation that they themselves can't vet let's just openly
38:34acknowledge again you can't vet it and who gave us this situation god did god
38:39could have made it so that everybody who gets saved immediately has the gift of tongues with regard to Hebrew Aramaic
38:46and Greek and their biblical forms he didn't do that he could have made it a requirement for salvation that you learn
38:53the original biblical languages he did not do that god's people have encountered the Bible God's word in
38:59translation for its entire almost its entire existence i like to point this out the very fact that God used Greek a
39:06very different language from Hebrew for the New Testament means that effectively everyone who's ever read the Bible has
39:14done so without the knowledge of a native speaker in its two major languages does that make sense so there
39:21are very few if any people in the whole history of the world who once the New Testament came out were native speakers
39:27of biblical Hebrew and native speakers of co Greek at the same time everybody since the New Testament has come out has
39:33had to encounter God's word in translation that's okay you're going to have to trust somebody and God is the
39:39one who gave us this situation so let's let's nail that down first and then you you ask "Who do I trust?" Well you I
39:47that's where I go back to my to my institutions and actually I think rather than multiple Bible translations
39:53decreasing trust you know I I I wrote an article once that acknowledges a rising tide can sink all boats people can start
40:00to think well there are so many translations because everybody wants to monkey with the translations to make
40:06them say what they want but if you will come with an open mind to the major institutionally produced translations
40:12made for evangelical Protestants and ask yourself rigorously are they really saying anything different i think over
40:18and over and over again you're going to have to say they're saying exactly the same thing especially if you zoom out to
40:25the you know maybe not even the forest level rather than the trees level but maybe something like the to use an
40:31obscure word the cops level the glade you know look at a clump of trees
40:37they're going to say the exact same thing the story of Joseph in Genesis is going to be exactly the same the story
40:43much more importantly of Jesus in the New Testament is going to be exactly the same some of the tiny little nicities of
40:49how something is said some of the ways in which we've figured obscure
40:54differences between the Septuagent and the Maseretic text stuff that you talk about and you talked about with Joe
40:59Rogan a little bit yeah that's going to be a little different but if you zoom out even just a little bit the picture is the same i think that ought to build
41:06trust i think uh another point here my favorite professor and I had a lot of
41:11great professors in seminary but my word nerdiest professor the the Greek one uh Randy Ley who diagrammed the whole New
41:18Testament in Greek great guy and taught me Greek linguistics he pointed out if
41:23you look around you know we've got a lot of major differences in Christianity even within evangelicalism you've got
41:28your more charismatic people and your much less charismatic people you've got your Presbyterians and your Baptists
41:34you've got your Calvinists and your Armenians but there's no English Bible or no Greek New Testament that's the
41:41Calvinist one and the Armenian one and the Cessationist one the continuationist
41:46one and the Episcopalian one and the Methodist one no even the ESV which yeah
41:52is like historically associated with the reformed world because that's what Crossway you know does in its books when
41:57people have tried to argue to me oh there's a place where the complimentarians you know monkeyed with
42:02the text uh I just don't find it persuasive the the one place where maybe you could kind of score a little point
42:09against them they just revised it back to the King James Standard in the 2025 edition so whenever people try to find
42:17some grand conspiracy by some denominational viewpoint or theological viewpoint they don't like in a
42:22translation they're wanting to criticize I look at it carefully and I just come away saying I I'm just not seeing it i
42:29don't think that translations are ideologically motivated we're human we're fallen we're finite that can
42:34happen but there's been a lot of winnowing a lot of checks and balances i a lot of good reasons to just trust the
42:41major evangelical Protestant translations that are on the shelves at our local Christian bookstore it's a really good point to highlight the fact
42:46that God used the Greek language compared to the Hebrew language and how
42:52different those two languages are from one another they're not even in the same family streams linguistically and yet
43:00that is what the New Testament authors wrote exclusively in and far more often
43:05than they're not are quoting the Greek translation of the Old Testament you know you mentioned the Septuagent earlier that being the major stream
43:12there were more than one but major stream of the Greek translations of the Old Testament and I found it really
43:18interesting bringing me into more of an awareness of what might be going on in certain areas where when I was doing my
43:25own studies and finding places where the New Testament authors appeared to be in one sense it looked like they were
43:31almost coming up with their own translation of the Hebrew and then in other places in the same book exclusively translating or exclusively
43:38referencing the Septuent and appearing to do that over and above maybe what the
43:46Hebrew had said previously so there being this factor of God is using these
43:51languages and then to see that the early Christians are you know totally fine
43:58with translation in fact they're promoting it get this into the Latin get this in the Coptic get this in the old
44:04church Levonic and the Georgian on and on and on and on which allowed the gospel to go out very far there wasn't
44:10the same sort of mentality that the Islamic tradition had of keeping it in a single language and everybody has to
44:16either learn that language or memorize it phonetically in which it becomes almost like a religious ritual rather
44:22than actually understanding what's going on i think that's very important but the push back mark would be that there are
44:28these differences because something like the King James is based on a different Greek base text so anticipating maybe
44:37some people who have some background in understanding what are we talking about
44:42well let me say first of in regards with what we just said hoping that the listener is not or the viewer is not
44:48hearing us say that all translations are created equal i think it's assumed that there are good translations and there are bad translations and then there are
44:54heretical translations and we're not advocating that the Joseph Smith translation is the exact same as the ESV
45:01but in general like I said recently on the flagrant podcast the best Bible is the one you're going to read right and
45:07so the one you're going to read is the one you should read and so if that's the NLT compared to the NASB then that's
45:14great that's the one you find more easy to read but when we're dealing with something a little bit more complicated
45:20what is the difference between the Texas receptus and the critical text and why
45:25do certain groups maybe make a lot of that yeah you know I devoted years of my
45:30life to this controversy and my main answer to that question historically has
45:36been to say I don't want to let's agree or disagree if you prefer the Texas
45:41receptus i don't regard the differences between any given available major Greek
45:47New Testament edition and any other as theologically significant so I am very
45:54much willing to see this as a Romans 14 issue where if for whatever reason your conscience leads you to one Greek New
46:00Testament over another and I usually find this is the case with people who can't can't read Greek and I'm not
46:05insulting i always have to say that like again this is what not what God has called us to do i don't think he's called everybody to learn Greek uh you
46:11know would that all the Lord's people were Greek scholars that'd be great but that isn't what we're called to so I usually find it's a conscience issue
46:18with people who bring this up and there's no way to really have an intelligent discussion about it not
46:25because they're dummies but because as with me in many other fields I'm just I
46:31just can't have an an argument with a specialist something in chemistry or biology or medicine i have the layman's
46:38general education level of knowledge about this thing but I'm just going to have to leave it to them all the base pairs or all of the chemical bonds are
46:46done right you know it's it's got to be that way with Greek if you are really exercised about the differences between
46:53two Greek New Testament editions but you can't read Greek at least acknowledge that and take a big step back of
46:59humility that's a big thing I'd say second I'd say the same argument I just used there is no Greek New Testament out
47:06there that's adopted by the Presbyterians because its readings where it differs from other Greek New
47:11Testaments those are Presbyterian readings clearly there's no Calvinist Greek New Testament or Armenian Greek New Testament there's no Catholic one or
47:18Protestant one in fact you know the major scholarly edition is used by a bunch of of the Greek New Testament the
47:24Nessalon 28 is used by a bunch of people whose views I don't like and disagree with we're not actually t tending to
47:32disagree over the Greek New Testament and and really we're not even usually disagreeing about how to translate it
47:37we're tending to disagree over then what does it mean what does it mean for the church right now that's where the
47:42disagreements come in so I just want to tamp down the tendency people have to tribalize and fight over this like
47:48Christians have plenty of good reasons to disagree and I think even to divide i am divided from some other people who I
47:55do think I'll spend time in eternity in heaven with cuz right now I think what they're saying is not right it's not
48:00sound doctrine when it comes to the Greek New Testament that's not the reason we're actually differing that's a big thing I want to say i do think that
48:06effectively all talk about the Texas receptus if that's reached the ears of your viewers because we've gone kind of
48:12from beginner to advanced now talking about the Septuagent talking about the Texas receptus effectively all talk
48:18about the Texas receptus arises from the King James only movement it's people who love the King James as well they should
48:24people who want to hold on to it in ways I don't think they should because they want to use it exclusively and say that
48:30every other translation is a corruption those are the people who are talking about the Texas receptus and the reason
48:35they're doing it is that it's actually something healthy combined with something unhealthy the healthy thing is
48:41that they're recognizing well it's not doctrinally sound for me to say that this given translation is inspired by
48:49God so instead I have to go back to its source and say what makes this translation superior to all others is
48:55that it uses a pure source and everybody else uses a corrupted source it's actually healthy to recognize it's not
49:02the translation itself that's inspired because God never said he would inspire any translation in any language um it's
49:07the original the Greek and Hebrew that are inspired but it's unhealthy then not
49:12only to to claim that you've got the pure Greek New Testament and everybody
49:18else is corrupted but I think it's unhealthily unhealthily confusing the issues when people say that they are
49:25Texas receptus only they'll only use translations based on it but then the question I've been asking for years and
49:30years and never getting a clear answer to finding only frustration is well what about the New King James what about the
49:36modern English version those are modern major you know translations of the Texas
49:41receptus and the Greek New Testament uh of the Greek New Testament Texas receptus and why don't you use them if
49:48your real concern is the Texas receptus then those ought to be acceptable to you and I get a lot of bluster and
49:54non-answer from people over that to the point where I I have finally kind of just stopped asking um I'm I've let my
50:01case on that land on the internet and people will make of it what they will i don't think that there are hardly any
50:08people in the world who really in their hearts truly care about the Texas recepts i think there are some uh I
50:13think almost all of that is uh an unwitting not dishonest but unwitting
50:19desire to hold on to the King James because I've met you know I can count on two hands the number of people that I've
50:25met who strongly prefer the Texas Receptus but are also fine with the New King James or the modern English version
50:31effectively everybody who wants to use the Texas Receptus also wants to use the King James exclusively and tell me that
50:37my Bible is Satan's Bible um that's divisive and not true and I've done a lot of work on my YouTube channel to try
50:42to graciously educate people on those issues it might also be useful to say that there isn't necessarily one Texas
50:49receptus throughout history um you know I have my uh Arasmus my 1522
50:55is the third edition um of Arasmus that I got years ago when I was in seminary it's a Latin Greek diglot but working
51:03through it it is one of five editions that Arasmus put together and then there was an update by Stfan then Basa uh and
51:10then the final kind of iteration was a 19th century one done by by Scrivener
51:15which is usually what people refer to when they talk about the TR is the 19th century Scriber publication which is him
51:22going back and looking at all the readings that the King James translators chose and in one sense it is a Greek version of an English version of a Greek
51:28version right but these are complicated issues that if you're not really digging
51:33into the different streams of text criticism which as someone who's even very involved in that can be messy um
51:41can be complicated and so there's an air of you know humility and in reality the difference between the modern critical
51:47editions that the English Bible is translated from the ESV is translated from compared to the TR the Texas
51:53Receptus it's pretty minuscule in in the grand scheme of things and a lot of the
51:58kind of choices that the individuals who I agree with you that I wouldn't necessarily agree on on all of their stances on every particular issue even
52:05some of the readings that they choose to put into something like the Nessand or
52:10the the United Bible Society text there's a level of giving the benefit of
52:16the doubt to well-intentioned good-meaning godly individuals who are
52:22trying their best and even if they're not believers they're not that doesn't mean that they're purposefully being
52:27manipulative to try to corrupt the text any more than they are to come up with
52:33the the text of Homer's Iliad in order to render that in the most upto-date
52:39possible English that an individual could read um as we just kind of land the plane here uh Mark what advice would
52:47you give to those who want to dig more into the word what would be your one or
52:52two pieces of advice for someone who's listening to this they're saying "Oh this is interesting but maybe feeling
52:58you know oh is this more complicated than I really want to get into?" How would you encourage them and maybe spur
53:04them on to dig into some of the stuff let me give two pieces of advice one
53:09will be forest advice and one will be trees advice big picture the most
53:15important thing that any teacher Bible teacher of mine and I've had many good ones ever did for me was to take me up
53:21high into a hot air balloon and show me the whole sweep of scripture i believe that the Bible tells one story the story
53:28of what God is doing to glorify himself by redeeming his fallen creation and the
53:33aspects of theology that we sometimes called redemptive historical views of scripture or certain aspects of the
53:39biblical theology movement i think have been incredibly healthy and so helpful for me there were so many times when I
53:45would hear sermons from uh from the Old Testament and I'd think to myself you know I don't think the preacher knows
53:51what this passage is about but I don't either and when I was in my younger years I got a lot of moralizing and
53:57spiritualizing and even allegorizing from the Old Testament uh from otherwise conservative Bible believing folks and
54:03it wasn't until I started to see this picture presented to me by the redemptive historical biblical
54:09theological view that I realized oh okay I need to make sure that I recognize the
54:14individual contribution of every Old Testament narrative for example and also the poetry and wisdom to the overall
54:20narrative and trajectory of scripture leading from creation and fall to redemption in Christ that is utterly
54:26massive for me and I've never lost the love of the beauty of that like I live
54:32in the Pacific Northwest and I had I used to travel an hour every day back and forth to work at Logos Bible
54:37Software on the bus and we would drive through the mountains and I never got tired of it no matter how many times I
54:43took the trip because it's unbelievably beautiful up here i feel the same way about the one story of scripture i've got a video about that on my channel
54:49there are so many other people who talk about it i love Von Robert's book uh God's Big Picture Tracing the Storyline
54:54of Scripture if you don't know what I'm talking about pick up that book it's awesome that's my forest advice my trees
55:01advice is actually that if you want to get into the details but if you don't feel you have the facility or the time
55:08to study Greek and Hebrew and I'm not discouraging you from studying those but realistically most people aren't going
55:14to get past day three on Duolingo i I have not with Arabic right you know other things I've tried i had to be in a
55:20classroom to do Greek and Hebrew and I had to work at it for years and years but if you want to get a lot of the
55:26benefit of that the ability to look at fine details and interpret individual
55:32words and phrases and clauses with care i actually think that digging into
55:38linguistics is the way forward with that linguistics and lexography and don't let those big words scare you my favorite
55:44way of introducing people to how language works is my the best
55:49popularizer I know in all the academic world and that is John Mcuarter he's an atheist he is not a Christian he
55:55occasionally uses salty language that I don't use myself um and he has a different view of the history of
56:01language you know how it originally was formed than I do because he's a naturalistic materialist when I where
56:06I'm a I believe that God didn't just create language but has used it apparently since before Adam had it you
56:12know we see God speaking in Genesis 1 before man is created but John Mcuart the way he talks about words it really
56:19is like that old famous overused illustration of the boy who wants to learn about jade and so the master gives
56:26him jade and he holds on to it all day while the master talks about a thousand other things and then he comes in on the fourth day and the ma the master hands
56:32him something that looks like jade and the boy immediately says "This isn't jade." He can just tell by the feel i
56:38feel that way about linguistics there are fun ways to get into it um Ann Kerzon and some others uh Steven Pinker
56:46again not Christians at all who talk a lot about language about usage um and do it in really engaging ways i think
56:52that's a great way to gain a sense for how much weight you should place on an
56:58individual word when you're reading your Bible i think conservatives like me and you Wes our tribe's tendency I feel is
57:06to place more theological freight on individual words than they tend to bear
57:11and and if you want to gain a sensibility for how to accurately parse those trees those twigs uh you got to
57:17learn about language that's my forest advice and my trees advice for those who want to get into uh studying the Bible
57:23that's great appreciate that and let me just also say as a shameless plug if you do want to learn the biblical languages
57:28you can go to Bibling Lingo and use code Wes 10 to get a to get a discount on
57:34that app which will help you in a journey of biblical Greek and Hebrew and
57:40I even as someone who has been studying it for years now have have wished that I had something like the resources that
57:47exist in an app like Bibllingo to be able to just walk you through at your own pace and help resolve maybe some of
57:53those issues of vocabulary and syntax and grammar that can seem daunting mark I want to thank you for coming on the
58:00channel to help us walk through some of these things where can the listener the viewer find you um the two major hats
58:07that I wear right now are YouTube so that's Ward on words at YouTube and then
58:13Forward Design which is forwarddesigner.net and uh I am trying to support my Bible
58:19teaching ministry by designing and hosting church websites for me that feels like a way I can serve the body of Christ while um at the same time feeding
58:26my family because all three of my children are addicted to eating and wearing clothes though not shoes necessarily especially in the case of my
58:32daughter uh those are the two major places where I'm at word on words on YouTube and then forwarddesigner.net that's great and once again cannot
58:38stress enough if you want to dig into some of the issues that we've talked about authorized the use and abuse of the King James Bible is uh genuinely a
58:46great resource and I would recommend you go subscribe to Mark Won on words really
58:52appreciative of your wisdom and knowledge in this particular area and I've been meaning to have you on for a while really glad that the opportunity
58:59uh finally happened so thank you Mark appreciate it thank you Wes i I've been praying for you actively i'm really glad
59:05to see what the Lord is doing in your ministry too appreciate that need all the prayer I can get
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