Since it is the KJVOnly position that it is a perfect, infallible translation down to the "jot" and "tittle," what do you have to say about the translations of "baptism" and "church?"

[Debau]

Originally Posted by freesundayschoollessons

Since it is the KJVOnly position that it is a perfect, infallible translation down to the "jot" and "tittle," what do you have to say about the translations of "baptism" and "church?"

Since you are the corrector, why don't you tell us what is wrong with these translations?

Originally Posted by Debau

Since you are the corrector, why don't you tell us what is wrong with these translations?

Corrector? Not.
I am genuinely interested in your thoughts. Mine don't matter to you. Also, I don't intend to fight here. I am simply asking.

Although I'm not KJVO I'll give you my opinion. I assume you are one of those who says that ekklesia must always be translated 'congregation,' right? Well, you are just plain wrong. When the church universal is spoken of then it is just plain wrong to translate ekklesia as congregation because every Christian all over the world does not congregate in the same place. So, when the church universal is meant, the translation must be church. In other words, it is proper to translate ekklesia as congregation only when the local congregation is meant. Secondly, the word church comes from a combination of kurios (Lord) and oikos (church) into something like kurioikos that eventually degraded in pronunciation to kirk and finally church. Its not some evil demonic word or something, but literally means "house of the Lord" which is what the church is called in 1 Tim 3:15 where Paul says "But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." House of God, theou oikos gets changed to house of the Lord kuriou oikos, becomes one word kurioikos, kirk, church. Is this the work of Satan? No. Those who try and label it as the work of Satan seem more likely to be doing the work of Satan actually.

Now, on baptism. You probably beleive it ought to be translated immersion in every occurance. I agree that it ought to be translated immersion, but not in every occurance. It is necessary to keep some reference to the proper name, and yet to interpret it also properly. Therefore, my course of action would be to translate as both baptism and immersion in passages where the word occurs twice, but only as baptism where the word occurs only once. So, for example in John 1, I would have it more like "These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing....And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come immersing with water....And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom..." so that a mixture of the proper name and interpretation are before and not either one to the exclusion of the other. To translate uniformly as immersion and throw out the proper name baptism would be ignorant.

[bibleprotector]

it ought to be translated

This is the denial of the providence of God in having the right men (the translators of the King James Bible) at the right place at the right time with the right learning (very high) making the King James Bible perfect by their thorough checking and studies.

How could it be the providence of God that someone in an upstart-like spirit comes along and says, "The real translation should be..."?

Thanks for the lengthy reply TROnly...

I know that you have more freedom in translation because you are not properly labeled as KJVOnly. I am interested in how the KJVOnly here live with the terms "baptism" instead of "immersion" where water baptism is clearly intended.

I get the whole local/universal church idea. The word "churches" in Acts 9:31 really should be "assembly." Correct? Then, why is the KJV considered perfect when "baptism" and "church" are used when the more correct terms "immersion" and "assembly?"

Originally Posted by freesundayschoollessons

Thanks for the lengthy reply TROnly...

I know that you have more freedom in translation because you are not properly labeled as KJVOnly. I am interested in how the KJVOnly here live with the terms "baptism" instead of "immersion" where water baptism is clearly intended.

I get the whole local/universal church idea. The word "churches" in Acts 9:31 really should be "assembly." Correct? Then, why is the KJV considered perfect when "baptism" and "church" are used when the more correct terms "immersion" and "assembly?"

It is plural there, not ekklesia but ekklesiai, so 'congregations.' The one place where I would consider the KJV's use of churches to be an error is Acts 19:37 where they translate the word hierosulous (temple-robbers) as "robbers of churches." Sorry Mr.-kidna-Catholic-Anglican-translator-dude, but churches of Christ do not have idols of Mary sitting around for anyone to steal. They do the same thing in Romans 2:22 with the verb form of the word where they say "thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?" when they ought to say "thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou rob temples?" In otherwords, if you hate idols so much, why are you stealing them and either keeping them for yourself or selling them to others? But probably their interest here is in scaring people from smashing their idols of Mary, so they say "dost thou commit sacrilege?" as if it were sacrilege to smash their idols. This seems like a clear Anglican bias as does never once translating baptizo as immerse. Also, translating en as "with" rather "in" when speaking of baptism, like when John the Baptizer says in John 1:26 "ego baptizo en udati" i.e. "I baptize in water" the KJV says "I baptize with water" because they were baby sprinklers and couldn't admit that it is in water. I don't nitpick the KJV for all this, but one thing I cannot abide is that the KJV translates hades as hell in Acts 2, which leads unstable souls into putting their trust in a bar-b-qued Christ rather than crucified Christ. (see here fore more on that) My suggestion for now is to compare the KJV and NKJV, since both are Textus Receptus.

[bibleprotector]

Freesunday, by "infallible translation" are you implying that King James Bible believers generally teach that the translation was made by inspiration from 1604 to 1611?

The truth is that the authority of Scripture is in Scripture itself. And since there is only one Scripture, there is only one form of Scripture which is actually the authoritative representation. This is not the originals for us (or for most New Testament times peoples), because they are gone. It is not the original languages, because no single extant perfect presentation of the Scripture can be found there. It is not in the collective of all Scripture evidence, because that has already been utilised, refined and presented in a gathered form, and finalised, namely, the King James Bible. It is not in the variety of all versions today, because they contradict and differ to each other and do not agree that there is one final authority, nor do they match up to it.

Clearly, "baptize" and "church" are God's words in English for use and understanding by the Church throughout the world. These Biblical English words have meanings which are discerned by studying and conferring Scriptures, and by our spiritual understanding of Biblical English even as we increase in a proper understanding of natural English.

Originally Posted by bibleprotector

Freesunday, by "infallible translation" are you implying that King James Bible believers generally teach that the translation was made by inspiration from 1604 to 1611?

By infallible, I mean its original sense that it is considered both infallible and inerrant. The 1611 product being your perfect edition.

These Biblical English words have meanings which are discerned by studying and conferring Scriptures, and by our spiritual understanding of Biblical English even as we increase in a proper understanding of natural English.

Neither a straight reading nor a "spiritual understanding" of the KJV will let anyone come to the conclusion that "baptism" is to be by immersion only. Only the definition of the Greek term will help you come to that conclusion. I also know that in 1611, the translators could not use the term "immersion" for obvious religious implications. My KJVOnly professors of the past made a huge deal out of "baptism" by immersion alone and "church" as assembly, but they always went back to the Greek to support their conclusions.

I am not here to "get ugly" on this subject. I was KJVOnly, but am no longer. That being said, I have wondered why it is impossible to find much pure KJVOnly literature on the subject of the use of these terms. The TROnly guys don't have this issue. Those who are KJVOnly purists do.

[bibleprotector]

By infallible, I mean its original sense that it is considered both infallible and inerrant. The 1611 product being your perfect edition.

But is not the original sense 100% here in English? Otherwise how is it that the Word of God can be said to be present today, or to go into all the world, to every nation, etc?

By "original sense" I interpret the meaning of the original writer, and that as perceived by the original audience. This can easily be a false way to examine the Bible, because it relegates present interpretations onto the past.

Since the full meaning has, by God's power, been rendered and presented in English, we may be confident that every word we come across has been providentially placed there by God Himself (through use of various means and methods).

So when we come to the word "baptism", we see that it is an ENGLISH WORD with a meaning or definition given in English. Clearly, it does not mean just "immersion", though we may see from Scripture that baptism does involve immersion.

This idea that the "Greek meaning" is the real one is false. I repeat, the word "baptism" is an English word, with a meaning that may be found by examining the English Bible, as well as by having a general good knowledge of English words.

It is true that the traditional Greek text would, if rightly understood, support both the Bible and right doctrines, but this is both unnecessary and counter to proper practice. It is unnecessary because the Word is fully present in English, and all the study and vindication has already been accomplished by people who have looked at the Greek up to perhaps the year 2000 (Dr Thomas Holland being the representative of the last). It is counter to proper practice because it is subject to error, a rejection of the providence of God with the English Bible and not truly useful for edifying. Appealing to the Greek today is most likely to be to alter doctrine, rather than to accept it as is presented by the King James Bible.

To claim that the translators of 1611 did not use one or other words for "religious reasons" is really not the case. They were not merely translating according to their sectarian bias. They were translating according to the Spirit of truth, that is, of fidelity and excellence, or accuracy and exactness.

It is a Romanist doctrine to say that tradition is equal to Scripture, and yet this is the idea that is presented today by those who do not see the correctness of the King James Bible. They think that somehow the translators’ doctrine had an equality (by an interfering quality) to the Scripture (which was therefore altered or rendered according to their limited and wrong understandings). This is altogether a false, Babylonish accusation. It is denying that God has worked providentially in history and used men despite their personal failings, errors or lackings.

It is clear that the 1611 translators were making their appeal to truth rather than to their own relatively limited understandings of true doctrine. This is because they were handling the word of God, and were translating it as God’s Word, not as interpreters, but being faithful to what God’s words were and what they meant. The Bible has hard sayings, and there is no doubt that various sayings were hard or dark to these translators, though they laboured to present the words faithfully in English. They made a perfect translation, regardless of their individual imperfections.

The reason why TRO people do not have an issue is because they have accepted the false principle that the real truth or authority is still in the original languages. The proper KJBO position is to accept that God has been well and fully able to get the truth authoritatively into one final text and translation in English for the world. Therefore, if the English Bible says “baptism” or “church”, we study the Scripture, seek spiritually and examine rightly to see what these things mean.

Christ did not appoint the office of “Greek interpreter” into His Church. The Apostles did not instruct the foreigners to look to the Greek or Hebrew for the real Scripture or the real meanings. It is true that the real meanings were in Hebrew and Greek, and that those words being preserved in those languages to at least 1611 were useful, but now we have the blessing of having the full text and full sense in English. In fact, it is by the English Bible that the full text and proper translation is accessible to anyone in the world today, and especially since English is becoming the global language, it basically allows the English Bible to be the ONLY Bible for everyone, Jew and Gentile, English or Italian.