Here’s a statement I made recently on an anti-King James Bible only forum,
The Reformation was not about going to the original languages specifically as such, but about believing Scripture was available and to be rightly understood, and that Romanism was corrupt. This means that the emphasis was on the Scripture coming into English above the emphasis of accepting Greek witness of Scripture which had come to hand. It assumed Scripture was available and readings recoverable rather than the modern anguished Greek-centric critical analytical view which is still grappling about with the Greek rather than having any resolution that things are right in English. The modern approach is essentially anti-Reformation because it denies that having a fixed Bible is a common possession, instead, like Romanism, full truth is locked away in another language, and only select individuals are “authorised” to deal with (and expound) it. While Greek was the main vehicle for NT early transmission, neither that language (though used by Apostles) is any more special, nor are surviving MSS any more venerable, than having Scripture common at hand properly in a resolved English form. I know what was communicated in Greek because we believers have a correct text (readings) and translation of it. The real Protestant Reformation-derived view is not “what do we think God said and meant in Greek”, but “what does God say exactly”. This necessarily leads to the conflict between the believing view of Prov. 22:20, 21 versus the “grammatical-historical” (i.e. revisionist) approach of modernistic hermeneutics. Foundationally behind all this is whether one starts from Scripture at hand and the doctrine therein to identify a correct providentially supplied copy, or whether one begins under the influence of Enlightenment-derived philosophy of external investigations into MSS, readings, probability, weight, empirical analyses, rationalisation, subjective opinion and the assumption that error prevails (in transmission and in recovery). This is an ideological battle between faith and antichristian modernism in the Protestant churches. Sadly, many good Chistians have been influenced (e.g. modern versions) by the other side. This is the great conflict for English-speaking Civilisation in our time.
Sadly, those against the King James Bible’s perfection are resorting to a deistic kind of view where perfection was only in the original inspiration, and that error has interfered in both the transmission and the recovery (modern textual critical) process. In other words, they are saying it is basically a law that you can’t have a perfect Bible ever.
