Alan O’Reilly is one of those obscure people who actually sort of believes that the 1769 Edition of the KJB itself is the perfect Word of God. He states, “It took millennia for God to perfect it, the task not being finalised until Dr Benjamin Blayney’s AV1611 Edition of 1769 but Final Authority is and always will be the 1611 Authorised English Holy Bible”.

Except, he realises that there a few small issues with the 1769, so he has to encompass all editions, like Oxford, London, Cambridge Concord, PCE, etc., in other words, he is clumsily trying to tell us that he supports the 1769 family.

He says that his word/Scripture from God is “the 1611 Holy Bible in its current bona fide perfected editions that follow Dr Blayney’s 1769 Oxford Edition. With the understanding that perfection does not mean verbatim, the Cambridge Cameo and Cambridge Concord Editions are two such perfected editions even though they differ in a number of minuscule aspects from each other and from the 1769 Oxford Edition.”

As you can see, he can’t actually have the 1769 as his final standard because he knows the Cambridge Concord and the Pure Cambridge Edition (PCE) came after it and that they all differ to each other!

So he refers to the “book of the LORD” and is talking about perfection, but actually cannot define exactly where the exact words are… this is because he has confused the concept of version and translation with Edition (let alone setting). What he doesn’t get is that the Book of the Lord is first of all the Scripture itself, and then it is the version and translation of the King James Bible. Quite separate to that agreed truth, we have to see that we want a properly edited form of the King James Bible. Yes, Blayney’s work is good, but it certainly is not precisely perfect editing.

The Blayney Bible of 1769 is perfect in as much as the version and translation of 1611 is perfect. So that’s not the perfect we need to be talking about. We need to know what actually is correct right down to the very words and spellings. Well, Mr O’Reilly can’t tell us that, because he is busy with his arms wide saying all the editions which follow from 1769 and their little differences here and there. It seems like there is a pantheon.

He then tries to say that Dr Blayney’s 1769 Oxford Edition is “the standard edition for current bona fide perfected editions”. But how can a standard precede what came after it which is perfected? Isn’t it, as the translators of 1611 themselves stated,

“Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the latter thoughts are thought to be the wiser: so, if we building upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen by their labours, do endeavour to make that better which they left so good; no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us”?

Well, we know that the PCE is better than the 1769.

Mr O’Reilly then takes the 12 tests to identify the PCE and analyses them in comparison to the 1769. That’s really not how the tests are to be used, as there are lists available from my website which give a more comprehensive list of differences between the PCE and 1769, and also I have a list comparing the PCE with the Cambridge text that was being printed prior to it. (As well as information on the PCE versus the Concord.)

Just using the 12 tests method, he concludes that the PCE follows the 1769 four times and restores 1611 readings eight times. This is an unscientific methodology, seeing as the PCE as a whole is like a Cambridge form of the 1769 with a few corrections, which mathematically would make it probably more than 99.99% the same as the 1769 Edition.

Mr O’Reilly then makes another kindergarten level statement, writing, “The Cambridge Cameo and PCE Pure Cambridge Edition match for all 12 readings.” If he bothered to understand what the PCE is, he would know that (a.) the PCE has been printed in many editions including the Cameo for many years, (b.) when I made the electronic text of the PCE I extensively consulted a 1938 Cameo and (c.) the Cameo of today is not PCE.

So then, Mr O’Reilly has to admit that he accepts, “the 1769 Oxford and bona fide post-1769 Editions”. Well, that is a step towards the PCE, but the problem is he is keeping his arms wide, so he wants to accept the Concord as right as well, even though the PCE and the Concord are not the same!

He then tries to explain what he calls “PCE onlyism”. He says, “Insistence on the PCE as exclusively the perfect AV1611 comes from a certain Matthew Verschuur in 2007. … He has a useful link to the PCE Text as a PDF but he also lists what I suggest that we can take as his perception of the major differences between the PCE and other AV1611 Editions that don’t follow it 100%.”

So far, what he has tried to do is minimise any of the real differences between 1769 and the PCE, or any real differences between the PCE and the Concord. He wants to keep his arms wide, and redefine what “perfect” or probably words like “exact” or “pure edition” mean.

But notice he introduces the concept that I am one who insists that the PCE is the exclusively perfect AV1611. This of course is imprecise. As I have said many times, the version-text-readings of 1611 and the translation of 1611 are right. That version and that translation is there in 1611, 1613, 1629, 1638, 1769 and even the Concord Edition… No, as we see, Mr O’Reilly misunderstands my position and seems to imply as if I were saying that the PCE alone is the Word of God and nothing else. Actually, I am saying that only out of editions, there is one perfect Edition.

But because Mr O’Reilly doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t seem to have a perfect, exact or final edition, but his arms are wide and he accepts a group of editions without drilling down to where there are important differences in them.

His view is that the differences between the PCE and say that Concord, or the 1769, are “actually minuscule with no effect on meaning.” Remember he is looking at the 12 tests of the PCE here, so they are not the lists I have made showing notable differences between the Concord and the PCE.

According to Mr O’Reilly, the difference between “spirit” and “Spirit” in Acts 11:28 and 1 John 5:8 are apparently no problem to him, bizarrely, he says, “both readings are correct because each of those scriptures refers to a Spirit-filled man”. While it is true that these verses are referring to people with the Spirit, what is distinct is that the use of the lower case “spirit” tells us it is the Spirit’s knowledge in the human, which information you don’t get if you have just “Spirit”.

Is Mr O’Reilly really going to suggest that we need to know both editions on this point, because he is implying you need both renderings to get the full information, and such a view is both ridiculous and the very same approach as modernists.

No, what we would need is a perfect presentation of a perfect Book which exclusively shows the truth, which is what the PCE does for us. We see “spirit” and that is the information we need. The contradictory or differing information of “Spirit” is confusion and implies that there is no “one word from God” or one to the letter reliable edition.

But Mr O’Reilly calls the PCE view “fraudulent”. Why? Because of some other unrelated accusation. Apparently “PCE onlyists like Verschuur are no different from other Nicolaitans … trying to lord themselves over ‘the body of Christ’”. That’s a wild accusation of course, that comes completely out of left field.

So now the argument is not about why “spirit” is correct (true), or why “spirit” and “Spirit” are both correct (false), but rather an entirely different view, that somehow a boogey-man like me is saying you can only use one edition as everything else is not right (false!). The fact is I am not saying that and I have even said things to such opposite effect as “the Vulgate is the word of God for people who only know Latin”! So then, one questions why I am such an apparently bad person.

Maybe Mr O’Reilly feels lorded over that the PCE is a correct edition (which of course he willingly won’t admit) but doesn’t like the messenger. So then he has to communistically keep his arms wide and say all editions are right.

Well, it does get that nonsensical. Listen to his ultimate schizophrenic thinking:

“This writer’s view is that the differences listed … are less significant than ‘ye’ Jeremiah 34:16, Cambridge editions and ‘he’ Jeremiah 34:16, Oxford editions. Dr Ruckman has shown that both readings are correct and, as indicated, the supposed difference is ‘a thing of nought.’”

No, “ye” and “he” are two different words with two different meanings. There is no way possible that these two words are both right or mean the same thing, or don’t matter, or is a nothing… if jots and tittles matter, and they do, then a “ye” and a “he” difference must be resolved.

He says, concerning “and” or “or” in Joshua 19:2 that “The variant readings are both correct.” Anyone knows that “and” and “or” are two different logical parameters! They do not mean that same thing, they do not express the same meaning.

He says, concerning the difference at 2 Chronicles 33:19, “The variant readings are both correct.” Variant? If variant, varying from what standard? How can a variation be correct? It has to be one or the other, not both.

Even though “farther” or “further” are two different words, which has been shown from the Oxford English Dictionary itself, he claims they “are interchangeable. The variant readings are both correct.”

He says that when comparing the Oxford with the Cambridge that whether it is “son of David” or “Son of David” apparently it doesn’t matter, “the difference is inconsequential” …

That is all opinion, that is just arbitrarily saying two things are both correct when two different things are not the same!

With his re-definition of my beliefs and his label of “PCE onlyism” he says, “The above notwithstanding, given the potential discouragement to genuine Bible believers that PCE onlyism could cause, it is wise to apply Song of Solomon 2:15 ‘Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.’”

Let us weigh the matter properly. We need to have an exact knowledge of the very words of God. We cannot say that variations are equally true. One word is not the same as another.

Therefore this pathetic attempt to summon the hounds to destroy the little foxes is an utterly ridiculous analogy.

And “Nicolaitans” is the PCE spelling, the standard, unsurprisingly Mr O’ Reilly didn’t use the 1769 and Oxford spelling “Nicolaitanes”. That’s because there really is a standard Edition, and it also seems that God has supplied Mr O’Reilly a Cameo to use.