That King James Is Not The Best

So as you peruse the internet have any of you found it interesting that there is another huge debate going on about the King James? When I type in “King James debate” into Google I get story after story and image after image of who is the best basketball player: His Airness, Michael Jordan or King [Lebron] James.

Here on StandardSacredText.com we are going to settle this debate once and for all.

Beyond these numbers, Jordan took the game to a whole other level. Jordan’s ability seemed to show so many other NBA players, indeed the best of his time, to be no match. I mean, watch the game where Jordan scored 63 points while having the flu and then stand in awe. In other words, Jordan was the rising tide which lifted all other NBA players’ game. Lebron has yet to do this. Indeed, he is better than most, but he is not so clearly better that all NBA players have become better as a result of Lebron’s play.

The first year we sent our NBA players to the Olympics, the team on which Jordan played, the basketball players of the world got trounced. In many cases it looked like a Harlem Globetrotters game. In fact it got so bad that network television stop showing the games half way through and switch to something like synchronized swimming. Lebron does not represent such domination in the field and that is because Jordan raised the bar of greatness and it showed itself in the rise of ability and competency both here in the USA and around the world. When Lebron does this, then perhaps he will be the greatest. Until then, he is merely a great player.

Now of course we can’t leave this post as a mere assessment of why Jordan is the GOAT. Let us now turn to a brief discussion on the King James Version debate.

Don’t you find it puzzling that the debate around Jordan and Lebron is about who is the GOAT, the Greatest Of All Time? Don’t you think it would be better to simply refer to Jordan and Lebron as sufficiently reliable basketball players? Can you imagine a Lebron fan or sports commentator saying for a Finals Game 7, “That Lebron James, he’s a sufficiently reliable baller.”?

No, it’s about exceptionalism. Denis Rodman was a sufficiently reliable player for the Bulls, but he is not Michael Jordan, the Greatest Of All Time.

And why is Jordan the GOAT? Is it because he is a man? Is it because he played in the NBA? Is it because he played with the Bulls franchise? Is it because he went to the Finals? No, plenty of other NBA players did these very same things. Jordan is the GOAT because of the details, the shot percentages, the free-throw percentages, the number of wins in a season and in post-season, the number of assists, Jordan’s leadership and many many other factors. It’s the little stuff. Like in American football, it is a game of inches. The point is that greatness is defined by the small stuff.

On the textual issue our opponents would have us abandon exceptionalism. There cannot be one English version that is better than all the others. In fact, to desire such a thing is to be in error. All the versions need to be super. But as that deranged philosopher Syndrome says,

And that is the point of the Textual Confidence Collective. Every man chooses the versions that are right in their own eyes. But as soon as someone comes to cut down the groves, dash their academic idols, and tell them there is only one, out comes the scholastic torches and pitchforks.

And does this not spark thoughts of yet another social ill? Everyone gets a trophy these days. ***whining***Why does Jordan always get the MVP?***the whining continues*** He gets the trophy because he is the best. He performed the best. So as good as other players are they are not exceptional, not like Mike.

So while many in our culture demand that every participant get a trophy so too our Critical Text interlocutors demand that every version or nearly every version get a “Sufficiently Reliable” trophy based on the “You Can Get Saved Out Of That Text” trophy which everyone also gets. While they ignore what is exceptional. They whine and complain that the TR/KJV advocate holds their text to be exceptional, to be better than the rest. And Critical Text advocates simply can’t have inequality like that. In fact, as I argued a week or so ago, in Ward’s case he would have this same society that is degrading by the day, be accommodated for its laziness and misallocation of scholae [i.e., leisure] rather than challenged to reverse course and embrace an exceptional text that is certainly within reach.

Which leads to yet another social ill that modern text-critical advocates continue to stump for in their own way. Everyone has to be equal. We are talking both equal opportunity AND equal outcome. Here again the text-critical advocate claims that all or nearly all English versions are to be given equal opportunity in Christendom and that all these equal opportunity Bibles will yield equal outcomes. Furthermore, anyone who argues differently is a textual bigot. Or again, in the words of Mark Ward, a textual absolutist. Queue the torches and pitchforks.

Returning back to the theme of details and the small stuff mentioned above. Again we see that Critical Text advocates continue to unwittingly or wittingly support further social evils, but of course in their own ways. Consider man and woman and our current cultures’ insistence that man and woman are basically the same thing. And in so many ways the Christian worldview agrees. Man and woman are made in God’s image and are souls that have bodies. These are the major inviolable doctrinal truths. A healthy man and woman both have two ears, two eyes, a nose a mouth, nervous system, a respiratory system, a circulatory system, need oxygen, need water, need digestible calories, have a skeleton overlaid with muscle overlaid with skin, and the list goes on and on and on.

But the details, the details make all the difference: differences in reproductive capacity, water in the skin, presence of testosterone, density of musculature, and on and on. Modern woke intersectionality would have us overlook these “small differences” which in the end would not make a man no longer a man if he had low muscular density or only one ear or one eye. Nor would it make a woman any less of a woman if she were unable to conceive. Both he and she would still be very much made in the image of God and be a soul that has a body.

The same goes for our Critical Text brothers. They would have us believe that the small stuff doesn’t matter because no major doctrine [i.e., all men and women are souls that have bodies] is affected by those errors. Try telling that to a woman who cannot conceive a child though she desperately wants one. “It’s ok Susan. Your inability to have children is small compared to the fact that you are created in the image of God [i.e., no major doctrine is affected by her inability to have children]. In fact, despite your inability to have children you are equal with all other women. ” Just writing this sounds ridiculous on so many fronts. Only a cold and ignorant heart could say such stupid things. But for our Critical Text brothers it is not ridiculous to speak this way about God’s words. Rather such words are thought to be brilliant and balanced.

***NEWS FLASH*** The “small stuff” in Scripture, the stuff that is said not to affect doctrine AND the “big stuff” that does affect doctrine are all the same stuff – inspired Scripture.

Current Woke Biology: Men are personalities that have bodies and women are personalities that have bodies, so both are personalities that have bodies therefore there is no meaningful difference between men and women that affects man/woman doctrine.
Current Evangelical Textual Critic: The NIV is sufficiently reliable, the ESV is sufficiently reliable, and the KJV is sufficiently reliable so there is no meaningful difference between these versions that affects Christian doctrine.

Sometimes you got to laugh to keep from crying.

In sum, the Critical Text/Multiple Version Only [CT/MVO] position objects to exceptionalism among Bible versions and in their own way [i.e., in the field of text-criticism] prop up the false equality trumped up by our broken and breaking culture in the West. All versions or nearly all versions deserve a trophy. To say otherwise is to be a textual bigot. CT/MVO’s continued insistence of downplaying the “small stuff” or “the stuff that doesn’t affect doctrine” plays perfectly into the hand of those who wish to diminish the diminutive but properly important differences between men and women. Biologists do it with people and text-critics do it with the Bible.

The worst thing of all though is that the woke biologist understands what he is doing and its repercussions. The modern evangelical text-critic is utterly oblivious and so much so that he thinks he’s doing the Church and Western Culture a favor. Indeed, the worst tyrants are those who believe they are tyrannizing you for your own benefit.