Drawing again from Laurence Vance’s Archaic Words and the Authorized Version we turn to Appendix 4 where he lists all the archaic words he found in the NIV, NASB, NKJV, and NRSV. It seem fair to conclude that archaic words would fall among those most suited to be False Friends seeing that archaic words have either passed out of use or are on the verge of passing out of use. As such English-speakers may very well think they know what these words mean but in the end do not which is the very definition of a False Friend according to Mark Ward.

The trouble for Ward is that such archaic words, False Friends, and potential False Friends occur in modern versions and in significant numbers as the following lists show.

Archaic Words in the NIV

abode, ancients, aright, asunder, away with, beckon, begotten, bier, bewitched, bowels, calved, celestial, coney, confections, convince, cormorant, decked, deride, distill, dung, effect, estate, forevermore, fowl, girdle, hallowed, haunt, heresies, infamy, inasmuch, insatiable, jeopardy, kernels, laden, lance, lusty, mantle, mattock, naught, nurtured, odious, osprey, pangs, phylacteries, plowshare, rend, respite, rushes, soothsayer, spoil, suckling, temperate, tetrach, trafficked, unto, usury, vaunt, vestments, vex, wanton, yokefellow.

Archaic Words in the NASB

abase, abated, abode, adjure, alms, ancient, apparel, aright, art, asunder, away with, backbiting, beget, beseech, bewail, bewitched, bondwoman, bowels, breeches, brimstone, calves, canst, cleave, comely, constrains, cormorant, coaches, covert, crib, dainty, dearth, deck, deride, didst, distill, doest, dost, doth, dung, effect, eminent, engines, estate, evermore, familiar, feigned, fetch, firstlings, fleshhook, footmen, forbearance, fowl, fuller, gaiety, garners, gavest, girdle, graven, gross, guile, handmaid, harrow, hast, haunt, heresies, hinds, importune, impotent, inasmuch, issue, jeopardy, know, laden, laud, layer, lightness, litters, lordly, lunatic, lusty, mail, maintenance, mammon, mantle, maranatha, mattock, milch, mill, nether, nurtured, odious, offscouring, pangs, paramours, perdition, phylacteries, pipes, plowshare, presbytery, principalities, putrefaction, raiment, rampart, ravening, remission, rend, reprobate, requite, riot, rushes, seemly, seest, seethe, shalt, sherd, speakest, stay, strait, suckling, swaddling, tares, temperate, tenons, teraphim, tetrach thee, thereon, thine, thou, thy, timbrel, trafficked, travail, unto usury, vagabond, valor, vaunt, venture, verily, vermilion, vex, virtue, wanton, warp, wayfarers, whence, wherewith, woof, wrought, yea, yonder

Archaic Word in the NKJV

abase, abode, alms, amiss, anise, apparel, aright, austere, away with, backbiters, beckoned, beggarly, begot, bemoan, beseech, bewail, bewitched, bittern, bondwomen, brimstone, calves, carnal, celestial, circumspect, cloven comeliness, concourse, confederacy, convince, covert, crib, dainties, daubed, dayspring, debased, decks, deride, dispensation, disquiet, distill, dung, effect, epistle, eventide, evermore, familiar, fan, feigned, fetch, flanks, flay, footmen, forbearance, foursquare, fowl, fuller, gad, godhead, graven, greyhound, gross, hallowed, haunts, hemlock, henceforth, heresies, immutable, impudent, inasmuch, issue, jeopardy, jot, know, laden, laud, laver, litters, lordly, lusty, mail, mammon, mantle, mattock, mill, mite, nativity, offend, offscouring, omnipotent, or ever, pangs, paramours, phylacteries, pipes, plowshare, potentate, principality, prognosticators, shod, smith, soothsayer, spoil, straits, suckling, tares, temperate, tenons, terrestrial, tetrarch, therein, timbrel, tittle, unto, usury, vagabond, valor, vehement, verity, vermilion, vestments, vex, virtue, visage, wanton, warp, wayfaring, whence, whereupon, whet, winebibber, woof, wrought, yea, yonder

Archaic Words in the NRSV

abase, abate, abode, adjuration, alms, apparel, assuage, asunder, augment, away with, backbiting, beget, beggarly, bemoan, beseech, bewail, bewitched, bier, bowels, calving, cleft, clemency, comely, coneys, constraints, cormorant, covert, crib, dainty, debased, decked, delectable, disquieted, dissembles, distill, dromedaries, dung, effect, enjoined, ensign, ensues, estate, eventide, evermore, execration, familiar, firmament, firstling, flagon, flay, footmen, forbear, foursquare, fowl, fuller, gad, garner, goodly, gross, guile, hallowed, haltingly, harrow, haunt, henceforth, hoarfrost, impudent, inasmuch, isles, know, laden, lance, laud, laver, litters, lusty, mail, maintenance, mantle, mattock, milch, mill, naught, noontide, obeisance, pipes, plowshare, pound, rampart, ravening, remission, rend, riotous, soothsayer, stay, straits, stripling, supplant, surfeit, swaddling, temperate, teraphim, thereupon, thrice, timbrel, trafficked, unshod

Of the 25 “False Friends” which Ward treats in his book, 5 are present in the modern translation: bowels, heresies, issue, spoil, and haltingly.

If edification requires intelligibility understood in a Wardian way, and so he declares the Authorized Version an unsuitable version of the Bible for modern day English-speakers, then to remain consistent he should include, at a minimum, the NIV, NASB, NKJV, and NRSV as unsuitable translations as well and by the same standard. Why? Because even the modern versions retain words which Ward regards as False Friends. Additionally, these modern versions contain a slew of dead/archaic words.

Again, Ward is a nice guy, but his scholarship on this point is spotty at best. And it is this point that rest at the very foundation of this argument and contribution to the textual/version discussion. It is my hope that he would have the integrity to walk back the greater part of his contribution to the textual/version issue and then rethink his aim and trajectory should he continue in this discussion. It is quite apparent. There is just too much he hasn’t thought about and too little that he has read on this topic.

On a separate note, in honor of the 4th of July we will be discounting ebooks over the course of the weekend. Stay tuned for more info and let your friends know because friends tell friends about free books.

Following up on a prior post in the same vein, I am reminded of the words of the Apostle Peter. A fisherman from Galilee who walked with our Lord, the master teacher, for 3 years. Peter was with the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration and preached at Pentecost. Yet with these overflowing credentials Peter proclaims that the Apostle Paul, an Apostle born out of due time and least among the Apostles, has put forward things hard to be understood.

The Apostle Peter writes in his second epistle,

“And also in all his [Paul’s] epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.”

2 Peter 3:16

As I noted in my prior post, Mark Ward is fond of saying that “Edification requires intelligibility.” I went on to point out that “intelligible” means, “able to be understood.” Here the Apostle Peter by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit proclaims that the Apostle Paul writes things that are “hard to be understood.” And what is Peter’s critique of these “hard to be understood” things?

Albert Barnes observes in his Notes on the Whole Bible,

“Things pertaining to high and difficult subjects, and which are not easy to be comprehended. Peter does not call in question the truth of what Paul had written; he does not intimate that he himself would differ from him. His language is rather that which a man would use who regarded the writings to which he referred as true, and what he says here is an honorable testimony to the authority of Paul.”

Albert Barnes, Notes on the Whole Bible, 2 Peter 3:16.

Barnes begins by pointing out what Peter is not doing. Peter is not questioning Paul’s words though He is eminently capable of choosing different words. Nor is Peter employing his office as an Apostle to withstand Paul to the face because, “Edification requires intelligibility and sometimes Paul is unintelligible to people.” Seeing that 1 Corinthians is currently regarded as one of the earliest if not the earliest written book of the NT, Peter could have said, “Paul in your first letter to the Corinthian Church, you said ‘except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken [14:9]?’ And now here you are writing things hard to be understood even by me. Paul, you are doing the very thing you tell other people not to do.'”

This would have been the perfect time for Peter to withstand Paul to the face for contradicting his own message to the fledgling church. Paul declares himself to speak in tongues more than all in Corinth (1 Cor. 14:18) and commands that people speaking in tongues ought speak words “easy to be understood” (1 Cor. 14:9). Yet, according to Peter, he [Paul] insists on writing things hard to be understood (2 Peter 3:16).

So Ward has either got to run with the idea that Paul is contradicting his own command in inspired Scripture or he is going to need to nuance his position a bit more. Maybe something like, Paul in 1 Corinthians 14 is talking about foreign languages via the sign gifts and Peter is talking about things that will need study and with that study understanding will come. The former talks about unlearned foreign languages and the latter is things you need to learn in your own language or through a teacher.

So when TR/KJV folks encourage their brothers in Christ to study, read, get the dictionary out, get out the lexicon, and use the online study helps, are they not simply falling in line with the Apostle Peter here? This won’t be the first time you will need study helps. In fact, the brightest and most able among us still use study helps in understanding the Bible. You know why? Because some places in Scripture are hard to be understood.

Indeed, as Barnes points out,

“… those portions of the writings of Paul, for anything that appears to the contrary, are just as ‘hard to be understood’ now.”

Albert Barnes, Notes on the Whole Bible, 2 Peter 3:16.

Peter goes on to tell us what happens when certain people, certain unlearned and unstable people come in contact with Paul’s hard to be understood writings. That is, Peter tells us that the unlearned and unstable twist, contort, and torture the words of Paul. Who exactly are the unlearned? The word Peter uses ἀμαθής means “ignorant”, or those who cannot or will not learn. How about the unstable? Who are they? Peter uses the word ἀστήρικτος meaning those who are not established in the faith, who lack proper moorings.

So those who will not or cannot learn and also those who lack proper moorings in the faith, take Paul’s hard to be understood words, and wrest, twist, and torture them. What again is Peter’s response? Does he call Paul to change his words for the sake of the unlearned and unstable? Does he exhort Paul to be consistent with his command in 1 Corinthians 14? Wouldn’t it better if Paul would simply use more easily understood words? I mean, doesn’t he know that he is speaking to the poor, the wretched, and the slave of the region? How many of Paul’s recipients in Corinth or Galatia or Philippi were steeped in Jewish ritual and tradition or had Paul’s education and upbringing? Even the Apostle Peter who walked with the Lord for three years calls Paul’s writings hard to be understood, how much more so a temple prostitute in Ephesus, and yet Paul persists in his hard-to-be-understood writing.

In sum, 1.) simply because something is hard to be understood does not mean it needs to be changed or abandoned. Rather, for the Apostles Peter and Paul, the expectation was that the reader, the Christian would change which is exactly what we have been saying. Study not only to grow in your theological education but to grow in your literary, grammatical, syntactical, and linguistic education as well. 2.) As it currently stands, Mark Ward’s interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14:9 seems to give rise to a contradiction in Scripture via 2 Peter 3:16. In the former Paul commands things easy to be understood and in the latter Peter observes that Paul goes against that command by offering things that are hard to be understood.

In conclusion, I leave you with words from the Westminster Confession 1.7,

“All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear to all.”

Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.7.

If Ward is going to start calling himself a Reformed Baptist, he may need to brush up on the Perspicuity of Scripture and its relationship to intelligibility and edification.

For the Church, whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. So read, study, and investigate the Scriptures with all your might. Some of your study will be hard, but the fruit of that labor will satisfy your very soul. Beyond that, the blessing and unity resulting from a standard sacred text among the English-speaking church far outweighs the difficulties we all face from time to time in the study of God’s word.

Speaking of the Bereans, Luke writes,

“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and search the scriptures daily whether those things were so.”

Acts 17:11

John speaking of the Ephesian Church writes the following in a similar vein,

“…thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars.”

Revelation 2:2

At the inception of the Church, generally speaking, first century Christians had three forms of special revelation: the sign gifts, the Old Testament, and the Apostolic Message. In both of the passages mentioned above we see that the Church, the fledgling Church, the Church without commentaries and study helps, was able to and accurately performed the work of determining what was the Apostolic Message and what was not – what was the word of God and what was not.

Indeed, as the Westminster Confession of Faith observes,

“All synods or councils, since the Apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err; and many have erred. Therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith, or practice; but to be used as a help in both.”

WCF 31.3

How exactly were they, the Church, able to determine what was the Apostolic Message, what was the word of God, and what was not? By the analogy of faith. In Acts 17:11, the Bereans compared Scripture with Scripture to see “whether those things be so.” In Revelation 2:2, John records that the Ephesian Christians tested/tried those who claimed to be apostles but where not. In like manner, we see in 1 John 4:1 that the Church is “believe not every spirit, but to try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”

Albert Barnes commenting on 1 John 4:1 writes,

“If they taught what God had taught in his word, and if their lives corresponded with his requirements, and if their doctrines agreed with what had been inculcated by those who were admitted to be true apostles, 1 John 4:6, they were to receive them as what they professed to be.”

Albert Barnes, Notes on the Whole Bible, 1 John 4:1.

Again the impetus and power to determine what is or is not the word of God is to compare what is said by a true or false apostle with the words of Scripture. This of course assumes, that the Church in the first century assumed the Old Testament, which was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and on and on was indeed the word of God and superior to the authority of a person professing to be a apostle whether that be Paul or some other.

What is more, I would like to ask my Critical Text/Multiple Version Only [CT/MVO] brothers whether they believe any one of the myriad of Bibles they hold to is a sufficiently reliable source to critique the Apostle Paul or the Apostle Peter? Put more concretely, in a world where the Old Testament shadows and figures are fulfilled in Jesus, and then Paul in Romans or the writer of Hebrews begins to show how the Gospel has gone to the Gentiles and that Jesus of Nazareth is greater than angels and the entire Jewish sacrificial system, do you believe that your subjective appraisal of the Bible as “sufficiently reliable” is going to be able to authoritatively persuade you and the Apostle Paul if he errs in his presentation?

It is also interesting to point out that the Church was able to determine the words of God, the Apostolic Message without the means of textual criticism. Certainly a form of textual criticism existed at that time seeing that there were many copies and manuscripts of the Old Testament. Still, the Scripture does not call the saint to employ textual criticism. Instead, they are commanded to search the Scriptures.

My point is this, 1.) if you put the words of God in front of God’s people whether they be the words of an Apostle or the words of the Old Testament, they can determine whether those words are from God or not by hearing the voice of the Shepherd through the power of the Spirit. It is no different now and they can do it without the subjective artistic commentary of the textual scholar.

2.) There is no guarantee nor is their any meaningful argumentation for the CT/MVO position that a sufficiently reliable Scripture is suited to withstand an Apostle of Christ to the face should that Apostle stray from the message given to them by Christ. In short, you need to raise the bar for “sufficient reliability” by orders of magnitude from “You can get saved out of this Greek NT or version” to “You can rightfully question and even oppose an Apostle of Christ out of this Greek NT or version”. And as I’m sure you know, Apostles talked about more than the way to salvation. Or as Barnes points out,

“No one should be received as a religious teacher without the clearest evidence that he has come in accordance with the will of God.”

Albert Barnes, Notes on the Whole Bible, 1 John 4:1.

This includes the version from which you read, Christian. Putting Barnes’ words another way, “No Bible should be received as a religious teacher without the clearest evidence that it has come in accordance with the will of God.” But for our CT/MVO brothers they trade “clearest evidence” for “sufficiently reliable evidence”.

Most of my academic carrier opponents of the TR/KJV position have told me that there are some translations that we all agree are terrible translations of the Bible. Presently, the translations usually cited as terrible translations are those like the Mirror Bible, The Passion Translation, and The New World Translation. Sometimes the Message is included in this list.

Don’t get me wrong, I too hold that these translations are terrible translations, but why, according to the Critical Text/Multiple Version Only position, are these translations “terrible translations”? What makes them terrible? Who determines what makes these translations terrible and by what authority is that claim made?

Let us assume for a moment that The Passion Translation [TPT] is the inspired infallible word of God in English. For any of us to claim that the TPT is terrible is to judge wrongly regarding the words of God in English. That would be quite a weighty failure in judgement, don’t you agree? So by what standard, by what authority, do any of us claim that the TPT is a terrible translation?

Is TPT a terrible translation because it strays from the commonly understood content of Scripture? Is TPT using phrases and making translation changes which are so different from the “accepted” multitude of other translations? This seems to hardly be an objection seeing that once upon a time the current accepted modern versions did the very same thing when they strayed from the Authorized Version. So maybe TPT is not a terrible translation. Perhaps it is just going to take time for the Church to get used to it.

I think it likely that TPT is rejected as a terrible translation because it translates the Bible in a way deemed unfaithful to the originals. And who deems TPT to be an unfaithful translation of the textual tradition? How do we know that current Critical Text proponent simply don’t have the stomach to do what their academic forefathers did in turning the trajectory of the English-speaking Church from the KJV to the RSV? It seems to me that when Critical Texts advocates or Multiple Version Only advocates gripe about TPT or the Mirror Bible or the Message they sound more and more like the King James Version camp, but of course are very late to the game.

Additionally, the Critical Text/Multiple Version Only folks are more in our camp by rejecting TPT. They draw a line in the sand, though it is unclear what authority allows them to draw such a line. Critical Text/Multiple Version Only advocates reject certain translations as faithful translations of God’s words.

They do exactly the same thing as we do though we exclude more translations from the “faithful translations” pool. For our part though we have an argument for why we reject the TPT and the myriad of modern translations. We have philosophical arguments based in properly basic Christian belief and warranted and rational beliefs. We have exegetical arguments grounded in historic orthodoxy and careful treatment of the original languages. We have robust theological arguments, again based in historic orthodoxy and consistent with Reformed Bibliology.

Our opponents on the other hand have arguments like, “I don’t like the way it sounds” and “That translation does not fit the prevailing subjective translations philosophy supposed by the academy.” Or they may argue, “These ‘terrible translations’ affect major doctrine.” Which of course is ridiculous if TPT is God’s word it is teaching major doctrine and ought to be considered an authority in every Christian’s life.

If TPT is not God’s word according to the Critical Text/Multiple Version Only crowd, how much of it is not God’s word? How do you measure that? What is the threshold which makes a translation a terrible translation? Who determines that threshold? Why should we trust that person’s stated threshold?

To my Critical Text/Multiple Version Only brothers, we believe you when you say TPT is a terrible translation, but it is wholly unclear why you believe that and by what authority you hold that belief.

On this point you are no different than atheists. Atheists seem to know rape is wrong, but they can’t explain why without provincial appeal to the assumed relative subjective social contract of their contemporary society. Even then their moral structure falls apart because morality need a transcendent source which has immediate and effectual causal power in the present i.e., God knows your sin, He will judge your sin, and be sure your sins will find you out.

The Critical Text/Multiple Version Only position is the same. It is not Christian. That is, the Critical Text/Multiple Version Only position is not grounded in the revealed words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as revealed in the 66 books of the Canon. Instead all appeals to standards, authority, and threshold are punted to the assumed relative subjective authority of the prevailing contemporary opinions regarding textual criticism.

In sum, the Critical Text/Multiple Version Only position is very much like our position in that certain translations are not faithful to the originals and are in this sense terrible. The difference is we here at StandardSacredText.com know these translations are unfaithful and we can explain why from a distinctively Christian position anchored in exegesis, theology, and philosophy. Our opponents know certain translations are unfaithful to the originals, but their attempts to explain why are no better, no more Christian, and no more effectual than those of common garden variety atheists.