So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air, 1st Corinthians 14:9.
For too long the King James Bible community has been riven by a rather shallow group who cling to the fiction that the Textus Receptus is perfect, but that the King James Bible can be retranslated at will as long as the TR (Textus Receptus) is the text used. In a very good article in the Detroit Baptist Theological Journal Website (Here), Dr. Mark Ward has demonstrated that there was no perfect Textus Receptus at the time of the translation of the King James Bible, and that those TR men who cling to it rather than the English of the King James Bible are in actuality in the same camp as those men searching through a wider variety of manuscripts for the real bible.
For those of you who aren't quite sure what all of this is about, the Textus Receptus is the general name given to the group of surviving Greek Manuscripts that come closest to the King James Bible. The vast majority of seminaries and colleges no longer trust those manuscripts but have moved on to theories of manuscript transmission that encompass a far greater variety of ancient Greek Texts, some of them being hundreds of years older than most Textus Receptus Manuscripts.
Whereas the King James Translators no doubt had in their possession Greek manuscripts from the Textus Receptus, they made use of scriptures translated into other languages early in the Christian era. For example, 1st John 5:7 is missing in most Greek manuscripts but it was quoted by early church fathers and it is found in early translations into Latin and Syrian in the first few centuries of the Church Age.
The translators made the proper judgment that the Greek manuscripts showed evidence of having been tampered with in the 4th and 5th centuries. Therefore they trusted the eye witness of translators who saw early Greek manuscripts and translated them into languages actually being used in churches. Keep in mind, there was almost no legitimate faith community using the Greek Language much past the 2nd or 3rd centuries.
By the 2nd or 3rd centuries, the Greek language had become what it is today, a playground for silly academics of the stripe who wonder "how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?". Serious study and adherence to the word of God has always been done in the common tongues of the people. Men learn their doctrine from the English Bible and then spend a lifetime trying to justify it in the Greek Language. Mark Ward's article should be saved and used by anyone who has ever crossed swords with a faithless TR man masquerading as a King James Bible Believer.
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