Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
Today I'm going to be responding to a video by Mark Ward, and before I get into this,
I just want to say that I don't think this is a big issue. I wasn't trying to make a big deal
out of it or anything. So if people disagree with me, that is their prerogative. I have no
problem with that. I just want to respond to this video because I do happen to be right, and I just
want to set the record straight about these things. So I'm going to go ahead and just play
the video, and I'll jump in whenever I want to make a comment.
You can't make this stuff up, and I couldn't pass up this opportunity.
I haven't followed the work of leading King James-onlyist Steven Anderson.
It's difficult to hear any of his substantive points over the din
of the personal abuse that he levels at me and countless others. I do know that he is a very
intelligent and very gifted man, that he knows several languages, including the biblical ones,
but he's also been positively vile in his speech. Malicious, slanderous, coarse,
the heir of Peter Ruckman, though he does to his credit reject the double-inspiration view
associated with Ruckman. One time a church member of mine went searching on YouTube for Mark Ward,
because early in 2020 I was putting out my church's sermons on another channel that I wasn't using,
and this church member stumbled across a Steven Anderson video that was titled
Fake Scholar Mark Ward Exposed. Thankfully, the church member just laughed, and I for my part was
glad to find out the truth about myself so that I could give up scholarship once and for all
and go back to YouTube where I belong. But Anderson has gone much further than this in
his malice toward me, and I predict that he'll do so again after I release this video. I can't say
I relish the attention that I will get from this shimmy eye, but I say with David, let him curse,
because the Lord hath said— This is basically where he's saying that he doesn't want to be
thrown into the briar patch, if you know the story of Br'er Rabbit. So I guess he's really happy that
I'm throwing him in the briar patch now. And I also say with David, is there not a cause?
The King James translators are dead. Somebody needs to defend them against Anderson's charge
that the King James contains a typo in this place. First of all, that statement in and of itself is
absurd to say that the translators need to be defended from my charge that there's a typo.
The translators had absolutely nothing to do with the typesetting of the King James.
Why would the translators be at fault? Because the printer made a typo. The printer, Robert Barker,
made lots of typos. The 1611 edition of the King James is filled with typographical errors that
were corrected over the next several decades. And even all the way in 1769, they're still
correcting typos from the original 1611 edition. You can't blame the translators on that.
The translators translated it correctly. Robert Barker, the printer, introduced typographical
errors. And Robert Barker literally went to prison for his typos in the King James Bible,
and he died in prison. And of course, the most famous example is the 1631 edition,
where he introduced the typo, thou shalt commit adultery, which is called the wicked Bible.
And he was put in prison because he had been so negligent. And so to say that the translators
need to be defended is absurd. Go ahead and get in and start driving. I'm just making this video.
Alright, let's get back to what he's saying here.
So here's what Anderson posted on Facebook just a week ago as I released this video.
This threw me for a loop, Anderson says, when I was preaching tonight. Deuteronomy 21
22. And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death,
and thou hang him on a tree. And then of course, the passage goes on to say that you take him down.
I've always just read this as and he be put to death. But it says and he be to be put to death.
It's a typo, Anderson says. I looked it up in Hebrew and it should just say and he be put to
death. It's funny because I think I've always just read it that way anyway because my brain
was correcting the typo. One would assume that such a statement would be incendiary from Anderson.
Again, I just haven't been able to make myself listen to enough Stephen Anderson to really
understand his position on the King James. I mainly heard him in his one-on-one discussion
with James White a few years back. But I sure thought Anderson took a strong. He says it was
a few years back. It was literally over a decade ago, just for the record. And strict King James
only position. Usually such men don't posit any kind of error in the King James. Not even a typo.
Okay, now that of course is a straw man because of course, we that believe that the King James
Bible is the word of God without error don't believe that it's translated wrongly in any place.
But I have met very few people that would be such reality deniers as to claim that there's never
been a typo in the King James. I mean, that's just flat earth level denial of reality and stupidity
because the 1611 edition of the King James is notorious for having typos. And of course,
you can buy a replica of the 1611 King James. I have one, lots of people have one. They were
selling them at Walmart a while back for the 400 year anniversary. And so if you pull out the
replica and read a few chapters, you'll find typos fairly often because there are, I mean,
I read a lot of it and I just personally found a bunch of typos. Like for example, in 2 Timothy,
when he says the cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest bring with thee
and the books, but especially the parchments and the books is missing. Another time I was reading
in Exodus and there was a line that was just repeated three times in a row. I mean, we could
go on and on lots of examples. And so to claim that King James only is don't believe there could
be a typo. I mean, yeah, there are going to be a few extreme ruckmanite weirdos that might say
that, but that's absurd because anybody who has spent their whole life reading the Bible has found
individual typos in their Bible. You know, my friend, pastor Shelley, he found a place in his
Bible where instead of sin, it said Sino, like S I N O. All right. So obviously we acknowledge that
there are typos. He's trying to act like I'm not King James only or something because I'm saying
that there have been typos in the text. No. Typos don't prevent it from being a perfect translation.
At the very least, they've got constituencies to expect them to maintain the perfection of the
King James. I was very surprised to hear that Anderson did this. How in the world was it worth
the risk of lost followers? How in the world was it worth the risk of lost followers?
Actually, Mark Ward, if you're a man of God, you don't ask yourself, Oh man, should I tell the
truth and risk losing followers? And the use of the word constituency, that's a political term.
Does he think I'm some kind of a politician? Does he think that I'm running for office or something?
Like, I care what people think about my preaching. Like, like I'm, Oh man, I don't want to lose
followers. I better be careful what I preach or, you know, what's the constituency going to think?
You know, as a man of God, it's my responsibility to tell the truth all the time and not care what
the so-called constituency thinks. I mean, I can't even believe that he would make such a statement.
What kind of a preacher even would ask themselves such an ungodly question? Anyway, let's keep going.
And in fact, some people reacted to Anderson in just the way I would have predicted.
One man wrote, KJV has it right. Anderson replied, I'm sure the translators got it right,
but this is a typo probably introduced by the printer. Even this is not acceptable to most
King James onlyists. And Anderson got exactly the kind of response I would have expected from
another commenter. No, it is not a typo. If you think you have found an error in the King James
Bible, you are the error. Why are you placing doubt on the King James Bible and its accuracy?
This is not a typo. Thank you. One commenter who I happened to know was commenting tongue-in-cheek
wrote, impossible. King James is perfect. You're one of them modern perversions guys, aren't you?
And Anderson replied, the translation is perfect, but every book has typos.
That's Anderson's view. The King James is perfect, but typos are okay. One wonders how that might
apply to New Testament textual criticism, but I digress. Anderson went on in the thread to give
what he described as more evidence that it is a typo. Anderson quoted Tyndale's translation
in the Bishop's Bible at Deuteronomy 21-22, neither of which contains this admittedly
difficult phrasing, he be to be put to death. He's right, of course, and this is apropos.
Anderson wrote, the Bishop's Bible was the rough draft that the King James translators were working
from, and Anderson is completely right. And it reads just like the Hebrew in this verse. There
is no way the King James translators changed it to B to B. It was obviously just an error by the
printers. Anderson is getting in trouble. Some commenters are following him, of course,
but others are weighing in against him, and with some alarm in their tone, as I showed.
I won't go any further into the back and forth. There's been more even since I wrote this script.
That's a long enough setup. What's the truth of the matter? I will summarize my viewpoint on this
passage, then explain and defend it. I believe that if he B to B is not a printer error, it was
what the King James translators intended to say. And I don't think it was an error on the part of
the King James translators either, an error that was then preserved by printers who assumed that
the translators knew what they were doing. No, I think the King James translators made a defensible,
if convoluted, translation choice, and that Anderson has been tripped up by an obscure
archaism. I would not call this a false friend, because I just don't think it misleads the reader.
It's just about impossible to process this for contemporary English speakers.
Okay. I'm not tripped up by the difficult grammar here. Obviously, it's a strange and awkward
wording, but I obviously get it how this could be made to work. In fact, this all started when
I was preaching my sermon the other night, and I got to this verse, and I was thrown for a loop,
because I'd always just read it as B put to death, and then I saw the B to B put to death,
and I pulled someone's Bible from the front row and checked to see if it was just a typo in my
Bible. Their Bible said the same thing. So in my sermon, I just treated it as, and he B to B put
to death. I get it that that theoretically could work in English. I'm not saying that it's
completely unintelligent. In fact, that's probably why this typo has persisted for so long,
because people are able to rationalize it, because it's not as obvious that it's a typo when you
dig deeper. I believe it's obvious that it's a typo once you dig deeper, but on the surface,
I can see where people are coming from, because yeah, you can rationalize this.
You can make an intelligible English sentence out of this, okay? And again, if you're at home there
and you disagree with me about this being a typo, I don't think this is a big issue. I don't think
it's a big deal. I see where you're coming from, but I'm 100% convinced that this is a typo, okay?
What I said was the flat earth level denial of reality is people who are saying that, you know,
like there's never been a typo in the King James, when of course throughout the 1600s there were
lots of typos, and the first edition has a lot of typos. All right, let's keep going.
So I would call it instead an obsolete syntactical construction. I've got three big reasons for
thinking all this. First, this wording goes all the way back to the 1611 King James,
and the wording was preserved in the various minor revisions that the King James underwent,
all the way up until the creation of the 1769 version that is still in use today and that I
hold. A number of scholars had a chance to fix this typo over the centuries if it was one,
and they did not. Despite what those that oppose themselves might think, I have a very high regard
for the work of the King James translators. I've heard some people say that strain at a
gnat might be a typo, but I've also seen someone demonstrate that that phrase was in use at the
time. I'm not personally aware of any typos in the King James, aside from the Wicked Bible.
I would think that that's common knowledge, and just, I don't know, it's kind of a weird
statement, like he's just acting like the KJV doesn't have typos except that one time.
I mean, the KJV had a lot of typos that have been corrected. Even if you disagree with me
on this issue about Deuteronomy 21, again, no big deal, but you'd have to acknowledge that
from 1611 to 1769, a lot of typos were corrected. And so if someone comes along and says,
oh, well, you're saying that, you know, the King James Bible isn't the word of God, or it's not a
perfect translation or whatever. Well, then my question would be, are you saying that we didn't
have the perfect word of God until 1769? Because if you're going to say that a typo invalidates
the translation or invalidates the preservation of God's word, then I guess you'd have to say that
we didn't have the preserved word of God between 1611 and 1769 when the, you know, the majority,
or all of the typos, depending on your view, when all the typos were corrected in 1769.
So that, you know, that would be basically an attack on the preservation of God's word
to say, well, we didn't have it between 1611 and 1769 because of all these typos.
So then why are people freaking out if I said there's a typo, if we already know there were
typos for almost two centuries, right? And just to clarify what I was saying here,
obviously it is also preserved in the original Greek and Hebrew, but the people that I'm talking
about who are claiming that a typo would somehow invalidate the KJV as being the perfect word of
God, they believe it's only preserved in the English. So that's what I was referring to.
All right, let's keep going. The museum of the Bible, which read, thou shalt commit adultery.
That surely was a printer error. Ironically, I have more implicit faith in the abilities of
all the folks who touched the various King James revisions over the centuries, at this point,
anyway, than does Stephen Anderson. That feels weird. But there's a big reason that my gut
led me toward trust rather than typo when Stephen went the other direction. I think I've spent more
time really dwelling and dwelling hard on language change. So, second reason, I actually think I can
parse the Elizabethan English here based on what I know.
Wow. Wow. You can actually parse it? Wow. It's not really that hard to parse. He, you know,
if he be, to be put to death. Okay. It's not really that complicated. It's just saying that,
like, if he is to be put to death, like in the future, like the idea would be like,
he's sentenced to be put to death or he's going to be put to death. Like I get it. I don't know
why he's acting like, you know, this is some daredevil stunt that he's going to do to parse
this because it really isn't that complicated. It's, it's, it's a little bit awkward of English,
but I think everybody can pretty much figure this out. What that would mean be to be.
He's going to proceed to lecture us on the use of the English subjunctive. Okay. I guess acting like
I or other people don't understand how to use the English subjunctive,
he's going to make a big deal about this English subjunctive, which is totally missing the point
because if it just said, and he be put to death, that is still a subjunctive B. The first B isn't
the problem. It's the second to be, that's the issue. And so he's going to go on and on about
the subjunctive and act like we don't understand the subjunctive mood. When in reality, that is
not the issue at all, because both readings, whether we say B put to death or B to be put to
death, that's both subjunctive. So what are we even talking about? Anyway, let's jump back in.
Scrammar. There's a point at which this becomes difficult as we'll see,
but still let me do my best to parse the Elizabethan English in this passage. Let's
break it down. The King James regularly uses the construction if he be or if she be. We would
almost certainly say if he is or better if he's like if he's poor, he has a funny way of showing
it. That's what we would say. But the King James uses in this situation what is called a subjunctive
form. We still have this form in contemporary English, we just don't use it and all of the
same situations the King James does language has changed. When we express a wish or a demand,
we use a different form of the verb than if we're describing what is happening or has happened.
Google sent me to these examples. I demand that everyone have an opportunity to speak. If Jane
were here, she could tell us what to do. I think that many people would not observe this distinction
in form. They'd say I demand that everyone here has an opportunity to speak and if Jane was here,
she could tell us what to do. So the subjunctive is a little twee. It's the kind of thing that
English professors do but many others ignore, but it's still absolutely in use by educated folks.
And check out this example of the contemporary English subjunctive. Sharon insisted that she
be notified of any problems. This is recognizably a little formal but just as recognizably current.
This subjunctive construction isn't gone. I confess that I'm not a historical grammarian,
I'm a historical philologist. I deal most typically in the meaning of individual words,
not in sentence structure or grammar. But I think the King James translators used this
subjunctive more often than we do. I think they used it for conditionals, for if statements.
I went and checked out this hypothesis as best I could. And I was right. Wikipedia, at least,
citing a scholarly source, noted this same feature of language. Wikipedia said,
The subjunctive is occasionally found in clauses expressing a probable condition,
such as if I be found guilty. More common is am or should be. For more information,
see English conditional sentences. This usage is mostly old-fashioned or formal,
although it is found in some common fixed expressions, such as if need be.
Isn't that great? Isn't language so cool? If they still worked at Logos,
I'd talk to my linguistic buddies, Jacob Cerrone and Michael Aubrey about this.
Wikipedia just has to be right here, and they cite a serious scholarly resource.
The very same linguistic force that gave us the stock phrase, if need be,
gave us the subjunctive in Deuteronomy 21-22. I think that's what we're seeing.
If a man hath committed a sin worthy of death, and if he be—I'll trail off there. Let's think
of some ways we could finish this sentence. And we can grab them from other places in the
King James. These are direct King James quotes. If he be not able to bring a lamb,
if he be poor and cannot get so much, then he shall take one lamb for a trespass offering to
be waived. I'll keep the quote short. Just look at the kinds of things that can fill in the blank
after if he be—look at the kinds of statuses with which you can fill in that blank. If he be
not able to restore it, if he be not redeemed, if he be poorer than thy estimation, if he be
a god, if he be able to fight with me, if he be gotten into a city.
I think what we have in Deuteronomy 21-22 is this. If he be to be put to death,
or if he be in this status, namely, about to be put to death.
Again, just literally half of this video has nothing to do with the issue at hand. It's
hilarious. About to be put to death. Maybe whoever made this decision and whoever validated it over
the centuries by not revising it felt that they were holding to the logical order in the verse.
If a man commits a sin, and if he is to be put to death, which naturally comes before he's actually
hanged on a tree, then don't leave his body up all night. It's all a little obscure and difficult,
but it's what I think is happening. Though, I admit, I can't find a precisely parallel construction
in the King James. Okay, so here's where he's getting this wrong. He's claiming that the logical
order is that he is going to be put to death, and then he gets hanged on the tree. That's logical
because Mark Ward thinks that hanging on the tree is the method of execution. Here's the problem
that that's not what we see in the Old Testament. You know, we might think, of course, the Lord Jesus
Christ being crucified, and the New Testament authors will come back to this verse and apply
it and talk about Jesus Christ being hanged on the tree, but that's not the actual immediate context
of what they're talking about in the Old Testament. Let me give you some examples of this,
okay, because what this verse is actually talking about is someone who is put to death,
and then they are subsequently hanged upon a tree, meaning that their body is exposed
after they're killed, okay, and this is sort of just hanging up their body as like a warning to
others, a sort of a scarecrow, or just a way to desecrate their corpse after they are put to death.
Let me give you some examples. Genesis chapter 40 verse 19, it says,
yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thy head from off thee, okay, which to me that spells
him being decapitated. It says his head will be lifted from off of him, and he shall hang thee on
a tree. So first he's decapitated, then he's hung on a tree, and the birds eat his flesh, okay.
Joshua chapter 10 verse 26, and afterward Joshua smote them and slew them and hanged them on five
trees. Notice the order. He killed them, and then he hung them on five trees, and they were hanging
upon the trees until the evening, and it came to pass that the going down of the sun that Joshua
commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and so forth, following Deuteronomy chapter 21. So
Joshua chapter 10 verse 26 and 27 is a direct parallel to Deuteronomy 21. We're talking about
someone who's executed as a criminal by one of the methods that the Bible describes, like stoning them
to death or burning them with fire or something like that. God has these methods of execution
that are prescribed in the Bible. After that person is put to death, they would sometimes be
hung from a tree in order to desecrate their corpse so that the birds would eat their corpse
and so forth, and so to say that the logical order demands this reading is incorrect, and
that's what a lot of people are saying. They're saying, well, it's be to be put to death because
obviously they're not put to death before they're hung on the tree. Yes, they are. They are put to
death, then hung on the tree. That's what we actually see in the Old Testament. Now many
centuries later when crucifixion is invented way later, okay, then this verse is going to be applied
to Jesus. Obviously the Holy Spirit, when he inspired Deuteronomy 21, knew that the crucifixion
of Christ is coming, and he's foreshadowing that, but as far as the actual primary context here,
we are talking about people's corpses being exposed after they are killed, and I only gave
you a couple of examples. There are lots of other examples in the Old Testament of corpses being
exposed after the people are killed, and I think Joshua 10 26 and 27, Genesis 40 19,
are very clear on this. So he's wrong about the logic of the order. Hang on a second. I'm finishing
this video, and so I just want to make that important point, and again, I think that that's
why this typo has probably persisted is because people were thinking along those lines because
they hadn't necessarily studied the issue of how many times in the Bible people are hung from a
tree after they're killed or exposed to the elements in some other way after they're killed.
That's what we're talking about here. Anyway, let's move on.
Third and finally, the Oxford English Dictionary sure seems to include this construction and a
sense for it and citations of it. If you know my channel, my reverence for the King James version
is matched only by my reverence for the OED. Both the King James translators and the OED
editors were responsible, rigorous scholars. I have a bumper sticker on my car that says,
the OED says it, I believe it, that settles it. English loves me this I know, for the OED
tells me so. And if I look in the OED, as I am wont to do, like want all the time, like want not,
waste not, like for Polly's want of a cracker the battle was lost,
this is what I find under the word be. With infinitive, which is exactly what we have in
Deuteronomy 21-22, be to be. This means expressing an appointed or arranged future action, hence also
expressing necessity, obligation, duty, fitness, or appropriateness, which is exactly what we have
in Deuteronomy 21-22. The arranged future action is that he be to be put to death. My brain still
wants to hear this the way Anderson's did. Man have committed a sin worthy of death and he be
put to death. The to be still feels extra to me. But according to the Oxford English Dictionary,
these words did not feel extra to a number of English writers over the centuries.
But again, I'm not saying that the English construction isn't possible.
That's not the point. Again, in my sermon, when I got to this verse, I just dealt with the text as
it was written, be to be. And obviously, it's possible. The reason why it's not correct is
because of the fact that it doesn't match the Hebrew. That's the whole point is that
how did I know that this is a typo and not just some strange wording or whatever? Because of the
fact that first of all, the King James is based on the Bishop's Bible. The Bishop's Bible has it
worded the right way that matches what the Hebrew explicitly says. Why would the King James
translators come along and take an accurate translation of the verse that matches the
Hebrew perfectly and change it to this awkward reading that deviates from the plain reading of
the Hebrew text? And look, the Hebrew text is crystal clear in this verse. Obviously,
if someone wants to try to read this be to be reading back into it, they can come up with some
theoretical exotic usages of Hebrew grammar. But if you actually just read the verse in Hebrew,
and look, when I looked up this verse in Hebrew, it's actually a really straightforward verse.
I didn't have to look anything up. I just pulled out a Hebrew Bible, looked at it. It was obvious
right away what it was saying. And so by looking at the Hebrew, looking at the Tyndale, the Bishops,
Occam's razor folks, the simplest explanation is probably right that it's probably just a
typographical error because there are typos. There have historically been for sure typos in the King
James. So if they corrected 99.9% of them and a typo slipped through, if you're going to say that
that invalidates the KJV as the Word of God, I mean, that's absurd. Because then you'd basically
be saying that we didn't have the Word of God until 1769. Because we know for sure that there
were lots of typos before that. Anyway, let's move on here. Udall wrote in 1588,
if the whole be to be observed until the end. Locke wrote in 1692, if a gentleman be to study
any language, it ought to be that of his own country. Defoe wrote in 1725, mighty uneasy
about their being to go back again. Malthus wrote in 1803, it must be to be depended on.
Some of those writers did not use the precise phrase we see in the King James in our Deuteronomy
passage, but some did. And using Google Books, I can find more. The phrase Anderson sees as a
typo gets used in similar ways in literature, from, very broadly speaking, around the time
of the King James. Here's a defense of the government established in the Church of England
for ecclesiastical matters. This is a bit obscure, but the author is speaking of pastors who are
ordained but don't have a congregation. If he is out of his charge or congregation,
he is out of his ministry, and therefore he is a layman. So the writer says of such a man,
an ordained man who doesn't have a church, if he preach, his preaching be no preaching,
and if he minister the sacraments, they are no sacraments. This writer goes on to say,
if those actions of his be to be otherwise accounted, then is it by reason that he
himself is to be otherwise accounted that did them. And if he be to be accounted otherwise,
then it is in respect he is a minister. I frankly have difficulty following this
older English, but I can see some key things. I can see exactly the same words I saw in the
King James, and I can see them being used in what sure seems to me to be the same way.
Francis Bacon used the phrase, if he be to be commended. Another writer wrote,
if he be to be counted a wise and discreet man. Another writer wrote in 1707, if he be to be found.
Another wrote of Christ, if he be to be worshiped. There weren't tons of these references. This
phrase is obscure, but I don't think it could have been a typo in all of those instances.
The Hebrew original and the Greek original to look at. And so that's what you use to
verify the King James. I mean, you know, how do we even know that the King James Bible
is an accurate translation? Because for the last 400 years, it's been rigorously compared
to the original Greek and Hebrew, and it stands the test of time. It stands up to scrutiny. You
can read the entire Greek New Testament. You can read the entire Hebrew Old Testament and see that
the King James is faithfully translating the original languages. You can see that it's accurate.
Okay, this isn't like Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon from golden tablets that then
disappeared. It's not like after the King James translators translated the Greek and Hebrew,
the Greek and Hebrew disappeared. They still exist. And so, yeah, be to be can work,
except that that's not what it says in Hebrew doesn't fit the context.
It's not what it says in the Bishop's Bible. And so it's much more likely an explanation
that is just a printing error. It's just a typo. Again, not a big deal. And again,
if you at home disagree and you think it's be to be, well, then, you know, I don't know what
to tell you. You know, you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm a hundred percent convinced
because, you know, I looked at it. This phrase got used before and after the King James in
situations where the King James was not being quoted. I think that most contemporary readers
of the King James just aren't grounded enough in the way language changes to spot all the
subtle ways in which language change shows up in the King James. And I don't think most
contemporary readers of the King James are practiced in using the tools that can help them.
It's kind of funny how he doesn't like someone criticizing his lack of knowledge,
but he's always condescending and just acting like King James only is they're all dumb or
something. And just, you know, Oh, they don't, they don't know how language changes. They don't
know what this word means. They don't even know when they're looking at an archaic word. They
don't even know how to handle this. They don't even know what subjunctive is. You know, he just
assumes just a lack of knowledge on the part of every King James preacher or King James reader.
But then he gets mad when somebody points out his own deficiencies, when he's just constantly
condescending to people and talking down to them and acting like he is so much smarter or
educated than people like, well, they just don't know how to do. I'm pretty sure I'm better at this
than other people. You know, I think I have a little more experience with X, Y, and Z. You know,
it's a little bit hypocritical. Okayisms from grammars to Google books.
But I'm going to like, so King James only don't know how to use Google books. They don't know how
to use the Oxford English dictionary. They don't know how to look things up. They don't know what
a subjunctive is. You know, these are a lot of assumptions that he likes to continually
throw around, you know, why we can't understand the King James. But I'm going to wrap up this
video by giving a big point to Anderson. Did you know that you can actually go look at one
of the copies of the Bishop's Bible that were marked up by the King James translators as they
did their translation work? And if you do this, you'll find the strongest point for Anderson's
view. I personally am not aware of any other Bishop's Bible copies that were used by other
portions of the King James committee. And I admit, he be is not present in the notations
here. Just look. You can see them adding the word and at the beginning of the verse, and sure enough
that shows up in the King James. You can see them crossing out trespass and writing something I just
cannot read for the life of me above it. And sure enough, the 1611 King James reads committed sin
instead of committed a trespass. But the translators who notated this copy of the
Bishop's Bible don't cross out a before trespass, and yet the 1611 King James does drop that word.
So Mark Ward is not accurate here. He's saying that the a is not in the King James. It actually
is in the King James. And in fact, what you're looking at here reflects exactly how the King
James ends up being worded in the finished product. The and is added at the beginning,
as you can see. And then where trespass is crossed out and replaced with the word sin,
the reason that he was having trouble reading it is because sin has that strange-looking s at the
beginning. But look right below the word sin at the word trespass, and you'll see that that's how
the s looks, that long skinny version. And it's spelled s-i-n-n-e. So he's not recognizing that
e on the end because of the way it looks, and he's going to make the same mistake in the next line
as well. It's s-i-n-n-e. That's how it is spelled in the 1611 King James version. On the next line,
they've crossed out is, and it says, and he be put to death. Okay, and then the for it is crossed out,
and thou hang him on a tree. So they change hangest to hang. So what have they done? In
the second line, they've changed the indicative is to the subjunctive be, and then they've changed
the indicative hangest to the subjunctive hang, and then they add, of course, at the very end of
the verse, the a between on and a tree. And so this is exactly how it's worded in the 1611 edition
of the King James. What's throwing him off is just the handwriting because words were written
a little bit differently than back then. I should say letters were formed a little bit differently.
Look down at the word, the wording at the end of verse 23 where it says,
for an inheritance. You can see what the h looks like there in inheritance. You can see what the t
looks like. You can see what the e looks like. You have two examples of o's. Now go up to the top.
That is not an o at the end of that sin. It's s-i-n-n-e. Just like in the next line, it's h-e,
he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree. Now here's the thing about this. Mark Ward thinks
that that wording in the second line is to be. That doesn't even make sense. You know, if a man
commit a sin worthy of death and to be put to death, that's not even proper grammar as he's
going to point out in a moment. No, it's and he be put to death. So this basically is worded
exactly how the King James is worded except without the typo. So this actually is very strong
proof that it's a typo because we have a handwritten rough draft here that matches exactly
with the King James without the typo. This is the smoking gun right here that he's putting on the
screen for us. I was already convinced, but this is even more evidence. I checked with Tim Berg,
the master of all these things, and it's simply not clear what relationship this image has to what
we actually see in the King James. I do think there was some other step between this page and
the original 1611. And maybe that step was a rogue printer who did his own thing in two places. That's
possible. Anderson could be right. He's certainly right about the Hebrew, which is another big point
for him. Okay, another quick point I want to add here. If I'm certainly correct about the Hebrew,
well then, isn't that conclusive? Why does he then say that I'm wrong? Why does the title of
this video say that I'm wrong? Is the original Hebrew text of the scripture not authoritative?
But let me offer my interpretation of what I'm seeing in this image. Two little points. First,
the sentence is incomplete if you go directly by the notations. Presuming that they wrote
sin above trespass, even though I can't read it, this is the way the verse would read,
going strictly by the notations. And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death,
and to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree, that's grammatically wrong.
And of course, as I pointed out, it's only grammatically wrong because he's reading it
wrong. If he would read the cursive correctly, it's not grammatically wrong. You at least need
is, and if he is to be put to death. So maybe this wasn't meant to be final. I just don't know.
Second, take your newfound knowledge of the English subjunctive and look at the change
they made to the word hangest. Hangest is not the subjunctive form. Hang is. The King James
translators were clearly, to my eyes, trying to turn the final two verbs in the sentence
into subjunctives. That, I think, supports my overall read of this passage. I could be wrong.
Let's see if Stephen Anderson could. Alright, well there you have it, folks. That's the end
of the video. I hope that this helps clarify what I was saying. I'm not saying that the King James
translators got it wrong. I'm not saying that the King James Bible is not the preserved,
perfect word of God without error. I do believe that the King James Bible is the perfect,
preserved word of God without error, but that doesn't mean that a printed copy of it
can't have typos or that every printed copy of it couldn't even have the same typo because of
the fact that every printed copy of it from 1611 to 1769 had typos too, and yet we still believe
that it was God's word. Okay, this kind of just obsessing over minutiae and being pedantic about
just a typo and everything is an over-the-top view. I do believe that God providentially
preserved the original Greek and Hebrew texts and that God providentially ordained that 54 expert
scholars would be at the right place at the right time to give us the magnificent, amazing
King James Bible that has been used more than any other Bible or Bible translation in the history
of mankind to actually preach the gospel when souls to Christ. Obviously English is the most
important language in the end times and so God blessed us with this wonderful, perfectly accurate
translation. I don't believe that the translation is deficient, but let's face it folks, there's
human error when it comes to printing. Earlier Mark Ward alluded to textual criticism. Every
single Greek manuscript of the New Testament is going to have scribal errors in it. Every single
copy of the Hebrew Old Testament has alternate readings in the column because there are typos
in the main text. It's called the karay kativ phenomenon. These are just facts. I'm sorry to
burst anybody's bubble. I'm sorry to hurt anybody's feelings because they wanted to have a more
simplistic view of this subject, but again I believe that the King James Bible is the word
of God without error, but that it is possible for a printed copy of the King James Bible to contain
a typo. And the nice thing about it is that when you get to this, I think most people's brains do
what I did anyway and they just read over it as be put to death because that's what it says the
other 57 times. You know he'd be put to death. It's clearly the meaning. So again, not trying
to make a big deal out of it. Just wanted to make a quick response to the video. Hope this was
helpful. Hopefully no one is confused, but if they are, well at the end of the day I'm going to tell
the truth. You know I'm not going to just tell people what they want to hear for the sake of my
followers or because it's going to offend people. You know I'm 100% convinced it's a typo. I looked
at it in Hebrew. I don't expect people to take my word for that, so whatever people want to do
is up to them. Hey, God bless you and have a great day.