The History of the King James Only Controversy within the Independent Baptist Churches: Its Effect and Importance, 1964-2000

© Copyright 2013 by Frederick Widdowson

All rights reserved.       

  

Dedicated to my wife, Beth

ABSTRACT

THE HISTORY OF THE KING JAMES ONLY CONTROVERSY WITHIN THE

INDEPENDENT BAPTIST CHURCHES: ITS EFFECT AND IMPORTANCE

1964-2000

    In the early 1920’s a reaction against the Anglican Church’s 1881 Revision of the King James Version of the Bible (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version (AV), began in American Fundamentalism. Traditional Fundamentalism divided into two groups regarding the Bible. One believed in the credibility of the Bibles produced by the Revision. The other believed that the traditional Bible text that Protestants used for Bible translations, the Textus Receptus or Received Text, was authoritative with the KJV as the best translation. Both believed that only the original autographs, manuscripts produced by the presumed writers of the Bible, were inspired by God. All translations were trustworthy to varying degrees but contained errors. Then, in 1964 a Baptist pastor from Florida almost singlehandedly created a movement within the Independent Fundamental Baptist Churches (IFB) that insisted that the King James Bible alone contained God’s inspired and preserved words, at least in English. Although treated as a trivial issue by many students of American Fundamentalism and even some Fundamentalists this controversy grew to divide the IFB churches in ways that inhibited their potential political influence and was a significant concern among the IFB who saw their churches divided over it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                                                                                                              PAGE

          INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………5

I.        LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………………………15

II.      THE KING JAMES ONLY MOVEMENT IN PRINT………………………………38

III.     HOSTILE CORRESPONDENCE…………………………………………………...58

IV.     PUBLIC DEBATES, & PERSONAL TESTIMONIES……………………………..75

V.     THE LOCAL CHURCHES AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONFLICT……86

VI.   CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………….94

       WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………………….105

Introduction

     The importance of the authority of the Bible in Protestant faith traditions was evident in the number of statements the Reformers made about said authority in the era when Reformation fires burned hot. As the early Anglican churchman, William Chillingworth, said in 1638, “The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants!”[1]  Three hundred years later, in 1949 Baptist theologian Henry Clarence Thiessen went even further in his Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology, “It [what he called the true Church] bases its view on the belief that the Bible is the embodiment of a divine revelation, and that the records which contain that revelation are genuine, credible, canonical, and supernaturally inspired.”[2]   

    Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge, in his three volume work, Systematic Theology, stated in 1873, quoting Martin Luther’s 1537 Smallcald Articles, that; “ All Protestants agree in teaching that ‘the word of God, as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice.’”[3] These dogmatic assertions about the Bible’s authority and its veracity were the foundational principles of Protestantism and particularly of that subset of conservative Protestant known by the name of Fundamentalist. However, today, such a view is regarded as extreme. Mainstream and liberal Protestant church leaders such as famed Baptist preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick in books such as The Modern Use of the Bible and Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong in Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture had as part of their themes that the Biblical scholarship they regarded as credible denied the possibility of the literal interpretation and supernatural inspiration that Fundamentalism required.[4] Belief in the interpretation and the inspiration of the Bible changed dramatically in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among most Protestants. In the days before the rise of historical criticism in the nineteenth century Biblical understanding and interpretation were very literal. The Bible was considered to describe real truths and to explain real history and if an allegory was used, it could not interfere with a literal acceptance of the text. This changed dramatically in the nineteenth century and beyond.[5] Fundamentalism reverted back to the eighteenth century’s literal understanding but with the added dimension of the original autographs being inspired as a “pushback” against Darwinism and “Higher Criticism” of German scholarship. The King James Only Movement, however, added a new twist, the belief in the perfection of the King James Bible without peer.

    The King James Bible was also known as the Authorized Version because it was ordered to be translated or authorized by King James I of England in 1604 although he had no part in the actual translating process. It was published in 1611 after approximately seven years of research and writing. The translation was based on the work of Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars, the writings of the early church fathers, older Bible versions in the languages of Europe and the Near East, and available Greek, Latin, and Hebrew manuscripts. The translating committee of forty seven scholars was composed of Anglican and Puritans who were at odds on church practice.[6] This was the reason that King James ordered the translation, to force them to work together on this most important of projects, the translating of a new Bible version, after a Puritan scholar suggested it.[7] The translators did not claim divine inspiration but humbly offered their work to the Protestant world in their “Translators to the Reader” preface.[8]

    Fundamentalism, as did the King James Bible, had its origins in the Reformation. Martin Luther’s doctrine of the ability of the individual to engage the Holy Spirit of God laid the groundwork four hundred years before the name of Fundamentalism was ever invoked. Robert Glenn Howard, in an article for the Journal of Church and State defined Fundamentalism as “the ideology of individual access to divine authority that laid the foundation for the basic characteristics we now associate with fundamentalism as a Christian ideology.”[9] Howard went on to explain,

Luther, on the other hand, felt that individuals with access to the Bible could simply plug into the Holy Spirit that it represented. Soon, vernacular Bibles would be printed and

sold. Each individual would be able to actually interact with the Holy Spirit by engaging the text in his or her own language. For Luther, there would be no need for a priest class to interpret the Bible for the laity because the Bible was not just inerrant but it was also understandable and clear. In this way, the fundamentalist ideology was born.[10]

    The Independent Baptist church movement was started by the pastor of the nation’s first Protestant megachurch, J. Frank Norris, in the early part of the twentieth century. Within this movement a controversy surrounding the very Bible which Fundamentalist Baptists held as infallible and inerrant arose in the latter part of the twentieth century. The belief in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible did not fall in a specific translation of it, as this thesis shows, but in a divinely inspired set of original autographs by the Bible writers whose names were long associated with the books they were purported to have written with translations such as the King James displaying various degrees of reliability. A new doctrine was formulated and expressed first in print in 1964 that elevated the King James Bible above all other translations. This point bears repeating. This thesis is not simply about an argument over good translations of the Bible versus bad or contrasting interpretations of the Bible. This thesis is the identification and explanation of a new movement begun in writing, at least, in 1964 unlike any before it, whose stated belief was that the King James Bible is God’s preserved and inspired words in English, at least, allowing no competitors or rival versions. This doctrine is a rejection of the singular and unique divine inspiration of the original autographs. It is peculiar as represented by a subset of Independent Baptist Churches and is not found in other Protestant faith traditions. It is also relatively ignored by students of American religion. That is a vital point that must be understood. The conflict exists and it is usually ignored by the mainstream, as in those scholars who are not Baptist and not part of the movement with few exceptions as will be revealed. This thesis is not about the history of Fundamentalism, Biblical interpretation, doctrine, or other theological assertions outside of the identification of this ignored movement and its potential influence on the political power of the IFB churches on a local level.

     The conflict started as individual teachers, missionaries, and pastors began to write polemics against the more modern versions of the Bible produced by the efforts of the 1881 Anglican Revision of the King James Bible and those who followed after in the revision committee’s footsteps. The conflict developed into a cultural subset of Fundamentalism. As a controversy it split churches apart. Within the IFB church (an individual IFB church might be named a “Bible Church”) movement in America in the years between 1964 and the end of the century the controversy was the proverbial gorilla in the living room that must, at some point, be addressed in many congregations. Ultimately, what developed in the minds and teaching of its partisans was a new doctrine that insisted the King James Bible contained the only inspired words of God in the English language, at least, and all other translations were counterfeits. This was a position never before established in either Evangelical American Protestantism or in Fundamentalism. Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism are almost synonyms except that Fundamentalism is more militant in its submission to the authority of Scripture.[11] The bitter controversy over the authority of the King James Bible among IFB Churches was a significant cause of division and weakened the substantial political influence of the IFB on the local level particularly.

Statement of the Problem and Research Questions

    The problem addressed is how the IFB movement in the latter half of the twentieth century divided essentially in a way that prevented political unity, theological consistency, and union of social purpose and action on a local level in the way it viewed the definition of the words, “The Holy Bible.” This is not about interpretation, meaning, or the canonicity of particular books of the Bible but about the definition of the words in regard to what specific Bible was held as the authority in a tradition that upheld the Bible as its final authority. What is the foundation of this conflict? What are its origins? Who were the leaders who kept the debate stirred up? What arguments did either side put forward regarding their stance on the Bible?  Why does this issue often appear to escape the research of mainstream scholars outside the movement when there is a wealth of published literature and well-known scholars such as Dr. Laurence Vance, famed IFB anti-war writer, Libertarian, and KJV only proponent, published books and articles dealing directly with this issue? What was the significance of the King James Only Movement? What was its impact on Fundamentalism?

Significance of the Study

    James Ault, Jr. noted that there was a significant influence on American politics imposed by Fundamentalist churches in America over the last quarter century at least.[12] And as George Marsden pointed out in his Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism “by the 1960’s ‘fundamentalist’ usually meant separatists and no longer included the many conservatives in mainline denominations...By this time almost all fundamentalists were Baptists.”[13] However, there was a lack of “comprehensive research into the character of these local church fellowships” that comprise fundamentalism.[14]  Point one, Ault said that Independent Baptists had a significant political influence nationally in the latter part of the twentieth century. This, he explains in his book was due to the Reagan candidacy and presidency in the renewed focus on traditional values. With the rise of popular conservatism, a union of Libertarian and old-style Republicans, opposed to abortion, sex education, gay rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment the IFB had come into their own.[15] Point two, Fundamentalist meant Baptist by the end of the century. Point three, local Baptist churches of this kind have not been studied very thoroughly. 

    This thesis will clarify the conflict between IFB churches with regard to their own definition of the words “the Bible” and under whose influence they came in that regard. The thesis identifies two major stances on the Bible issue within IFB churches; the first being that only the original autographs of the presumed Bible writers were inspired by God and were perfect, infallible, and inerrant while different translations displayed varying degrees of trustworthiness. The second stance was that the King James Bible, the Authorized Version, was itself a perfect Bible without proven error, the inspired words of God. The first stance represented historical Fundamentalism and was divided into two groups.  One group accepted the Anglican Revision of 1881 and its Critical Text or Minority Text based on a small number of authoritative Bible manuscripts. The second group argued against the Revision and for what was called the Traditional Text, the Textus Receptus or Received Text for the Greek and the Masoretic Text for the Hebrew, as being authoritative with the Authorized Version as being the most reliable translation. The Greek of the “New Testament” was the focus of the debate more so than the Hebrew of the “Old Testament.” It followed that if the original autographs only were inspired by God then the presumed original languages of Greek and Hebrew were part of that inspiration.[16] The stance that is the focus of this thesis was that the King James Bible did not just represent the inspired words of God found in a Greek text but was itself the inspired words of God in English, at least. The most extreme form of what eventually was known as King James onlyism required foreign language translations to be made from that Bible rather than the background texts from which it was translated. The political power and popularity of the IFB movement, although much trumpeted by the mainstream media, was limited by the division over the Bible; not over its inerrancy, its inspiration, its supernatural revelation, or its importance and influence but by the very definition of “the Bible”. The influence of IFB churches in America in the realm of national and local politics over the last quarter of the century at least made this issue significant.

    The published writings of the King James Only Movement are discussed immediately after the literature on the subject from those Fundamentalists and scholars outside of the movement is reviewed. Then, correspondence, sermons, public debates, and testimonies of the King James only partisans are laid out. Finally, the controversy in the local churches and its significance is discussed. As the focus in the thesis narrows to individual churches the often unheard viewpoint and beliefs of rank and file congregants are important in expressing the way the conflict played out in the local IFB churches around the definition of the Bible; perfect original autographs of the Bible writers or a perfect historical Bible.

Methodology

    This thesis used primary sources such as books, letters, sermons, and public debates of those in the King James Only Movement and the other more traditional Fundamentalists with whom they did battle. Many of these pastors and teachers were relatively unknown outside of the IFB Churches. These are contrasted with other primary sources such as an interview with a local evangelist from York County, Pennsylvania where the focus of the study narrows. This is a very strong area for Fundamentalism and representative of IFB churches throughout America. IFB churches are found from Washington to Maine and from Michigan to Florida with the majority of declared King James only churches found in Ohio. Pastors from Washington State to Florida are quoted in this thesis. The interview and quotes from members of IFB churches help give context to the actual consequences of the controversy on a personal level with the rank and file congregant. These sources are of vital importance to this thesis because it is based on the contention that, for whatever reason, ignorance, lack of interest, or a regard that the issue is a trivial one mainstream students of American Christian fundamentalism who are not affiliated with IFB churches have for the most part neglected the issue here investigated. It is not that scholarship ignored Fundamentalism. There is a rich historiography regarding that subject such as the work of George Marsden, Joel Carpenter, and Ernest Sandeen. It is not that scholarship ignored the issue of Bible translations or manuscript evidence. Every Bible translating committee in modern times published its own justifications such as Arthur L. Farstad’s The New King James Version: In the Great Tradition and Kenneth Barker’s The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Translation. There was a huge industry in writing about the Bible and the value or poor quality of different translations such as Daryl Coats’ NKJV Nonsense or Peter Ruckman’s The NIV: An “In-depth” Documentation of Apostasy.  The intent, however, for this thesis paper is to be a thorough discussion of the King James Only Movement within the IFB churches, not a history of disputes over individual translations other than the King James, the history of Fundamentalism, or of general Biblical interpretation.  This is lacking in the historiography on Fundamentalism and generally absent from even intimate studies of IFB churches such as Ault’s. Dr. James R. White, acknowledging mainstream scholarship’s failure to address the King James Only Movement said, “Most Biblical scholars and theologians, even of the most conservative stripe, do not feel the issue worthy of any real time investment,” in his 1995 book The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations?[17] When asking the obvious question of why he cared, he stated it was because he had seen so many churches ripped apart by the controversy.[18] Fundamentalism in America, associated predominantly with IFB churches by 1970, was divided beginning in 1964 over the significant and caustic issue of the authority of the King James Bible in a way that inhibited unity of action, particularly on a local level.

Chapter One: Literature Review

   There are few articles and books by scholars who aren’t Baptists that address the issue of the controversy in the IFB churches outside of Peter Thuesen and Gordon Campbell and perhaps one or two others. Even those authors give it short shrift and only Campbell identifies Ruckman, the movement’s originator. Outside of those churches and outside of that tradition it was ignored for the most part. That is not to say that the study of disagreements over the value of individual versions weren’t published or that objections to the Anglican Revision of the Authorized Version published in 1881 weren’t presented. It is to say that the late twentieth century King James Only Movement was generally ignored outside of the IFB faith tradition. This point is of the utmost importance. There is a vast historiography on Fundamentalism, its history and its influence. Marsden, Harris, Dollar, Packer, Melling, Maltby, Carpenter, and Abrams are among the many scholars who wrote about Fundamentalism in America paying little or no attention to the movement that departed from Fundamentalism’s core values of the divine inspiration found only in the original autographs and declared the divine inspiration and authority of one translation of the Bible, the King James Version. In nearly all of the literature, with exceptions that could be counted on the fingers of one hand, the founder and principal drivers of the King James Only Movement are ignored and the movement itself is reduced to a vague and irrelevant notion among an almost invisible minority of churches. The prevailing scholarship on the movement addressed in this thesis is from the Fundamentalist colleges and universities in the main possibly because they felt threatened enough by the movement to comment on it.

    One example of the problem with the scholarship on this particular issue is a misunderstanding of the nature of Fundamentalism. For instance, Harriet Harris, in her book Fundamentalism and Evangelicals makes a critical mistake, along with the authors she quotes, by saying that all Fundamentalists believe that the King James Bible is the only inspired translation and that Evangelicals believe in other, more accurate translations.[19] Clearly, persons presented in this thesis such as John R. Rice and schools such as Bob Jones University regarded themselves and were regarded as a staunch Fundamentalist and a bastion of Fundamentalism and yet neither believed the King James Bible was inspired by God, or that any Bible was inspired. They believed only in the perfect, infallible veracity of the original autographs of the presumed Bible writers which they often referred to as the original manuscripts. Harris and the authors she cites are quite in error and this is a fundamental problem with the scholarship that does offer a line or two to King James onlyism. In fact, George Dollar, writing under the banner of the Bob Jones University Press, wrote A History of Fundamentalism in America and explained that Fundamentalism began in the nineteenth century as a defense of the attacks on the Bible’s authority. He was clearly in the more militant strain of Fundamentalism but did not believe in the singular authority of the King James or any Bible outside of the original autographs.[20] His work was attacked vigorously by the founder of the King James Only Movement, Peter Ruckman, throughout Dr. Ruckman’s books.

    There is a good reason why the King James Only Movement is not written about in Regent College Professor of Theology J.I. Packer’s 1958 book entitled “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God where he defined the Fundamentalist’s dependence on the truth of the original autographs.[21] It did not exist for another six years, at least in print. Other possible reasons for ignoring the movement described in this thesis are forthcoming from White, Theusen, and Rice, mainly that it is not considered important. It is the one purpose of this thesis to show the error of that sentiment. Packer’s approval of James R. White’s attack on the King James Only Movement referred to later in this chapter was that White’s work was “sober, scholarly, courteous, and convincing.”[22] Clearly, Fundamentalist scholarship, when it did recognize the King James Only Movement, rallied together against it.

Works Justifying Individual Translations from the Revised Version forward

     Understanding the foundations of the change in the study of the background languages of the Bible and how this affected Bible translations requires a thorough understanding of not only the nature of how these languages were viewed before and after the nineteenth century but studying the background of the extant texts themselves. Of vital importance is H.C. Hoskier’s work on the development of the New Testament in Concerning the Genesis of the Versions of the N.T. as well as his indictment of the background texts for the Westcott and Hort effort in Codex B and It’s Allies. Richard Chevenix Trench, dean of Westminster Abbey, was a member of the translating committee for the Anglican Revision of 1881 and actually called for the revision in his 1858 work, On The Authorized Version of the New Testament.[23] There were a great many other works by translators and Anglican clerics of the nineteenth century that explained why they chose to set out on the course they did. As a list of published writings from these scholars could fill a book and all preceded the King James Only Movement by a century it would not do to belabor the issue. Suffice it to say that the most important point in understanding how Biblical translating and a view of the actual meaning of the original languages changed in the nineteenth century is best left to the scholar most credited with the change, Adolf Deissmann. Deissmann’s landmark works were Bible Studies and Light from the Ancient East. In these two books he set forth his “new” view on the nature of Biblical Greek that the Cambridge History of the Bible, quoted elsewhere, underscored. As one of the preeminent German scholarly critics of the Bible in the nineteenth century his work was eventually collected, translated from the German, and published.[24] Deissmann did not pioneer the study of Biblical languages. He was just the most articulate and well-known in English. The change from the Reformation era view of Biblical languages began a century before Deissmann as evidenced by scholars like Hans Frei. None of these authors from the nineteenth century foresaw the existence in the late twentieth century of the birth of the King James Only Movement.

     Although there have been dozens of books written about individual translations before and after the Anglican Revision the following are significant works on individual translations that contrasted with the KJV and are often attacked by the KJV Only Movement. The American Sunday School Union published Anglo-American Bible Revision: Its Necessity and Purpose in 1879. This detailed the efforts of both the British Revision Committee in translating the background texts that resulted in the Revised Version of the Bible and the American Revision Committee which resulted in the American Standard Version of the Bible. The American Revision Committee headed by Philip Schaff wrote this edition. The best information on the next revision of the RV, the Revised Standard Version, is Peter Theusen’s Discordance with the Scriptures, cited later in this chapter. The New International Version, a version whose translation process began with meetings in the 1960’s had as its greatest apologist Kenneth Barker of the translating committee with his The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Translations. The New King James, which was a more conservative hybrid between the Westcott-Hort text and the Majority or Traditional Text, also known as the Textus Receptus or Received Text, was trumpeted by translator Arthur L. Farstad in his The New King James: In the Great Tradition. [25] None of these efforts anticipated the rise of the King James Only Movement.

Works on the History of the King James Bible and English Bibles in General

   A great deal of literature was written about the translation of the King James Bible. Olga Opfell’s The King James Bible Translators from 1982 depends on Ward Allen’s Translating for King James based on translator John Bois’ notes among other works and gives a thorough background on the translation and the education and skills of the translators. Although it is written in a very understandable manner it lacks footnotes and is very difficult to research. Allen is known for several books on the translating effort including the aforementioned Translating for King James: Notes Made by a Translator of King James’ Bible and The Coming of the King James Gospels both of which are marvelous reads which this author used to own and donated to a local church library where it is understood they are gathering dust rather than eyes. Translating for King James is based on the only surviving notes of an actual translator so it is an invaluable resource but as revealed later in this thesis the translators are no help to the King James Only Movement as they made no claim to divine inspiration nor did they commend their work as being above the work of any other translators.[26]

    David Norton’s A Textual History of the King James Bible also draws upon Allen’s compiling of Bois’ notes calling Allen’s work “masterful.”[27] Although Norton provided important background information on the textual foundations of the KJV he chose not to refer to famed Bible scholar, F.F. Bruce. Opfell had used F.F. Bruce’s The English Bible but not his History of the Bible in English. That is a valuable reference on the history of English Bibles up to the King James as is Benson Bobrick’s Wide as the Waters which deals with the impact of the Bible in English leading up to the Glorious Revolution of 1688.[28] Bruce, in History of the Bible in English quotes another monumental work, a trilogy on the history of the Bible from the beginning to the present day (the 1960’s in this case) entitled The Cambridge History of the Bible, edited by P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans. The first volume of this series led the author to the dramatic change in the way the Greek of the New Testament was viewed by scholars in the nineteenth century, which is quoted in chapter two of this thesis.

    The most detailed work on the history of the King James Bible with regard to King James himself was written in 2006 by King James only scholar, noted Libertarian, and anti-war writer, Dr. Laurence Vance. Dr. Vance was the Greek teacher for Dr. Ruckman’s Pensacola Bible Institute but was terminated for his anti-war writings when church members with children in the U.S. military objected to his stance and many published works against the Iraq and Afghanistan military adventures, particularly his series of essays entitled Christianity and War. In King James, His Bible, and Its Translators he gave a great deal of context on the history of the English throne and its complex intricacies before King James. He then, as the others, lays out the planning and work of the translators quoting Ward Allen’s Translating for King James, The Coming of the King James Gospels, and Allen’s third well-known work, Translating the New Testament Epistles, 1604-1611: A Manuscript from King James’ Westminster Company. He also refers to Benson Bobrick’s Wide as the Waters and the background on English medieval politics which he provides. Vance relies, as well, on Christopher De Hamel’s The Book: A History of the Bible and Paul C. Gutjahr’s An American Bible, which covers the controversy over early American Bible translation efforts but nothing on the late twentieth century movement to place the KJV over other translations as particularly inspired by God. As well, Vance uses information gleaned from Alistair McGrath’s In the Beginning, quoted later, David Norton’s previously mentioned Textual History, and David Schaff’s biography/autobiography of his father, historian and modern Bible translator, Philip Schaff.[29]  All of these works are valuable in giving background to political, social, and theological questions surrounding the King James translation and English Bible translating in general, particularly before the nineteenth century. However, even though De Hamel, Bobrick, and McGrath are quoted extensively in Gail Riplinger’s work, they shed no light on the King James Only Movement itself as in providing an historical foundation. While they are important historical works among many others there is found in them no justification for either the historic Fundamentalist stance of the infallibility of the invisible original autographs nor the King James only viewpoint of an inspired historical Bible, the result of God’s direct intervention in the minds and writing of the translators of the King James Bible. One can search but no clue is found as to why either position is thought by its proponents to be arguable from an historical perspective.

    One important to note to make is sounded by Ward Allen regarding the English Bibles which preceded the Authorized Version. There was very little difference in the wording and any differences were minor. “The changes in the text of the A.V. from earlier Protestant translations are slight.”[30] The King James Bible was not a new translation made “out of the blue” but a continuation of a long tradition. Christopher De Hamel’s The Book like David Norton’s A Textual History makes use of actual old Bible manuscripts as part of its arguments but offers no new perspective on the history of the Bible that would shed any light on the modern King James Only Movement. De Hamel’s work is also referenced in one of the most entertaining and readable histories of the King James Bible translation entitled God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson. Nicolson also made use of Opfell’s book, Allen’s works, and a book that is quoted in the conclusion to this thesis, Harvard’s Literary Guide to the Bible.

Works on the Linguistic and Cultural Significance and Influence of the KJV

        David Crystal’s Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language shows the influence that words and phrases from that translation had on the language. He studied the commonplace use of many phrases and, as quoted later, even conducted a count of a specific number of phrases from that Bible that have stayed with the language and influenced it although this is not one of the arguments that Ruckman used in his books. It is, however, an important part of the arguments used by  KJV only scholar, Dr. Gail Riplinger, who although she didn’t reference Crystal, did make use of such works as Margaret Magnus’ Gods of the Word: Archetypes in the Consonants, Dr. Robert Logan’s The Alphabet Effect, and Marc-Alain Ouaknin’s Mysteries of the Alphabet. Her intention was to elucidate in her book In Awe of Thy Word, not Crystal’s contention that the King James was important to the formation of modern English, but the supernatural origin of language itself and the King James as the ultimate expression of English, supernaturally inspired.[31]

    Mark Noll wrote about the tensions between Fundamentalism and science within a cultural setting in America with information on the scholarship at the Princeton Seminary which confirms Sandeen’s appraisal of the origins of doctrine that elevated the original autographs. [32]

Melanie Wright discussed the story of Moses in written works and in movies as a cultural icon but neither Noll nor Wright offer any discussion of the King James Only Movement as Noll focuses on Fundamentalism itself and Wright on cultural adaptations of the story of Moses specifically.[33] Melvyn Bragg’s book entitled The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011 offers insight into the influence of that translation on society particularly with the reform movements of the nineteenth century but no insight into the modern KJV Only Movement.[34]

Works on the History of Biblical Interpretation and Understanding

    Fundamentalism in the early twentieth century and the King James Only Movement in the later twentieth century has its roots in a historical attitude all the way to Martin Luther, the great Reformation giant. In an article for the Journal of Church and State in 2005 Robert Glenn Howard explained how this was so. His “"The Double Bind of the Protestant Reformation: The Birth of Fundamentalism and the Necessity of Pluralism" revealed how it became possible for every IFB adherent to choose for himself which Bible was to be his final authority in all matters of faith, practice, and doctrine.[35]

    Previously cited Hans Frei in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative and Robert Price’s Inerrant the Wind underscore the tension that Fundamentalism carried with it that forced the King James Only Movement to come about. First, as Frei explained the changes in Bible interpretation from the eighteenth century through the historical criticism of the nineteenth, this underscored the leaving behind of what Ackroyd pointed out as the former view of the uniqueness of New Testament Greek into the age of skepticism on the one side and Fundamentalism on the other. Price made a point about how the inspiration of the original autographs led to even the view of the sacredness of the original languages among Fundamentalists. If one then adds the understanding about the new doctrine of the inspiration of the original autographs explained in the next chapter from Sandeen and Trembath’s work the conclusion is reached that the KJV only group rejected. As Trembath points out in his quote, this reduced inspiration to a simple one-time transmission from God to an inspired writer. God then, in that argument, had no place in the Bible’s preservation. This was rejected by every King James Bible proponent who, as seen later in this thesis, whether Ruckman, Grady, or any number of authors believed that that translation was God’s preserved words in English, at least. So, the scholarship draws a knot on the one hand that shows no historical underpinning to the King James only belief by the very words of the translators of that Bible or any other. On the other hand it draws a knot showing the traditional Fundamentalist exalting of original autographs of the presumed Bible writers as being singularly inspired by God denies the very God they claim to worship as having any hand in the preservation or inspiration of the Bible after the first words were penned. Yet, presumably the God of the Bible works all through human history in their belief system. In respect to the Bible this renders traditional Fundamentalism as almost a Deistic approach to God’s sovereignty.

    Other books that refer to modern interpretation and particularly the role of prophecy and prophetic language in contemporary American culture but in no way address the Bible version issue specifically in IFB churches include Paul Boyer’s When Time Shall Be No More. [36]

Works on the History of Fundamentalism

    George Marsden’s book, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, Joel Carpenter’s book, Revive Us Again, already quoted, and Ernest Sandeen’s article for the journal Church History quoted later in this thesis, were reviewed for background on the history and origins of Fundamentalism. The focus of their work precedes the origin of the movement to exalt the KJV above all others, however. There were issues fundamental to this thesis that were gleaned from their research such as the literary foundations of Fundamentalism, the later domination of Fundamentalism by Baptists, and the nineteenth century Princeton Theology’s original autographs doctrine that underpinned historic Fundamentalism.

Works that Discuss the King James Only Movement Specifically

    The authors listed in the following represented the two sides of traditional Fundamentalism in America. One side stood for the Critical Text and the credibility of the work of the Anglican Revision of 1881. This led to an acceptance of most modern versions of the Bible to varying degrees based on preference. The second side stood for the authority of the Textus Receptus with the King James Bible being its best representative. The writings of the protagonists in the King James Only Movement are reserved for the next chapter as primary sources to the focus of the thesis.

    One exception was Princeton scholar, Dr. Peter J. Thuesen, who published In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible in 1999. Thuesen revealed the plethora of disagreements over Bible translations throughout American history. He focused mainly on the controversies over the Revised Standard Version and its challenge to the King James Bible with comments on David Otis Fuller’s stance in Which Bible?, and his rejection of the Revised Standard Version. Thuesen’s work helped in establishing the existence of disagreements over specific translations but only briefly mentioned an emerging focus on the authority of the King James Bible but not belief in its divine inspiration. Thuesen reported his view that modernity demanded truth and accuracy and this led to the methodologies and techniques of the modern Bible translators which every KJV only proponent would argue was preposterous.[37] They would argue that a demand for truth and accuracy would validate the King James Bible as shown later by Jack Hyles’ sermon entitled Logic Must Prove the King James Bible. If modernity demanded accuracy in methodologies and techniques of the modern Bible translators then it was certainly frustrated by the failings of the lexicography of ancient Greek. First, as James White, who is quoted in chapter two pointed out, the text used for modern Bible versions other than the King James is different than that used for the King James.[38]  Differences in manuscripts mean that there are some different words to translate. To imply that the King James is not accurate because it did not translate a word from the Critical or Minority Text into English is absurd when the Traditional Text or Textus Receptus had a different word to translate. The King James is an accurate rendering of the words in Greek and Hebrew that were before them. As Ward Allen said, referring to the King James translators’ skill, “The translators were masters of Greek words, and they had an astonishing command of the full range of meaning for English words. Even more surprising is their sense for the current status of English words.”[39] With regard to modernity and the accuracy of modern lexicons from which Greek words’ English equivalents are found, lexicographer John Lee confessed, “It is simply a fact that what has been done so far cannot be relied on….we cannot know for certain that what we find in front of us when we look up a word is sound…” going on to insist that all of the currently existing lexicographical entries are obsolete.[40] Lexicographer John Chadwick wrote on the lack of original scholarship among modern lexicographers, “The effort of making an unprejudiced analysis of the meanings of a word is considerable; small wonder that most scholars have found it easier to rely on another’s opinion, especially if enshrined in the dense print of a lexicon.”[41] If one justification for modern Bible versions’ rejection of King James reading is based on a demand for accuracy there appears to be a lacuna, not only in the scholarship regarding the King James Only Movement itself, but in other facets of the Bible translating process, as well.

   The author of this thesis asked Dr. Thuesen, currently a professor at Indiana University, if he recommended any scholarly works about the King James Only Movement not penned by those who were advocates of the perfection of that Bible. Dr. Thuesen cited in his book several key forerunners to the King James Only Movement who, although not King James only themselves in that they were not advertising perfection in the Authorized Version, had their objections to the Anglican Revision  used later by the key players in the King James Only  Movement as justifications for their stance. This included Philip Mauro writing in 1924 and Benjamin Wilkinson writing in 1930, as well as David Otis Fuller, writing in the 1970’s. David Otis Fuller came the closest to professing in the perfection and inspiration of the King James Bible of the three.  Dr. Thuesen was kind enough to respond to the query. He said;

I'm afraid yours is a tough question. I think you're absolutely right that most of what's written is by partisans in the conflict. I assume you've seen readily available sources such as James White, The King James Only Controversy, and have scoured his notes for other leads. David Daniell, The Bible in English, includes a few pages (pp. 765-768) on the King James Only movement, but I just checked his endnotes and he cites mainly either White or me (though you might check what he says nevertheless).[42]

    Philip Mauro, a lawyer, not a trained Bible scholar, wrote Which Version? Authorized or Revised in which he questioned the value of the 1881 Revision and the Greek text upon which it was based. These were his stated reasons, given throughout his book, not in any way related to social events or the recent world war or any events external to his study of the Bible. He simply objected to the revision that was, at that time, only forty years old.[43] Thuesen noted that Mauro had contributed to the work that defined the Fundamentalist movement entitled The Fundamentals in the early part of the twentieth century after being converted to a belief in the inerrancy of the Bible in the original autographs and using the Revised Version. He later changed his mind about that Bible version and began to uphold the Authorized Version and attacked the Revised Version as being based on inferior manuscripts. Mauro based a great deal of his contempt for the Anglican Revision of 1881 on the works of John William Burgon, an early critic of the Revision.[44]

    John William Burgon was a noted Greek textual expert of the late 1800’s. He penned three major objections to the Anglican Revision of 1881 entitled The Revision Revised, The Traditional Text, and The Last Twelve Verses of Mark. However, he was a proponent, not of the perfection of the King James, but of the trustworthiness of the traditional Byzantine text over the text established by Anglican Bishops Westcott and Hort of the Anglican Revision Committee.

    Another scholar that Thuesen pointed to was Dr. Benjamin Wilkinson of the Seventh Day Adventist College in Tacoma Park, Maryland, known then as the Washington Missionary College. He was the Dean of Theology there and penned his attack on the Anglican Revision entitled Our Authorized Bible Vindicated in 1930. He also quoted John Burgon. However, he was not, by any means, an advocate of the inspiration of the King James Bible above all possible translations. He said very clearly that the “original Scriptures were written by direct inspiration of God” and that any Bible translated faithfully from the Textus Receptus was the “Word of God.”[45] Interestingly, in that very English Bible the use of “Word” with a capital ‘W’ is reserved only for Jesus Christ Himself not the written word. Wilkinson’s ideas then are linked to Mauro through Burgon but none of the three were King James only.

    The Anglican Revision of the King James Bible of 1881 resulted in a Greek text that was radically different from any used previously in the Protestant faith tradition. Hendrickson Publishers reproduced that text by Westcott and Hort, the leaders of the revision committee. The foreword by Eldon Jay Epp provided the history of and the reasoning behind the creation of the text which began in 1853, published originally in 1881.[46] In addition, Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words contained a foreword by respected Bible scholar, F.F. Bruce, which was valuable in understanding the principles by which Bible translating changed in the nineteenth century.[47]  

          Missing in Thuesen’s scholarship but often quoted by the extreme partisans of the KJV only was missionary Jasper James (J.J.) Ray who published God Wrote Only One Bible in 1955, plagiarizing much of Wilkinson’s work, as others would later do, but he was still of the camp that promoted the Textus Receptus above the work of the Anglican Revision of 1881 and insisted that the Bible was preserved in that Greek text from which the AV was translated.[48] It is interesting that Thuesen failed to include his book in his study because Ray’s main objections seemed sparked by the release of the very Revised Standard Version that Thuesen’s book centered around. Amazingly, Thuesen did not acknowledge an even more important scholarly work on the Bible translation issue. A year after Ray, Presbyterian Dr. Edward F. Hills, expert in textual criticism, graduate summa cum laude from Yale and graduate of Westminster and Columbia Theological Seminaries, as well as Harvard University, published his tome, The King James Version Defended, which although often quoted by King James only advocates only went so far as saying that “it is not absolutely perfect, but it is trustworthy,” while upholding the Textus Receptus over the text produced by the Anglican Revision.[49]  

    Baptist Pastor and King James Bible proponent, David Otis Fuller, became well known in Fundamental Baptist circles with three books, the most notable being Which Bible? followed by True or False? The Westcott-Hort Textual Theory Examined, and Counterfeit or Genuine? Like J.J. Ray’s book in the 1950’s Fuller borrowed heavily from Wilkinson without citation.[50] Thuesen mentions Fuller’s books in his bibliography but his main mention of Fuller, the one that stood out the most significantly, was Fuller’s trumpeting of the Textus Receptus as “virtually infallible” while defending the King James Bible as its best English representative.[51]

    In 1979, D.A. Carson, who received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and was a research professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, published The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism.[52] Carson, frequent contributor to the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, followed the pattern of the Fundamentalist camp that held the original autographs to be sacred, inerrant, and inspired by God but translations to be just feeble attempts at reproducing God’s words in print. Carson pointed out repeatedly that it was petty to point to a few errors and dismiss a translation on the basis of them and that by the standards the King James only crowd set even the King James Bible could not stand up.[53] His point that “no translation is perfect…No translation has ever been perfect,” underscores the distance between scholars like Carson and the most extreme point of view of the King James Only Movement.[54] Carson also made a blistering attack on Thuesen’s work in 2001 for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society criticizing him for his reliance on Hans Frei’s interpretation of the history of Biblical interpretation. Carson criticized Thuesen for not tackling translation theory, developments in linguistics, and lexicography, none of which his book was about specifically. Thuesen made it quite clear that his book was about the reception of the Revised Standard Version and the controversy surrounding it.[55]

    Dr. James R. White made his entry into the fray with the 1995 book The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations?  White’s work was the most conclusive and in-depth study of the controversy ever written by someone who was not a King James only partisan. He identified the creator of the movement, Peter Ruckman, and all of the key players and their written works. He noted Fuller’s and Ray’s work and covered much of the same textual criticism ground of Hills, Wilkinson, and Mauro from the perspective of someone who believed the original autographs were inspired by God.[56] He also alluded to Carson’s work.  Interestingly, he did not mention Wilkinson or Mauro by name. He did give a reasoned explanation of the science of textual criticism. White’s book was also important in that it was recommended by pastors who tried to keep the King James Only Movement from disrupting their own IFB churches. White also penned a chapter in the 2009 book, edited by David Burke, entitled Translation That Openeth a Window: Reflections on the History and Legacy of the King James Bible. White’s chapter is “A Critique of the King James Only Movement.”[57] White added nothing new to his former book on the subject but continued to err in his assessment of David Otis Fuller as King James only when Thuesen made it clear that Fuller was a Textus Receptus proponent who viewed the King James Bible  as merely the best translation but never called it inspired by God.

    Acknowledging the firestorm in Fundamentalism the neo-evangelical magazine Christianity Today published its contribution to the study of the controversy in October, 1995. “King James-only Advocates Experience Renaissance,” written by Joe Maxwell, gave a surprisingly fair assessment of the movement that reached its peak at that time. The title betrayed an inconsistency with the article as the word “renaissance” implied a connection to a historical position as if the movement had a precursor in history and this was a revival, so to speak. Although implied by the title, no such historical link was provided.[58]  In fact, no link could be provided because there is no comparable movement in the history of Christianity regarding one Bible translation as Bobrick’s Wide as the Waters and De Hamel’s The Book show.

     Kenneth Hagen’s 1998 The Bible in the Churches: How Various Christians Interpret the Scriptures offered a passing glance at the King James Only Movement and wrote that the proponents of that movement preferred the Greek text supported by the majority of ancient manuscripts but that most Evangelicals and, one might add, most Fundamentalists, accepted

Westcott and Hort’s work.[59] Hagen did not identify the more radical elements in the movement. Doug Kutilek brought out his J. Frank Norris and His Heirs: The Bible Translation Controversy in 1999 to unravel any links to one of the founders of the IFB movement and the King James only controversy.

    A latecomer into the fray over the King James Bible was Roy E. Beacham, Th.D., of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. He and Kevin Bauder wrote One Bible Only? Examining Exclusive Claims for the King James Bible in which he went as far as including the King James translators’ letter to the reader, which most modern editions of the AV exclude.[60] He cited Carson’s work, Hills’, J.J. Ray, and White’s work, as well as a number of the King James only camp.

     Dr. James D. Price, whose unpublished doctrinal dissertation on the King James Only Movement is cited by Beacham and who was also a principal in the translation efforts for the New King James Version, made a late entry into the debate with his history of the King James Only Movement and Bible translating in general with the very thorough 2006 offering, King James Onlyism: A New Sect. [61] Price acknowledged that he had never even heard of the movement in the conservative Baptist tradition in which he moved until the 1970’s when he began to hear of its creator, Peter Ruckman.[62] Price’s book was a result of his unpublished doctoral dissertation. Another doctoral dissertation that examined the movement was submitted to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in 2008. It was Robert Lee Pate, Jr.’s “A Strategy for Calming the Troubled Waters of the Bible Translation Controversy Among Independent Baptists,” which, while interesting, provided no significant new information about the conflict.

In 2010 Gordon Campbell published Bible: The Story of The King James Version, 1611-2011 in which he presented that Peter Ruckman argued that the KJV presented a “third revelation alongside (or superseding) those of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.” Campbell also makes mention in his short few pages offering on the King James Only Movement of the Bible Believer’s Church Directory with over a thousand churches holding the KJV as perfect and infallible.[63]

    The scholars and authors who wrote about the King James Only Movement or who presented ideas which that movement used as fuel for its side of the debate were divided into two groups. One represented by Burgon, Mauro, Wilkinson, Ray, Hills, and Fuller regarded the Traditional Text as being authoritative. The other viewed the work of the Anglican Revision and the text they produced as more credible. This included Carson, White, Beacham, and Price. Neither side regarded the King James Bible itself as inspired by God. It was merely one of many translations to one group and promoted as the best translation by others, but nonetheless just a translation with errors and problems. For both sides, perfection was only found in original autographs. All added to this thesis as the author realized that even though Burgon, Mauro, Wilkinson, Ray, Hills, and Fuller are claimed by the King James Only Movement they were not proponents of King James onlyism.

    While there is not an abundance of literature on the King James Only Movement in the IFB churches in the latter part of the twentieth century, the literature that is available identifies the principal actors in the movement, the rationales for the movement, and the comparatively recent origin of the movement. The scholars writing about the movement acknowledged that mainstream scholarship generally offered few insights into the movement, perhaps because it thought the movement too trivial an issue as James White is quoted as saying in the Introduction to this thesis. The thesis presented goes beyond the available scholarship to identify not only the significant players in the King James Only Movement but identifies their major published works, to reveal the tactics they used in their engagement with traditional Fundamentalists, their private correspondence, public debates, and to reveal personal testimonies through articles and sermons. It will also point out the significance of the untapped political power on a local level that IFB churches had due to their disunion over the issue of infallible original autographs or inerrant historical Bible. To address James White’s lament quoted at the end of the Introduction, the issue is hardly irrelevant in the fractious political condition of the U.S., heavily influenced by issues of Fundamental Baptist concern and this thesis builds on White’s work identifying significance that he doesn’t address, taking the study of the King James Only Movement to another level.

Chapter Two: The King James Only Movement in Print

    Although not the only Bible version available for English-speaking Protestants the King James Bible was the primary version used by Protestants of all denominations and faith traditions for the better part of two centuries. Established as the dominant Bible version by the 1640’s it never reigned without being challenged unsuccessfully by other translations.[64]  However, new manuscript discoveries and changes in the way the underlying Bible documents were viewed in the nineteenth century created a sense of the need to revise this authoritative Protestant Bible to bring it into line with those newer developments.

     This impulse led to the Anglican Church’s 1881 Revision of the King James Bible. The Revision was the first effort in two hundred and fifty years with any Anglican Church authority behind it to revise the King James Version of the Bible.[65] Plans were in the works since at least 1820 when Anglican Bishop Herbert Marsh in a lecture on the interpretation of the Bible at Cambridge, published in 1828, called for it as necessary.[66] This struggle to have the idea of a revision seen through happened in fact even though many, such as philologist and America’s first true environmental conservationist, George Perkins Marsh, foresaw in lectures given in the autumn of 1858 that a multitude of Bibles would result from such a revision, dividing Protestantism and causing more harm than good.[67] The Revision Committee published its work in 1881. The Revision efforts consisted of an English committee headed by Anglican bishops Westcott and Hort and an American committee headed by Bible scholar and historian, Philip Schaff. Schaff’s first note referring to the revision was dated August 19, 1870 when he “suggested suitable names for the committee,” resulting in the publication of the American Standard Version of the Bible, the American counterpart to the British Revised Version, the immediate result of the revision. [68]

    Anglican divines thought the revision necessary because a change presented itself to the efforts of Bible translators in the nineteenth century. Earlier Protestant Bible translators viewed New Testament Greek as a special language, a version of Greek prepared by the Holy Spirit for its own use as a “unique language with a unity and character of its own.”[69] Nineteenth century scholars who translated into lexicons and studied the Bible began to view New Testament Greek as simply common Greek called “Koine’” due to recent finds in Egypt of papyrus documents of a non-Biblical nature with similar words to the Bible’s.[70] Lexicographers began translating Greek words into English not from their Biblical usage but from secular Greek writings, plays, and works on philosophy. It became a standard practice with the Bible to go to other sources than the Bible to see word usage and definitions.[71] Linguist John Chadwick’s Lexicographica Graeca provided the landmark criticism of the forerunner of modern Biblical lexicons and the new methodology, Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon[72].

    In Bishop Westcott’s personal letters to Hort and other members of the Revision committee it was clear that they felt contempt for the King James Version. Westcott said in a letter written on October 12, 1853, “I feel most keenly the disgrace of circulating what I feel to be falsified copies of Holy Scriptures [referring to the AV], and am most anxious to provide something to replace them.”[73] They also did not hold to the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture in general (not only the KJV) but believed in the Bible’s particular human, not divine, origin, based on the nineteenth century changes in the way the manuscript evidence was viewed and Bible translating was done.  As Hort said to a respected colleague, Reverend J.B. Lightfoot, in a letter dated May 1^st of 1860, “If you make a decided conviction of the absolute infallibility of the N.T. practically a sine qua non for co-operation, I fear I could not join you…”[74] Hort acknowledged that the views of himself and Westcott, as well as the other Anglican scholars who took on the work of revision the King James Bible might well meet with opposition. In a letter dated April 12^th 1861 he confesses,

I have a sort of craving that our text should be cast upon the world before we deal with matters likely to brand us with suspicion. I mean, a text, issued by men already known for what will undoubtedly be treated as dangerous heresy, will have great difficulties in finding its way to regions which it might otherwise hope to reach, and whence it would not be easily banished by subsequent alarms.[75]

    The revision finally did come out and was subsequently critiqued by Bible scholars of the time. Dean John Burgon of Chichester, noted conservative Bible scholar, attacked the revision vigorously in 1883. “I pointed out that ‘the New Greek Text,’ – which, in defiance of their instructions, the Revisionists of the ‘Authorized English Version’ had been so ill-advised as to spend ten years in elaborating, - was a wholly untrustworthy performance: was full of the gravest errors from beginning to end….”[76]

    During this general time frame in America, from 1868 to 1900, a group of pastors and laymen held conferences (from 1883 to 1897 at Niagara Falls) where the issues of the basics of the Christian faith were discussed and clarified. This was completely unrelated to the Anglican Revision taking place or its American counterpart. However, these two unrelated events would converge in the next century in arguments over Bible versions. The participants at these conferences were essentially, “the founding fathers of fundamentalism.”[77] Fundamentalists received the name from a series of published volumes in the early twentieth century entitled The Fundamentals consisting of sixty four authors who furnished a total of ninety articles, published free for the Protestant public.[78]

    The Westcott and Hort Greek Text has been the basis for all of the other Greek Texts in use for Bible translating for the last one hundred and thirty years.[79] Most Fundamentalists accepted the Westcott and Hort Greek Text, largely due to a new doctrine formulated at the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1879 that said that the original autographs only were inerrant and infallible.[80] This allowed a fallback position from the assault on the inerrancy of the Bible by such things as modern scholarship and the acceptance of Darwin’s version of the Theory of Evolution to a Bible that didn’t actually exist in reality as the original manuscripts were never in one Bible and were themselves not extant so they could not be questioned. The mark of Fundamentalism in America was a conservative, literal approach to scriptural interpretation and a belief in the divine inspiration of the original autographs with translations being trustworthy but not perfect. It reduced divine inspiration to mere transmission from God to writing on a single occasion.[81]  

The term fundamentalist was first coined by a Baptist journalist in 1920 to describe those conservative Protestants then involved in militant movements both inside and outside North American denominations to defend what they saw as certain “fundamentals of the faith.” In their view those fundamentals included the virgin birth, the second coming of Christ, and, most important, an inerrant Bible…[82]

    American Protestant and Evangelical (a focus on the gospel of Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture) Christianity was postmillennial throughout the 18^th century in that it regarded the creation of God’s kingdom on earth as being the preeminent preoccupation of the Christian. “Millennial expectations are woven into the fabric of early 19^th century life in both Europe and America.”[83] But, while it was the “commonly received doctrine” in the 1800’s it had virtually disappeared by the early twentieth century.[84] The shattering disillusionment of World War One and the realization that perhaps mankind was not going to make a better world after all gave rise to the return of the first century’s premillennial view of waiting for Christ’s physical return to set up His own physical, literal kingdom to make all things right and a sort of giving up on the world as hopelessly incorrigible. This retreat from active engagement with the world in trying to make it a “better place” to winning souls from a lost and doomed world or, in other words, the movement from trying to patch the hole in the Titanic to getting everyone off the sinking ship was the driving force of Baptist Fundamentalism and separated it from conservative Protestant traditions, even Evangelicals who focused on the gospel of Christ. “Evangelicals who emphasized revivalism and those who emphasized social reform were coming more and more to comprise two parties…” as famed evangelist, Billy Sunday, was criticized in 1912, before the term ‘fundamentalism’ was even coined by social reformers for his ‘sensationalist techniques and his gospel of soul-saving.’”[85] As Fundamentalism became less and less a force after the “Scopes Monkey Trial”, a complex issue that is beyond the scope of this thesis, it was concentrated in the Baptist denomination until Fundamentalist and Baptist became synonymous as reported by Marsden earlier in this thesis. In any event, the “Scopes Monkey Trial”, in truth a battle not against science but a “culture war” between “religious and social conservatives against religious and social liberals, along with atheists and skeptics” moved Fundamentalism even further from the mainstream, further retreating from active engagement with the world, and was a boon to the development of Fundamentalist universities such as Bob Jones.[86] These were the very colleges and universities which Dr. Ruckman said, as revealed later, were the cause of apostasy. It is important to understand that to the defenders of the King James Only Movement the “Scopes Monkey Trial” was ancient history. What mattered was the defense of their view of the Bible against other Fundamentalist Christians. The world was lost, at its best, and although they wrote and preached against the Theory of Evolution their fury was reserved for defending the King James Bible against their own peers. With regard to Fundamentalist views on the subject of Creation and Evolution that was the focus of the arguments in the trial an unpublished thesis from Abilene Christian University that explains the literalist view of Fundamentalists in the 1920’s in reference to the Bible was Michael Wilson Casey’s The Interpretation of Genesis One in the Churches of Christ.[87] This gives no insight into the latter twentieth century controversy over the King James only division in the Baptist churches but is focused on the Church of Christ denomination in the heyday of early Fundamentalism.

    Accepting modern versions that flowed from the Westcott and Hort Greek Text was not difficult for Fundamentalists until the publication of the aforementioned works by Benjamin G. Wilkinson, J.J. Ray, and Edward F. Hills made some question the text, its derivative translations, and the most recent scholarship behind it. But, even a rejection of the Westcott and Hort text did not change the fundamental faith in the original autographs’ divine inspiration with translations being trustworthy but not perfect.

    The King James only position is markedly different from any objection to a particular new Bible version such as Edgar Goodspeed’s American Translation in the 1920’s. The King James Only Movement was the rejection of all modern standards and methods of Bible translation. In addition, as James White admitted, “The textual differences between the KJV and modern versions derive from the Hebrew and Greek texts from which they were translated.”[88] The main objection to Goodspeed’s translation effort was the attempt to render the beauty of the King James Bible into crass, vulgar American idioms.[89] The King James only position rejected any Bible version not only because its proponents might disagree with the background texts from which it was translated or the view of the translators over the nature of the original languages but because the King James Bible was given by inspiration of God and others after it were not in their view. It is for this reason that the numerous books put out by the translators of the modern versions themselves justifying their translations or those by critics of their translations are not necessarily relevant to this thesis although some are included as they were written by the KJV only camp. Fundamentalists who preferred one translation or another argued endlessly about why their favorite version was better than another without violating their core belief in the authority of the original autographs. James White considered himself to be a Biblical conservative and admitted that there were a number of Bible translations he wouldn’t recommend.[90] That is not relevant to the thesis. The issue identified here is the movement that not only valued the King James Bible as treasured or important but the very inspired words of God in English, at least, as stated in the Introduction to this thesis.

    For the first several decades of the twentieth century Fundamentalists were set in two camps, both of which overlapped in the churches. There were those who believed in the credibility of the Anglican Revision effort published in 1881 and the Bibles that flowed from it and there were those that believed the Textus Receptus was virtually infallible and that the King James Bible was its best representative. Many churches were unconcerned about what seemed like small differences best left to scholars to argue over. In an individual church one would find Bibles from both traditions side by side with a Sunday School teacher using a Revised Standard Version from the Westcott and Hort inspired tradition, the pastor preaching from a New King James Version based on the Traditional Text, and older congregants using only the King James Bible because they grew up with it and had never used anything else. The author of this thesis witnessed just such situations.

    Then, in 1964, a Baptist pastor from Pensacola, Florida published a book entitled Bible Babel. Up until this point in the history of Fundamentalism with regard to the Bible translation issue there were two distinct camps. One group of Fundamentalists believed in the perceived solid scholarship behind the Westcott and Hort Greek Text and the Bible translations that flowed from it. The other believed in the virtue of the Traditional Text or Textus Receptus, the Received Text, with the King James Bible being the best translation. Now, things would take an interesting turn. Dr. Peter Ruckman, graduate of conservative but traditionally Fundamentalist Bob Jones University, firmly in the Westcott and Hort camp, began insisting on some things completely contrary to what his alma mater taught. In the book Ruckman threw a monkey wrench into the gears of Fundamentalist thought. In his opening remarks he made the shocking recommendation, “…you would do well to stick to the King James Bible (1611) whether you are a Protestant, Catholic, or Jew.”[91] He never explained why a Roman Catholic or a Jew should acknowledge the authority of the King James Bible. On the same page he called the King James Bible “the greatest book ever written, published, taught, memorized, studied, preached, or read.”[92] With this opening salvo he continued later insisting that, unlike other Bibles, the King James Bible “is true to the exaltation of Jesus Christ,”[93] Dr. Ruckman attacked the very foundation of Fundamentalist belief in the inspired original autographs pointing out that no one had seen the originals, the originals never existed together in any book, and pointedly, “there are no scholars, saved or lost, living or dead, who ever made the mistake of thinking that Paul wrote his originals, and then put them into a BOOK that contained Moses’ and Isaiah’s originals.”[94] Ruckman finished up with a definitive statement about the King James. He said it was “preserved by the grace of God, without error, in spite of the work of the faculty members of…” and then he named several prominent Fundamentalist universities, calling it a “perfect BOOK for the end time.”[95] Suddenly, believing the King James Bible was a good but flawed or even superior but with some errors in translation was not good enough. It was THE translation approved by God Himself without error, an infallible Bible translation.  Bible Babel was very popular among the rank and file IFB and was reprinted again in 1981, 1987, and 1994 to meet the demand after the movement took hold in local churches. Needless to say, this would not please the bastions of “orthodox” Fundamentalism such as Bob Jones University, Tennessee Temple, Pensacola Christian College, and later, Liberty University, although there is no record of their immediate response to the book’s publication. This disapproval was evident later in the debates teachers of those schools such as Fred Alfman would carry on in letters with the KJV only faithful.

    As this thesis explains in the next chapter, Ruckman’s view on the authority and perfection of the King James Bible was established while a student at Bob Jones University. Interestingly, before he so clearly explained his position in the Bible Babel he commented on it in a 1960 work on the Bible book, The Revelation of St. John, commonly called Revelations. In the book, The Mark of the Beast, Ruckman noted his views on the superiority of the King James Bible and the inferiority of every other modern Bible version. But, this book did not specifically address the Bible version issue for which he became noted as did the Bible Babel.

    Ruckman preached his message in churches from coast to coast and was recorded on tape quite extensively by his supporters beginning in 1964. Eventually, the bookstore associated with his church would sell popular cassette tapes and then CD’s which included commentary on books of the Bible and his polemics against modern Bible versions, uplifting the authority, credibility, and perfection of the Authorized Version of the Bible. In 1965, Dr. Ruckman founded the Pensacola Bible Institute to train pastors, missionaries, teachers, and laymen in his viewpoints on the Bible.

    The next significant work produced by Ruckman that addressed his view on the Bible version debate was his commentary in 1969 on the book of Genesis. Again, he directed a challenge to traditional Fundamentalist scholarship, but this time he expanded his arguments to the Old Testament. “After carefully checking the 1500 (plus) ‘supposed errors’ in the Old Testament text, the author has come to the conclusion that 80 per cent of the critics of the AV 1611 do not know about what they are talking, and the remaining 20 per cent did what they did for scholastic standing.”[96]    

    Ruckman was the great grandson of a Civil War hero, the grandson of a World War One general, and the son of an Army colonel who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War Two.[97] He was a hand-to-hand combat instructor in the U.S. Army toward the close of World War Two. These facts of his life influenced his combative nature. In 1970, Ruckman threw the gauntlet down with The Christian Handbook of Manuscript Evidence. This was no rehash of Wilkinson from forty years before but a thorough, almost Edward Hills like appraisal of the Biblical scholarship that overthrew the King James Bible and generated new, updated Bible versions every decade. Unlike Hills, Ruckman did not write in a scholarly fashion. His writing style was of the preacher exhorting his congregation. One could almost hear him shouting at certain points where capital letters dominated the pages. He covered everything in this book from the early church fathers and Westcott and Hort’s work to the damage he perceived inflicted on the average Christian confused by a multitude of Bible versions that all had slightly different readings being published at regular intervals.[98]  Ruckman also laid out his claim to the King James Bible’s superiority even over the “original Greek.” Rather than comparing the Greek of the Textus Receptus as superior to the Greek text formulated by Westcott and Hort’s revision committee as other Fundamentalists did, he said, “…the AV 1611 English text is superior to the Westcott and Hort GREEK text….the English readings are superior to the Greek readings, which is borne out by the comparison of one verse to another.”[99] In that same year Ruckman published his commentary on the book of Matthew. Now in the New Testament he emphatically declared, “What the modern scribe hates about the AV is the ‘A,’ for it means AUTHORIZED (from ‘authority’).”[100] These types of jabs at Fundamentalist scholarship were common throughout his works.

    In 1972 Ruckman attacked the New American Standard Bible (NASB) with the booklet, Satan’s Masterpiece: The New ASV.[101] The year 1973 featured Ruckman’s booklet, a smaller version of Manuscript Evidence entitled The Monarch of Books: An Illustrated Account in Layman’s Language of the English Bible, again, written for the average person.[102] The year 1978 brought his Survey of the Authorized Version, clearly intended to keep the controversy charged up.[103]

    The year 1983 featured Ruckman’s attack on the New King James Bible, a more conservative attempt at translating than those versions previous to it in the years since 1900. It was entitled About the New King James Version.[104] That year also saw Ruckman’s effort to answer critics of the King James Bible’s multiple historical editions in Differences in the King James Version Editions.[105] In 1988 Ruckman published a more detailed book on the history of Biblical scholarship with a blistering attack on modern versions such as the Revised Version, the American Standard Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, The Living Bible, and the New International Version. This book was entitled The Christian’s Handbook of Biblical Scholarship and again not written in a scholarly manner but written in language that the average person could understand which is what made his books so popular in many IFB churches.[106]

    Ruckman’s folksy humor and writing style designed to appeal to the average IFB church-goer was very popular and made the Bible Baptist Bookstore or Bible Baptist Press, a ministry of his church, the Bible Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida a small, but quite successful publishing house. The bookstore even sold books by people who opposed Ruckman’s ideas and people he blasted in his own works. Rarely did their bookstores, websites, or campuses, however, allow Ruckman’s works to be sold.

    During the early 1980’s Jack Chick, a purveyor of cartoon gospel tracts, got in on the King James only movement. His Chick Publications, the producer of the tracts, published books such as Barry Burton’s Let’s Weigh the Evidence: Which Bible is the REAL Word of God? in 1983.[107] The books produced by the King James Only Movement were no longer rehashing Benjamin Wilkinson’s work or J.J. Ray’s copying of it but drawing on the resources of a new generation of students of manuscript evidence who were encouraged by Ruckman’s outspoken success and popularity. Dr. Samuel Gipp, a graduate of Ruckman’s Bible Institute, introduced his An Understandable History of the Bible in 1987, defending the authority of the King James. In 1989 he released The Answer Book, both now published free of charge on www.chick.com by the Chick tract company.[108] Ruckman, who dominated the 1970’s and 80’s with his popular preaching style and constant flow of books published by his Bible Baptist Bookstore, began 1990 with an assault on the New International Version entitled The NIV: An “In-Depth” Documentation of Apostasy, and in 1992 he published with King James Onlyism versus Scholarship Onlyism.[109]

    The 1990’s, as the century came to a close, saw the largest number of broadsides with new combatants entering the fray. First, in 1993, Gail Riplinger exploded onto the scene with her attack on all modern Bible versions, only with much more in depth and original scholarship, entitled New Age Bible Version: An Exhaustive Documentation of the Message, Men, and Manuscripts Moving Mankind to the Antichrist’s One World Religion.[110] Now, not only were the modern Bible versions attacked but the men behind the lexicons and the translators of the newer versions personal lives and personal beliefs were under a microscope.

   Kevin Bauder pointed out in One Bible Only that “a new generation of controversialists arose. Throughout the 1990’s, these new leaders mounted an increasingly vocal campaign to attract fundamentalists away from the mainstream toward the fringe.”[111] The most prominent and outspoken of these new leaders was Gail Riplinger. Her book, she reported, was the result of a six year study of “new Bible versions, Greek editions and manuscripts, commencing with over 3,000 hours of word-for-word collation of the entire New Testament.”[112] Riplinger’s book was very thorough and detailed in its 650 pages but she was just getting warmed up. More significant work would follow. The book was brought out in churches and argued over by congregants who never considered the issue before and who never heard of Ruckman. Her most significant difference from Ruckman was her associating of modern Bible translators from Westcott and Hort onward with Satanism and occult beliefs.

    Believing that the New American Standard Bible’s owners, the Lockman Foundation, updated and revised their version in 1996 based on the damning evidence found in Riplinger’s explosive book, Dr. Laurence Vance went after them with, Double Jeopardy: The NASB Update, in 1998. He published in the same year as Riplinger’s bestseller his own A Brief History of English Bible Translations.[113] Riplinger’s thoroughness but sensationalistic accusations were matched by Vance’s scholarly and dignified prose. Lesser known authors also joined the exhortation to use only the King James Bible such as Chick Salliby, who published one of the more notable attacks on The New International Version (NIV) entitled If the Foundations Be Destroyed in 1994.[114]

    Dr. William Grady published the most scholarly work on this side of Hill’s The King James Version Defended with his 1993 historical work, Final Authority, which he made available at no charge later on the internet as an audiobook. Final Authority placed the translation into an historical context from the earliest Bible manuscripts and versions until the Reformation. It is one book that no one has attempted to refute due to his thorough carefulness, extensive citations, and helpful bibliography.[115] Grady implored the Independent Baptist reader with, “Until we hear His trumpet sound (1 Thessalonians 4:16), we must…believe the King James Bible is the preserved Word of God…”[116]

    Ruckman, who had a vicious exchange of letters with James R. White, responded to White’s The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Bible Translations? in 1996 with The Scholarship Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Professional Liars? and The Mythological Septuagint: A Fairy Tale for Grownups. In the Scholarship Only Controversy Dr. Ruckman referred to J.I. Packer’s commendation of White’s book as “spaced-out hysteria.”[117] He also published The Mythological Septuagint: A Fairy Tale for Grownups which attacked the Greek translation of the Old Testament that the King James translators rejected but modern scholars preferred. Then the very next year he released a treasure trove of personal correspondence and statements from prominent Fundamentalists in the originals only camp entitled The Christian Liars Library. Ruckman already released a similar group of correspondence in 1990’s The Last Grenade: A Military Record of the Biblical Apostasy of Modern Christianity.  He finished the century in the year 2000 with The Alexandrian Cult Series, the Alexandrian Cult being his derogatory name for those who followed Westcott and Hort’s Greek Text, revealed later in his correspondence.[118]

    Gail Riplinger, in 1998,  published praise of the King James Bible entitled The Language of the King James Bible which, among other things, chronicled her decade long obsession with studying everything from Sanskrit to the history of Bible translating and copying. She stated that the KJV was flawless.[119]  Riplinger made several statements in her book which she set out to prove about the unique authority of the Authorized Version. One was that the King James Bible had its own built-in dictionary and another that by using literary devices such as parallel phrasing words and concepts were defined in it in her effort to manifest the supernatural design of that version.[120] Riplinger added the science of linguistics to her review of scholarship to support her view of the perfection of the King James Bible.  Riplinger stated that the language of the King James explained the grammar and syntax of the Greek and Hebrew in an implication, similar to Ruckman’s shown earlier, that the English Bible was superior to the Greek and Hebrew.[121]

    Riplinger also quoted extensively from Harvard’s Literary Guide to the Bible to help her point out the literary devices that this particular Bible used to help with meaning and for the understanding of the reader to buttress her view of its superiority. Taking from among the several quotes from the Literary Guide to the Bible she listed on pages 133 and 134 of her book the Harvard compilers of various essays on the Bible said that the King James Bible “is the version that best preserves the literary effects of the original languages,” although their reasons for uplifting it had nothing to do with divine inspiration.[122]  In the same contribution the author pointed out that even the translators of the modern versions believed it was a great work of art, although no citation of any modern translator’s approval was given.[123] It was also explained how the syntax of that Bible reflected that of the original languages better than other Bibles.[124] As a postscript Riplinger published two new additions in 2003 and 2008 to her list of popular works, popular to digest for the King James Bible believer and popular to dissect for those opposed. In Awe of Thy Word, a thorough study of the history of the Bible and how the King James Bible was constructed as an addition to the material found in The Language of the King James Bible was published in 2003. Hazardous Materials was published 2008 and was an addition to material covered in New Age Bible Versions being a review of the changes in the scholarship regarding translating the Bible in the nineteenth century Anglican Church.[125]

     The King James Bible known also as the King James Version (KJV) and the Authorized Version (AV) was the dominant Protestant Bible for several centuries. Bible translators and scholars in the nineteenth century, based on new manuscript discoveries and new ways of viewing the nature of the Bible manuscripts, came to change methodology and reasoning behind translating the Bible. Fundamentalism was divided into two views on the Bible, one that the Anglican Revision of the King James Bible and the Bibles that flowed from it were superior and the other that the Traditional Text or Textus Receptus, Latin for Received Text, was superior with the King James Bible being the best translation. Both sides agreed that divine inspiration lay only in the original autographs of the presumed Bible writers. Beginning in 1964, a movement started that defined the King James Bible alone, as the supposed original autographs no longer existed, as being the object of inspiration. This movement was propelled forward by a number of self-published books by its proponents as revealed here.

Chapter Three: Hostile Correspondence

    Dr. Peter S. Ruckman was definitely the acknowledged lead person in the King James Only Movement from his first published book on the matter in 1964. He did not forbid anyone from using any version in study but he did fight doggedly for the authority of the King James Bible as God’s word in the English language and regularly dismissed other versions as counterfeits. In his autobiography he said, referring to what he taught in his school, the Pensacola Bible Institute (PBI), “I taught them they could USE any book as long as they believed THE BOOK.” [126] The correspondence Ruckman and his followers had with other Fundamentalists over this issue was caustic in nature.

    The basis of his crusade was that Christian colleges and seminaries that promoted the concept that the original autographs only were inspired by God caused the nation to lose “confidence in the Book, and confidence in the Book is always destroyed slowly and subtly in Christian colleges and seminaries THAT PROFESS THE ‘FUNDAMENTALS OF THE FAITH.’”[127] He went on saying, “that if a man makes his living USING a Book he does not believe, while deceiving his supporters into thinking he believes it, he is an APOSTATE FUNDAMENTALIST; in short, a liar, a fraud, and a hypocrite.”[128] This was his standard reasoning for the attacks he made on other Fundamentalist pastors, teachers, and scholars. In no uncertain terms, clearly stated, Ruckman believed that, for those who were taught by him at PBI, denying charges that he was trying to create a cult, “Your faith was in a BOOK,  not a man, and you stood up for a BOOK, not a man.”[129]

    Ruckman’s stance was cemented while at Bob Jones University in the early 1950’s. He felt that the teachers in the Bible classes were pushing an agenda at variance to everything he believed personally about the Bible.[130] Dr. Ruckman explained in detail his beliefs in a CD he produced for his bookstore to sell entitled How God Opened My Eyes to the AV 1611 in which he outlined the differences between his camp and the mainstream of Fundamentalism. On this CD he said that he “has never been so egotistical and maniacal with self importance that he undertook to correct the word of God,” implying what he believed were the personal character traits of his opponents.  In further explanation of his view of the nature of Fundamentalist scholarship he went on to say,”…not one scholar in America is recognized as a scholar if he doesn’t change a verse in the King James Bible.” [131]

    Starting with Ruckman himself at the high point of his bitter correspondence in the 1990’s there was an acrimonious exchange with Dr. James R. White, a respected theologian and Calvinist Baptist with a Th.D. in Apologetics from the Columbia Evangelical Seminary. His ministry of Christian apologetics is called Alpha and Omega Ministries. The authenticity of the correspondence between himself and Dr. Ruckman, archived on Alpha and Omega Ministries’ website has never been denied by Ruckman and the letters are scanned in their entirety with no editing. White’s book, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? was strongly recommended when released by IFB pastors who opposed the King James Only Movement. This was confirmed in an interview with evangelist John Kotchenruter regarding his attendance at an IFB church called Grace Bible in New Freedom, York County, Pennsylvania in the late 1990’s.[132]

    When James White released The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? he sent a copy and a letter to Dr. Ruckman, his opponent in the King James Bible debate. White, a staunch defender of Fundamentalist and Evangelical, Protestant, Christian faith through many debates and books acknowledged to Ruckman on his own Alpha and Omega Ministries letterhead, “You are the leading advocate of the most conservative and extreme form of KJV onlyism in the United States today…..,” then challenged Dr Ruckman to a debate which White thought would “be useful to the many who have been confused, and yes, I would say misled, by your preaching and teaching on this topic.”[133] In fact, in White’s book he had acknowledged Ruckman’s importance to the King James Only Movement in no uncertain terms. “His devoted followers see him in prophetic terms. He is the best-known advocate of KJV Onlyism in the United States. He is the author of dozens of books and head of the Pensacola Bible Institute.”[134]

     Ruckman read White’s book and responded quite promptly with his own letter suggesting a debate in June of the following year. Ruckman called White’s book “the finest, clearest, and most definitive example of the Creed of the Alexandrian Cult that the Cult has exhibited so far…” and went on to recommend several books that White should read.[135] The line that stood out the sharpest in this two page assault on James White’s integrity, manhood, and intelligence is “you’re a liar, sonny; just like your peers, mentors, and supporters.”[136]

       The two main manuscripts upon which Westcott and Hort based their Greek Text were regarded as Alexandrian (Egypt) text type by most scholars differentiated from the hundreds of Byzantine text type manuscripts used for the King James Bible, hence, the origin of Ruckman’s derogatory phrase. Dr. Ruckman outlined his name for his opponents in every issue of his church’s bulletin and in many of his books. In his letter to White of the 22^nd of April, 1995, he also included the following remarks, “I was told to ‘redeem the time’, not waste it on the Alexandrian Cult. You’re not the first Bible-rejecting fakir who wanted to ‘take on Ruckman.’”[137] There are two clear patterns emerging here that were present in much of the personal correspondence from the King James only camp uncovered for this thesis. One was the dismissal of the opponent as being a fake, a liar, and up to no good. The other theme was the beleaguered pastor, scholar, or just plain Christian who was fighting, attacked, taking on enemies of the Bible and, as a consequence, enemies of God. This was an ever present attitude that permeated much of Fundamentalism in general but was quite common in the King James Only Movement as the point man, whatever station he had, took on what he perceived to be the enemies of the Bible.

    When the socialist and feminist reporter, Marcet Haldeman-Julius interviewed a principal founder of the IFB movement, J. Frank Norris, a man Ruckman admired a great deal, she commented that “melodrama is as the breath of life to J. Frank Norris.”[138] Norris’ paranoia and the mentality of the besieged man of God were ever present in his attitude and demeanor. Haldeman-Julius reported, “Norris positively likes to think of himself, and have other people think of him, as moving in a world of would-be assassins,” always referring to attempts on his life and his receipt of anonymous letters threatening him.[139]

    On May 12, 1995 Dr. White replied to Ruckman’s letter. He acknowledged the hostility in Ruckman’s writing. “I confess that I find your tone, as usual, to be excessively abusive and mean-spirited.”[140] He then offered further suggestions on how the debate should be conducted. Dr. Ruckman, in his typical, angry fashion sent back White’s own letter with sentences underlined and hostile, dismissive comments written in the margin including calling White “a conceited ass.”[141] The letter that accompanied White’s marked up letter went on along with more abusive remarks to argue over debate points. But, back in the marked up letter Ruckman made another accusation as he demanded time to rebut White’s arguments in the intended debate, “given your propensity for destroying the Christian’s faith in the Bible an opportunity for pointing out your motives would have to be given.”[142] The motives referred to were not put forward in the letter. The exchange of correspondence continued until White’s final response on June 29^th. Through all of the hostility, name-calling, and verbal attacks put forward by Dr. Ruckman, the debate never took place. This is not to imply that Ruckman had not engaged in important debates. He had. The DVD’s were available on his website. That these two men could not work out the details of a public debate acceptable to both of them is irrelevant. The point made is the acrimonious and hostile manner in which Peter Ruckman talked to his opponents, a device common to many in the movement.

    In the introduction of Ruckman’s book long review of White’s book, The Scholarship Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Professional Liars?, a sarcastic word play on White’s title, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations?, that came out the year after the exchange of letters, Ruckman said,

What you must keep in mind from start to finish, when reading James White, is that neither he nor any of his friends, peers, mentors, promoters, relatives, or colleagues have any higher authority on this earth than their own opinions. They have never seen a verse of Scripture, they have never read a verse of Scripture, they have never memorized a verse of Scripture, and they have never believed a verse of Scripture. They only use the ‘Scripture’ to sucker the suckers.[143]

   

     This statement implied that believing that the long-lost originals only were inspired meant that Baptist Christians such as White didn’t have a Bible to read, according to Ruckman. As Dr. Ruckman was, Dr. White pointed out, the most extreme advocate of KJV onlyism in the United States at that time it is important to consider the manner in which he conducted the warfare over the stance he chose. His followers were deridingly called Ruckmanites, a name they often used for themselves without embarrassment.[144]

    One Ruckmanite, a Christian of Korean ethnicity named Geneha Kim, wrote a book in response to Fundamentalist R.L. Hymers’ Ruckmanism Exposed. Kim’s 2010 work, looking back over Ruckman’s career was entitled Ruckmanism Ruckus. Kim wrote his book not only to defend Dr. Ruckman but himself as Hymers had spoken against those in Korea  in one of his own sermons who believed in the Korean version of the King James. Kim explained that, “The word ‘Ruckmanism’ is a misleading term that Fundamentalists derived to criticize Bible-believing Christians.” [145]

    Ruckmanites often copied their leader’s tactics of verbal abuse. In his collection of letters of the battles he and his supporters fought over the King James Bible appropriately titled The Last Grenade: A Military Record of the Biblical Apostasy of Modern Christianity he included letters written to prominent Fundamentalist leaders by his followers. In fact, even the other Fundamentalists who preferred the King James, if not as radical as Ruckman in believing it was given by inspiration of God, were also fair game. Curtis Hutson was one of those prominent Independent Fundamental Baptists. He was the editor of the Fundamentalist newspaper founded by John R. Rice, The Sword of The Lord, from 1978 until his death from prostate cancer in 1995.  Their position in the last quarter century of the 1900’s was as it is now, that “WE BELIEVE the Bible, the Scriptures of the Old Testament and of the New Testament preserved for us in the Masoretic text  (Old Testament)  Textus Receptus (New Testament) and in the King James Bible.”[146]

     Curtis Hutson’s “sin” was that he and his newspaper were not radical enough but still in the mainstream Fundamentalist camp. In Ruckman’s cassette tape series, The Whole Story, which consisted of items that did not make his monthly Bible Believer’s Bulletin he often attacked Hutson’s standards.  While Ruckman acknowledged that Hutson, like himself, stood against Bob Jones University’s “Alexandrian” stance, he attacked him as “selling out” and called Hutson “a prostitute” because Hutson placed the Textus Receptus above the King James Bible in authority.[147]

    Returning to The Last Grenade and Ruckman’s followers, Ruckman proudly printed a letter written on Sept. 5, 1989 from one of his followers, Pastor Al Hughes, to Curtis Hutson regarding an article Hutson wrote entitled “Unnecessary Divisions Among Fundamentalists”. Hutson proclaimed that “the King James Version is the only Bible we have ever used. It is the Bible we preach from and the Bible we use in all of our writings.”[148] In the letter to Hutson, Hughes called him a liar and reminded him that he used other Bible versions in several of his articles in past issues and gave the page number and the name of the version used in those articles. Hughes said, “This article has removed ALL DOUBTS from my mind to what YOU really are; you are a LIAR, FRAUD, and HYPOCRITE. You prove that in your article.”[149]

    Al Hughes was the Pastor of the Bible Baptist Church in Port Orchard, Washington from 1986 through the end of the century and still holds that office at this writing. His church’s doctrine was straight Ruckman, “We believe the King James Bible is the perfect Word of God in the English language,” which he confirmed to the author of this thesis along with the authenticity of the letter in Dr. Ruckman’s book in an email exchange on February 25, 2013. He wrote,

“I started the Barton Baptist Church in Barton, Vermont in 1976. Our original 1976 Articles of Faith included a statement that the KJV is the Word of God. After I became the pastor of Bible Baptist Church in Port Orchard, WA in 1986 (where I've been the pastor for the past 27 years), we added our doctrinal position in the KJV being the Word of God.

I had some correspondence with Dr. Curtis Hutson in 1989 concerning the King James Bible. That correspondence has been included on pages 118-120 in "The Last Grenade" by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman. Also, in 1977, I corresponded with Midwestern Baptist College (where I graduated in 1974) concerning their position on the King James Bible. This correspondence can be read in Ruckman's "The Last Grenade" on pages 308-309.”[150]

    From the examples shown, as representative of many others read for this thesis, Fundamentalists who held to the inerrancy of Scripture as assumed for the original autographs inspired by God, even those who believed the King James Bible was the best translation on the market, were subjected to ridicule and invective hurled against them from Dr. Ruckman and his followers.

     In Roy E. Beacham’s One Bible Only? Kevin Bauder put forth that most Fundamentalists had grown tired of the controversy by the late 1980’s and the King James only proponents were being ignored.[151] But that statement hardly seems based in reality as Ruckman’s popularity alone soared in the 1990’s with his “Bad Attitude Baptist Blowout” conferences of preaching with different guest preachers he trained or favored featured, held twice yearly and attracting huge crowds. The attention of James White’s literary efforts in the mid-1990’s showed that the issue was at its peak. As this chapter later reveals the accusation charged letters that built up to this peak existed throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s.  Focusing on this peak period of pointed exchanges Bauder did point out accurately, as cited earlier, that “a new generation of controversialists arose. Throughout the 1990’s, these new leaders mounted an increasingly vocal campaign to attract Fundamentalists away from the mainstream toward the fringe.”[152] Again, as already noted, the most prominent and outspoken of these new leaders was Gail Riplinger.

    Gail Riplinger entered the battle over Bible versions with her 1993 New Age Bible Versions, supporting the King James Version and it’s background Greek and Hebrew texts. She took the brunt of the attack from Fundamentalists who supported the originals only view and even those who used the King James Bible exclusively responded negatively to her work. David Cloud, who operated his own website attacking prominent Christians, and D.A. Waite of the Dean Burgon Society, an organization devoted to the writings and philosophy of   John William Burgon, who wrote The Revision Revised, attacked Riplinger’s work. Both men were proponents of the King James Bible and the Textus Receptus behind it but not the divine inspiration of the King James Bible. James R. White also attacked her work. In fact, there was a veritable feeding frenzy surrounding opposition to her work by anyone who was not in the Ruckman camp.

    Riplinger published her response in 1995 to the negative review given by David Cloud of New Age Versions in his organization’s Way of Life Literature, publication, Fundament Independent Baptist Information Service.  In a parody of his journal O Timothy her response was titled “O Madmen.”[153] Additionally, Riplinger responded to a 1994 critical review of her book by the fundamentalist magazine, The Berean Call, challenging what she called writer T.A. McMahon’s misrepresentations and errors.[154] She accused him of setting up straw man arguments and undocumented claims.[155] She attacked his work as a “false witness” and accused him of “evil surmisings.”[156] She even accused Dave Hunt, The Berean Call’s publisher, of altering the text of the King James Bible translators’ letter to the reader.[157]

    Next she took on Robert Thomas, whose review for Fundamental Calvinist John MacArthur’s Master’s Seminary Journal criticized her work. She accused him of being a “purveyor of such misinformation” and “….untruths.[158] Riplinger tackled Bob Morey’s review in the now defunct The Researcher and James White’s review and even said his comments were “legally actionable.”[159] All in all, the responses to Cloud’s review and White’s took up most of her book.

Fundamentalist D.A. Waite’s attacks on Riplinger’s work resulted in her threat of a lawsuit. James R. White published a lengthy rebuttal of Riplinger’s book on his ministry’s website, as well. However, neither Waite nor Cloud approved of Dr. Ruckman, who, in spite of Riplinger’s gender, considering Fundamentalism’s typical misogynistic outlook, held her up as an example and a cross-bearer.

    The error in Bauder’s statement about a lull in interest in the King James Bible debate is revealed by looking back to the 1970’s and 80’s at the buildup to this high point of argument over the authority and inspiration of the King James Bible in the IFB churches. Herb Evans was one of the earliest advocates of The King James Bible in the late 1960’s after Ruckman and is still an avid blogger and collector of memorabilia, letters, and debates regarding the King James only movement throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century and beyond.  Dr. Ruckman mentioned Evans prominently in The Last Grenade. The author of this thesis requested access to Evans’ personal letters and correspondence he had with Fundamentalists opposed to him. Mr. Evans was very generous in sending many items of interest and confirmed the authenticity of the letters printed in The Last Grenade. [160] In 1976, as a result of a December 15, 1972 article in The Sword of the Lord and an exchange of letters between Rice and Evans, Herb Evans wrote and published a pamphlet through Wonderful World Publishers entitled Dear Doctor John, Where is My Bible?: A Written Dispute with John R. Rice. The article in The Sword of the Lord from 1972 said Peter Ruckman and David Otis Fuller were wrong in their views on the exclusive authority of the King James Bible, mischaracterizing Fuller’s views which were similar to Rice’s own. As noted previously, John R. Rice was the founder of that newspaper in the 1930’s and remained the editor until his death, when Curtis Hutson took editorial control. John R. Rice was a prominent Fundamentalist, considered one of the founders of the IFB movement who fought against ecumenicalism and compromise with what he considered to be worldliness and sin.[161] However, John R. Rice was a staunch Fundamentalist who believed the credo he put forth in his newspaper and that all of the radical King James only were schismatics at best.

    The Wonderful World Publisher, missionary David Cimino, had the pamphlet distributed at a missionary conference at Tennessee Temple University in 1976. The pamphlet attacked Rice’s stance on the originals and that the King James Bible was the best Bible but not God’s perfect word in English superior even to the original Hebrew and Greek, as the radicals in the movement believed. The late Fred Alfman who died in 2009 was an educator at Tennessee Temple, the Fundamentalist seminary in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He had also taught Peter Ruckman at Bob Jones University in the 1950’s. He highly objected to the distribution of the pamphlet written by Herb Evans attacking the beloved John R. Rice’s position in Rice’s home state and at a school that supported him. It is noteworthy that what was at stake were not just the loyalties and theological standard of Fundamentalists but the millions of dollars that were funneled to these schools and missionary efforts by the thousands of IFB churches around the country. It was a struggle for the very control of Fundamentalism itself.

    Alfman wrote a letter to David Cimino dated April 16, 1977, which Ruckman referenced in The Last Grenade but which Herb Evans, the eventual recipient of it through his publisher, sent the author of this thesis by email, confirming the authenticity of the letter printed in Ruckman’s book. Alfman objected to the distribution at the conference and school, saying it was “unchristian and Unethical” to do so, defending himself by saying that he “used the King James throughout all of my years of training and ministry,” (remember Hutson’s statement) acknowledging that he, too, had read Fuller’s Which Bible? and Ruckman’s Manuscript Evidence. He then reinforced the credibility of his complaint by referring to his own education by saying, “Lest you feel that I am not qualified to speak on this subject, I have had three years of Hebrew plus a year of textual criticism plus four years of Greek, and another year of textual criticism in that field.” He accused the King James Only Movement of “dividing unnecessarily the believers in the inerrant Word of God.”[162]

    Herb Evans replied in the place of David Cimino who turned over the letter to him.  Two lines in the letter that stood out above the others were, “It is hard for me to understand the blind prejudice exhibited by men of exceptional education….Disagree with us, say we are wrong, but do not condemn us without facts.”[163]  Then, parroting the classic accusation that those who followed the Westcott and Hort Text were a cult themselves, said, “You predict this movement of Bible Believers will become a cult. Perhaps you are not aware of the Westcott and Hort cult that is already operating in our seminaries.”[164] Then, Evans made the plea that was one of the foundations of the King James onlyists’ lament and a point for them of unequaled importance. “Last of all, you refer to the “INERRANT” Word of God. I ask you plainly, ‘WHERE is it and WHAT is it?’ Have you ever seen the ‘Original Manuscripts?’ In your two years of textual criticism, have you ever personally COLLATED the manuscripts?” [165] The exchange was also published in Ruckman’s Bible Baptist Church’s Bible Believer’s Bulletin in the January, 1979 issue on page four. This question and the response from Evans itself went unanswered.

    In his typical fashion, Ruckman, in referring to the original exchange of letters between Rice and Evans, acknowledged, “Evans didn’t slander anyone and didn’t accuse anyone of anything that he didn’t lay out in print…,” but couldn’t resist adding, “Every time these sissies get their skirts ruffled they start hollering ‘SLANDER, MISREPRESENTATION!’  Curtis Hutson and Bob Jones, Jr. are masters at it.”[166]  

    Robert Sumner was the editor of The Biblical Evangelist, a Baptist fundamentalist newspaper, from 1967 with a break in 1980 for some work on The Sword of the Lord which ended in conflict, although not over the Bible version issue. He restarted The Baptist Evangelist in 1982. Fundamentalist Sumner had always been a staunch enemy of Peter Ruckman and a critic of the King James Only Movement. He wrote an article in 1979 for The Sword of the Lord entitled, “Bible Translations: Is the King James Version the only trustworthy translation? What text is inerrant, infallible, and God-breathed?” A doctoral dissertation for Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, firmly in the originals only camp, written in 2008, pointed out that Sumner’s article affirmed the standard theme of the majority of Fundamentalists’ beliefs, that “the autographs were inspired and inerrant and not translations.”[167] The author of the dissertation entitled, “A Strategy for Calming the Troubled Waters of the Bible Translation Controversy Among Independent Baptists,” also revealed that Dr. Rice received a letter from Tennessee Temple affirming that Sumner’s position was also their position on the Bible version issue.[168] Then, the author of the dissertation, Robert Lee Pate, Jr. defined in the most concise way possible the position which Dr. Ruckman and the King James only radicals opposed vehemently throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century. “Therefore, it must be irrefutably evident from the abundance of evidence presented that traditionally Baptists have only accepted the autographs as inspired and that the historical Baptist position on the Bible is that believers have a trustworthy translation, not a perfect translation.”[169]

     In response to Sumner’s article, Dr. Ruckman, who referred to Sumner as “Scumner,” supplied a letter written on February 2, 1979 to Sumner by a Ruckmanite named David Reese who said, “Dear Mr. Sumner, I have read your article on Bible Translations. There were several points in your article which in my thinking were confusing and contradictory…,” which set up Sumner for an attack disguised as a question, “You labored to prove in your article that only the original manuscripts were inspired…I have heard this many times by experts…,” here implying a lack of credibility on the part of Sumner and then, “…but I have yet to find it taught by precept or principle in the Bible. Would you please give me book, chapter and verse which says only the original manuscripts were inspired?”[170]

    One reason why mainstream scholars such as Marsden and Carpenter who were not Independent Baptists in the last quarter of the twentieth century may have regarded the Bible version issue as a triviality as quoted earlier in this thesis by Dr. White was best reflected by John R. Rice’s response to Herb Evans in the published Dear Doctor John, Where is My Bible?: A Written Dispute with John R. Rice. Regarding the rabid devotion to the Bible version issue that the radicals in the King James Only Movement gave to the Bible translation issue, Rice said simply, in giving the typical Fundamentalist view, “I do not believe the matter has the IMPORTANCE which they give to it.”[171]

     Exchanges such as these exposed Dr. Ruckman and his followers to the anger of the majority of Fundamentalist churches, even those who used the King James Bible exclusively but didn’t believe in its inspiration by God. The followers of Dr. Ruckman’s viewpoints, whether labeled as such or whether they called themselves “Ruckmanites,” acknowledged that “throughout various independent, local, Baptist churches, Dr. Peter S. Ruckman is marked as a Fundamentalist divider or a dangerous heretic.”[172] The foundation on which the Ruckmanite stood, as opposed to those such as White, who accepted the Anglican Revision’s work and many of the Bibles that followed from it as credible, and Rice, who believed in the authority of the Textus Receptus with the King James Bible as being the best translation of it was simple. Geneha Kim stated what Ruckmanites had come to believe and accept through the teaching of people like Riplinger, Grady, Gipp, and Ruckman, “I believe the KJV is the scriptures given by inspiration of God and the preserved words of God…”[173]

    Dr. Peter Ruckman singlehandedly started the movement exalting the King James Bible as God’s preserved and inspired words in English, at least, in 1964.  Dr. Ruckman was acknowledged as its prime mover for decades. He and his followers, often called Ruckmanites, carried out his argument for that Bible version through often hostile letters and pamphlets with other Fundamentalists who disagreed with their stance on the Bible.

Chapter Four: Public Debates and Personal Testimonies

    One of the main ways that Fundamentalist partisans on either side of the Bible version issue attempted to reach the zealots on their own side or to draw members of the enemy camp to them were public debates, first sold as cassette tapes, then as MP3’s, or DVD’s, and sometimes finally placed on the popular video site, YouTube.

    In late 1987, Earl Kalland, contributor to The Expositor’s Bible Commentary and co-author of Problems in Christian Apologetics: The Midyear Lectures of 1948 of Western Baptist Theological Seminary and The Genius of the Bible, engaged in a sharp video debate with Peter Ruckman over the New International Version of the Bible. On July 21^st, 1990 Dr. Ruckman engaged in another significant video debate with vocal anti-KJV only speaker and writer, Gary Hudson, entitled The King James Bible Debate: Are There Errors in the King James Bible? This ninety minute debate featured a war of Greek verbs, prepositions, nouns, and reliable translation methods. Both of these debates are available on the Bible Baptist Bookstore website.[174]

    In the early 1990’s James R. White held two very significant debates, one with Gail Riplinger and one with D.A. Waite of the Dean Burgon Society. In late 1993, White had a radio debate consisting of two half-hour episodes with Gail Riplinger regarding her New Age Versions which he posted with highly partisan commentary on YouTube in 2008 after several other books she wrote proved themselves to be very popular. White claimed complete victory, which he always did. An organization called Christian Answers hosted a nearly two hour debate between James R. White and D.A. Waite of the Dean Burgon Society on August 6, 1994 over the Textus Receptus and The King James Bible versus modern versions and modern Greek textual scholarship, although Waite certainly did not believe in the divine inspiration of the King James. This is included in order to show that not only did the two types of Fundamentalists regarding Bible versions, those that upheld the Textus Receptus and the King James Bible as being the best translation and those who extolled the virtues of the Westcott and Hort text and the Bibles that flowed from it, debate the King James only enthusiasts but each other as well. White’s debates with Riplinger and Waite are available on YouTube.[175]   

    One popular debate was on a 1995 production of The John Ankerberg Show, a Fundamentalist cable television show, when a total of eight shows were taped and later broadcast and sold on Ankerberg’s website. This consisted of a sort of roundtable discussion between King James only advocates Drs. Samuel Gipp, Thomas Strouse, and Joseph Chambers and originals only supporters Drs. Don Wilkins of the NASB translating committee, NIV translator Kenneth Barker, Dan B. Wallace, and, of course, James R. White. Both sides claimed victory in their own literature and the show, like the debates before it, were often glorified as old warriors in ancient times might elevate their most brutal (or meaningless) battles to mythic proportions.[176] 

    In addition to major debates, televised or recorded and sold in the protagonists’ online bookstores, innumerable minor debates took place between the originals only Fundamentalist camp and the King James only camp. As an example of the lesser debates Herb Evans provided what he claimed was a correspondence exchange between himself and David Cloud of Way of Life Literature. David Cloud upheld, as did D.A. Waite, the Greek Text supporting the King James Bible which is often called the Textus Receptus, the KJV being its best representative. David Cloud first published exchanges, which Herb Evans provided, on January 20, 1996.[177]

    The debates and letter exchanges between the various Fundamentalists show that there was the tradition Fundamentalist position, the “historical position,” that the original manuscripts or autographs were inspired by God and that no translation was perfect but that many were “trustworthy.” It was commonly understood that there were the ardent King James Bible enthusiasts and supporters who believed that the Greek Text supporting the King James Bible, known as the Textus Receptus or the Received Text, was inspired, and there were the radicals who insisted that the English version itself, published in 1611 and in its four to seven subsequent editions where printer errors were corrected and spelling was standardized, as Ruckman explained in his Differences in the King James Version Editions, was inspired by God and  that “only the King James Bible contains all the truth.”[178]  Scholars such as David Norton, in A Textual History of the King James Bible, gave a more detailed version of exactly how much was changed in each edition but Ruckman simplified the changes in his booklet for the average reader.[179] This was the main point of their debates and the point on which the traditional Fundamentalists disagreed.

     Personal testimonies in the Bible version debate ran the course from sensationalistic pronouncements to personally painful confessions. Often quoted by KJV only advocates, Dr. Frank Logsdon, in a 1992 interview with David Cloud’s Way of Life Literature’s O Timothy magazine, outlined along with the history of Bible versions in modern times, his involvement in the beginning organization of the New American Standard Bible. [180] Logsdon said that in 1956 and 1957 the head of the Lockman Foundation, Dewey Lockman, a close personal friend of his for 25 years, invited him to help organize a new translation of the Bible based on Philip Schaff’s poorly received American Standard Version.  That version was published in the early 1900’s by agreement with the English Revision Committee. The agreement was that the American version would not come out until fourteen years, at least, after the English. The version on which it was based, the Revised Version, also turned out to be a failure in reaching any kind of significant acceptance yet opening the door for the possibility of replacing the King James Version as Peter Thuesen’s colleague at Indiana University, Paul Gutjahr, revealed.[181] (Dr. Gutjahr chose not to reply to an email request the author sent to him on February 26, 2013 at Dr. Thuesen’s suggestion regarding his recommendations for possible scholarly works on the King James Only Movement.) Logsdon relayed that after reading David Otis Fuller’s Which Bible? he became convicted that what he had done for the publication of the New American Standard Version, which he said Lockman produced only for the money, was wrong. So, he resigned and renounced all connections to the Lockman Foundation’s work. This article was also reproduced in the Fundamentalist magazine, The Biblical Astronomer, published by geocentrist, Dr. Gerardus Bouw.[182] Interestingly enough, in many published reports on websites across the internet the Lockman Foundation denied Frank Logsdon’s involvement in the publication of the New American Standard Version (NASV), also known as the New American Standard Bible (NASB).

    Personal testimonies from prominent pastors and evangelists were usually revealed in specific sermons on the topic of the King James Bible. There are several database archives for recorded Fundamentalist sermons on the internet. One of them is Fundamental Baptist Sermons hosted by Lompoc Valley Baptist Church in Lompoc, California and William Grady, author of Final Authority, posted some of his sermons there. The site did no editing of the sermons they posted and they were recorded in their entirety.

    Dr. Grady gave his personal testimony entitled “Why I Believe the King James Bible,” at Jack Hyles’ First Baptist Church of Hammond in Hammond, Indiana. Grady gave the date as 1989 in the sermon. Grady’s conviction that the King James Bible was the only valid Bible was based on the history of Bible translations and on how he interpreted history in general, American History specifically. Grady tied America’s prosperity to its Christians’ trust in the King James Bible. [183]

    A number of pastors and evangelists, in the late twentieth century, interwove their personal testimonies of why they came to believe in the authority of the King James Bible into their sermons. Jack Hyles gave his belief in the authority of that Bible over all others in several sermons including, “King James Bible Study,” found on Fundamental Baptist Sermons, as well as the sermon “Logic Must Prove The King James Bible.” Hyles, although a self-described Textus Receptus man, declared that the King James Bible was his final authority. In his sermon he declared that a Christian has four authorities; a church organization, his own reason, his own experience, or the Bible. If he didn’t have the Bible, a copy of God’s inspired words, he would have to return to one of the other three. As the original autographs did not exist they could not be the Bible. Either a Christian had the words of God or his faith was based on a one of the other authorities. His thesis question was would God tell Christians to believe the Bible and yet not provide and preserve it for them?[184]

    Dr. Ruckman made his belief in the authority of The King James Bible the topic of many taped sermons sold on his church’s website. In his autobiography he gave the history of his life and in  

that revelation of his motivations and personal sorrows and victories there is a clue of what may have pushed him into the fight at the time he published the Bible Babel, his first foray into the King James only debate, in 1964, eight years after Hill’s King James Version Defended and nine after J.J. Ray’s God Only Wrote One Book. Ruckman, married three times, experienced the tragedy of his second wife leaving him in 1964. The King James Only Movement and the hostility that is a characteristic of the arguments in that movement might have satisfied his inner personal frustrations. He laments in his autobiography, “From 1964 to 1972, I lived as a single man and raised my two boys.”[185] Only another level, as Melanie Wright pointed out, there was a great deal of pressure to conform and follow along in lockstep during the Cold War Era and Ruckman’s contrarian stance may subconsciously have been a response to those societal pressures at the same time.[186] Aside from any effort to examine possible personal motives behind Dr. Ruckman’s war against modern Bible versions and the Fundamentalists who used them, one principal fact underlies the origin of his battles. As a student at conservative Fundamentalist Bob Jones University in the early 1950’s he was appalled at the manner in which they taught and preached the Bible he adored. He pointed to one Sunday morning in the Bob Jones University chapel when he realized was in the “wrong pew” and left the chapel to join an actual church that believed the Bible he did, the Pellham Baptist Church in Pellham, South Carolina under the direction of Pastor Harold Sightler.[187] Harold Sightler was born in 1914 and died in 1955, the year J.J. Ray’s book was published. Sightler was considered a pioneer of Independent Baptists in the Carolinas and had a tremendous influence on Ruckman. It was in this environment that Ruckman said, “I ‘cut my baby teeth’ in the ministry in the mountains of North and South Carolina.”[188] Since he believed that no one at Bob Jones University, even in the Greek and Hebrew departments, really knew the Bible he said, “I learned my Bible ‘on the road,’ because no one at BJU knew it well enough to teach it to anyone. If I had gone to BJU to learn the BOOK, I would have gotten the worst disappointment a new convert ever experienced.”[189] In addition, as there are no extant sermons of J. Frank Norris extolling the virtues of the King James Bible it is only through Ruckman’s memory in distinguishing between the types of Fundamentalists he met “on the road” that the implication stood that “the Texans were the independent, Premillennial, J. Frank Norris, King James Bible crowd. I quickly made up my mind which side of the fence to get on.”[190] However, author and anti-KJV only partisan Doug Kutilek, presented a picture throughout his 1999 book, J. Frank Norris and His Heirs: The Bible Translation Controversy that J. Frank Norris was not King James only.[191]

    Dr. James White made a few comments in his debate with D.A. Waite about the dangers of anti-intellectualism. Dr. Ruckman took great pride in his anti-intellectual stance. In his rambling personal account of his ministry and his opinion of the work of Fundamentalists entitled The Anti-Intellectual Manifesto he said, “I am not a scholar. I have never professed to be one, but I know one when I see one. You do not have to be one to know one.”[192] The implication here was that Fundamentalist scholars who attacked the King James lacked credibility. And yet, Dr. Ruckman was not above bragging about his intellectual abilities. In yet another personal memoir he wrote, “I can handle a Greek or Hebrew lexicon without any trouble. With time, and a magnifying glass, I can decipher the block capital uncials in a Photostat of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus in the New Testament.”[193] Ruckman often talked about his superior knowledge of the Bible. In 1990’s How to Teach the Bible he bragged, “I do not profess to know everything, and I profess to be very stupid about a lot of things. But THE BOOK? Let me tell you something, honey; none of you mossbacks are going to teach me ANYTHING about the Book…”[194]

    The painstaking way that King James only pastors reviewed the modern Bible versions as they were published revealed an obsession with the Bible version issue that seemingly went beyond all bounds of reason. Pastor Daryl Coats gave his personal testimony of his reaction to the New King James Version in how he carefully listed all of the words that were changed from the King James Version in the New King James Version (NKJV) and on November 6, 1992, a day he remembered as a Friday, gave them to the students at his Bible school who understood the King James Bible but did not know the definitions to the words the NKJV used.[195]

    In the introduction to New Age Versions and also quoted by Christianity Today in their 1995 article , Gail Riplinger’s journey toward becoming a partisan on the side of the King James only believers began when she was an architecture professor at Kent State University in the 1980’s. A student asked her if Isaiah 14:12 referred to Lucifer or Jesus Christ. When she compared the King James Bible with the New American Standard Bible she saw that the words had been changed from “son of the morning” for Lucifer to “the morning star” which is the name that Jesus Christ gives himself in Revelation. So began a pursuit of studying the Bible version issue and promoting the Authorized Version as God’s preserved and inspired word.[196]

    Geneha Kim wrote about how his father, Kyeong W. Kim, “was called by God to start a Korean Bible-believing church from scratch in Southern California in 1997.”[197] He spoke about how Dr. Song O. Lee gave the Korean people a translation of the King James Bible into Korean in 1994 and he admitted how the first time his father preached from it not one person stayed after to visit with him as was customary, thinking he was part of a cult.[198] Ruckman trained Dr. Lee and Lee trained many Korean pastors to preach from the Korean language version of the King James.[199] Kim acknowledged his own and his father’s beliefs, implanted by Dr. Lee and Ruckman in the 1980’s and 90’s that, “I believe in every word of the KJV, and I believe in any doctrinal teaching from the KJV. The King James Bible is my final authority for all doctrines and practices.”[200]

    The most important testimony of the authority of the King James Bible from the translator’s point of view was provided by the translators themselves. Their “Translators to the Reader” is not usually printed at the beginning of Authorized Versions sold anymore but in Beacham and Lauder’s book they provided it as an appendix. In that letter the translators said, “…we do not deny, nay we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession…containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.”[201] This would seem to speak against the advocates of one Bible as being the only possible Bible that can properly call itself the word of God. The opposing argument then presents itself that even though the translators did not claim special inspiration from God neither did Matthew or Luke, among other Bible writers.

    What about the testimony of the Bible? The differences between the words in the various Bible versions are numerous and these variant texts and debates about them could fill textbooks. A literal reading of the King James Bible itself without interpretation appears to contradict those who insist that only the originals were inspired by God or it can go against those who believe in a translation as inspired. Focusing only on the Bible version at issue, in 2 Timothy 3:16 the verse says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…”[202] The word “inspired” is never used in the King James Bible and the only other time the word “inspiration” is used elsewhere is in Job 32:8 where it says, “But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.”[203] Understanding is listed as synonymous with wisdom in many verses in that Bible. Even Peter said that Paul wrote his letters “according to the wisdom given unto him.”[204] No one suggests that Timothy had the original manuscripts of Moses’ writings, Jeremiah’s laments, or Nahum’s prophecy of doom for Assyria so “all Scripture” might not be a reference to originals only but to copies and translations as well. Also, there is some question in Jeremiah, chapter 36, of even what constitutes an original manuscript. Of course, it all depends on how the reader views “is given,” whether it refers to when the original inspiration is given to the original writer or if it refers to “all Scripture”, meaning originals, copies, and translations. The point in bringing this last bit of testimony out is to show that this dispute was not likely to be settled by endless debate, name calling, or rehashing the same history over and over again from biased, partisan viewpoints. Even testimony like Frank Logsdon’s mentioned previously, if true, did not resolve the core questions involved on both sides of the debate.

    Debates and published personal testimonies on cassette, DVD, and CD were popular methods of presenting the controversy to the faithful IFB. These methods, along with books, were the mainstay of the KJV only argument and kept it in the IFB public’s eye.

 

Chapter Five: The Local Churches and The Significance of the Conflict

    The controversy that began in print and preaching in 1964 heated up in the 1970’s in the Fundamentalist literature and press but didn’t come to a boil in the churches until the 1980’s and in many parts of the country it was just being recognized at that time by the rank and file Christian. In the March 30, 1979 edition of The Sword of the Lord John R. Rice, traditional Fundamentalist and, as mentioned previously, along with J. Frank Norris considered one of the founders of the Independent Baptist Movement, wrote the following understanding that it is not uncommon for preachers to use “we” in reference to themselves and their ministry;

We love the King James Bible. We use it in all our sermons, our books and pamphlets    published in millions of copies, in the weekly SWORD OF THE LORD. We recommend it as best for daily use. We have memorized some thirty chapters and thousands of other verses in it. We have large commentaries on Genesis, Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, Corinthians, and Revelations: all based on the King James text. We have written comments on every chapter in the Bible and almost every principle verse in five years of work, all in the King James Version. I have probably done more to promote the King James Bible than anyone else in America in many years.

But there are people who fanatically insist that the King James Version was perfectly translated with no errors; if there is a single error in the translation we have no trustworthy Bible. …They are wrong, foolishly and perhaps ignorantly wrong, and they are often guilty of railing and unchristian talk and foolish, slanderous statements…Why cannot fans and extremists about the King James Version be good Christians also?[205]

    So, how did this unchristian like behavior which Dr. Rice claimed was so characteristic of the King James only crowd, and admittedly so by all appearances, play itself out in the local churches in the last quarter of the twentieth century?

    The war of words is often conducted on internet forums and on the websites of partisans and as a result, although their points of fact aren’t reliable, they do attest to the existence of the conflict and to the anger of the opponents. One such website entitled All About Baptists that didn’t respond to email requests for clarification shared this personal testimony in an undated post where the author found himself;

…attending a church where the ushers were instructed to ask visitors to the church what version of the Bible they were carrying. If they had brought any version other than the King James, they were asked to not take it into the ‘sanctuary.’ If unable to comply, they were asked to leave. I might also mention that the church dropped from over 500 in attendance to under 150 upon adopting this practice. Interestingly enough, the leadership of the church stated that the loss of membership was justified in that they were taking a stand for God.[206]

  

    Traditional Fundamentalist churches linked to the Jerry Falwell “brand” of Fundamentalism with its headquarters at Liberty University had no such concerns about the Bible version issue but followed more or less the John R. Rice view noted earlier. As Ault discovered in the individual church he studied, “It was always the King James Version, though I later learned that Pastor Valenti, as a Liberty Baptist graduate, did not insist on that translation.”[207] Ault pointed out that the church he studied in the 1980’s had no problem altering the content of a verse in the King James which a King James only church would never condone.[208] In a reference to trying to understand why the Fundamentalists preferred using the King James he revealed that he was at the beginning of the height of the controversy discussed in this thesis although by his comment in the footnote for a comment on page 194 he knew little about it. He said, “As this book nears completion, a vigorous movement is underway among fundamentalist Baptists to insist upon the King James Version as the only authoritative one for true Christians, even if fundamentalist seminaries, like Falwell’s, teach that it is not the best available translation.”[209]  “Is underway” reveals his ignorance of the well entrenched movement this thesis reveals. What is underway is the firestorm, the height of the fury that burns brightest in the next decade. So, the traditional Fundamentalist viewpoint was use the King James but don’t believe it is the only Bible worthy of being called as such, a notion Ruckman railed against repeatedly.

    James White gave his personal testimony of volunteers in his ministry receiving calls from Christians in the 1990’s concerned that their pastor preached a sermon on a verse that wasn’t even in their Bible. He admitted that the profusion of Bible versions did create the ground for the controversy but blamed the King James Only Movement for “by its very nature”, bringing “disruption and contention right into the pews of the local Christian church. KJV Only advocates, due to the nature of their beliefs, are often disruptive of the fellowship in churches,” and how they felt that “anyone who does not ‘know what they know’ needs to be told quickly, and most often, forcefully.”[210] He said that the KJV only “material alleges grand and complex conspiracies on the part of modern translations, distrust of others who use (or would even defend) those translations,” and that this “results in schisms within the fellowship and a debilitation of the local body.”[211] White went on to say what was to him, the most important issue, that “men of God, pastors and elders entrusted with the care of the flock of God, are inevitably, and often unwittingly, drawn into this controversy.”[212] Furthermore, White accused the KJV only people as being “used by skeptics as evidence of how ‘backwards’ conservatives as a whole truly are.”[213]

    There were several Independent Baptist Churches that used the King James Bible only within a short radius of each other in South Central Pennsylvania’s York County. Ruckman, in his description of his personal journey in building a successful church, warned against that. “I teach all my students … never to build a work within fifty miles of another man’s work if that man is a Bible-believing Baptist. And even then, fifty is the minimum; two hundred is better.”[214] In Stewartstown, down the road a mile from the local Southern Baptist Convention affiliated church is Antioch 1611 Baptist Church. It is a newly formed Independent Baptist Church that uses only the King James Version although there are no rules about bringing another version. In the sparsely populated, by Northeastern United States standards, southeast corner of York County, Pennsylvania in the 1990’s there were ten named Baptist churches and two more Bible churches. Of the twelve there were six within a twenty miles radius which were IFB churches that used only the King James Bible. There were the Turnpike Baptist Church in Shrewsbury, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Long Level, New Freedom Baptist Church in New Freedom, Red Lion Bible Church in Red Lion, Immanuel Baptist Church in Stewartstown, and Mount Zion Baptist in Brogue.

Interview with an Evangelist

    Evangelist John Kotchenruter consented to a brief recorded interview in the office of his pastor at Antioch 1611 Baptist Church on March 3rd, 2013. A summary of the interview follows. When asked about his church activities in the 1990’s Mr. Kotchenruter stated that he had converted to Christianity in 1987 and five years later he had the opportunity to teach youth and preach. His church was called Grace Bible Church in New Freedom, Pennsylvania, an Independent Baptist Church baptizing only adult believers or children who showed they understood their profession of faith, rather than infants, which is the historical Baptist stance on the practice of Baptism. Baptism in a Baptist church is a public profession of a faith that already exists in the believer but in Baptist theology it carries no saving grace and, in fact, outside of belief in Christ there are no sacraments in the Baptist faith. He was then asked if he was aware of a controversy at the time over Bible versions when he was in the church. He said he was aware of it while attending that church. His pastor only used the King James Bible and, as a new Christian, Mr. Kotchenruter was unaware of other versions until he had been a Christian for some time. The King James Bible controversy came to his church, though.

    His pastor started to teach a class he attended and the pastor said that “nobody really had the true word of God…” but that “… there were many good translations.” Mr. Kotchenruter felt that “even as a younger believer at that time I felt like that God promised to preserve His word, and He gave us His word, and Jesus said ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words will not pass away.’” He went on, “now, wait a minute, is God, quote, the author of confusion?” Mr. Kotchenruter said that he began looking into it and studying the matter, then brought it to the attention of his pastor, and, “that’s when the controversy started and that’s when the issue came about.” The pastor was teaching that there “were many good versions but nobody had the true word of God, that you can’t trust every word in any Bible but that you could trust the doctrines of that Bible.”

    Mr. Kotchenruter said that in 1998 or 1999 his pastor recommended that his congregation read James White’s book, The King James Only Controversy. Kotchenruter purchased a copy of White’s book as well as books by Sam Gipp and Peter S. Ruckman. He believed, after his review of the Bible version issue, that White’s book was less credible and “full of errors,” and that the authors of the defenses of the King James Bible seemed more believable to him.

    Mr. Kotchenruter went on to say that the pressure on the King James Bible believers was in the way of treating those believers as being ignorant and unlearned in comparison to the pastor’s education and that he, personally, “firmly believed that the Bible is the word of God and the King James Version, I believe that is God’s word for the end-time English speaking people and it is the preserved word of God.” Mr. Kotchenruter completed the interview, when asked if he believed that the King James Bible was given by inspiration or is the inspired word of God, replied that he did believe that.[215]

    This interview showed that pastors tried to prevent the controversy from taking hold in their churches but those who looked into the debate and were convinced by the arguments of its proponents stood for the King James as the only authoritative Bible version for IFB Christians. One implication from the interview is that bias for or against the King James only stance was assisted by how the congregant felt they were treated by those who disagreed with them. Earlier there was James White’s testimony of King James only believers being pushy and abrasive and in this interview there is the testimony of someone from the King James only side being made to feel ignorant and unlearned if he didn’t conform to the pastor’s viewpoint.

    From both sides of the conflict there was disruption and confusion, taking away from the normal business of the church. The conflict was spurred on by books and publications put out by both sides of the issue. Church members made their own decisions and often left their congregations after meeting opposition with pastors who, like John R. Rice, used the King James but believed it was not what Mr. Kotchenruter and others believed it was.

    It is redundant and unnecessary to review the political machinations and influence during the last quarter of the twentieth century of the most famous Independent Baptist on the national scene, the late Jerry Falwell. His political influence from his Moral Majority to sermons from his own pulpit, at least, every American was aware of who listened to talk radio or read the newspaper. The big churches with big money, children of J. Frank Norris’ megachurch, were influential in politics on the national scene with right wing politicians seeking to curry favor with celebrity pastors who could call their flocks in as a voting bloc.

    But, even on a local level Independent Baptists attempted to exert their influence on events. As an example, the January 6, 2013 obituary and front page news article on Pastor Jim Grove of the Heritage Baptist Church in Loganville, Pennsylvania expounded on the effect he had in York County, Pennsylvania from the 1980’s until his death. The King James Bible was not the only Bible preached from or allowed in his church. This separated his church from those who believed and used only the King James. After his conversion in 1972 and his “call” to preach he graduated from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, created after J. Frank Norris lieutenant, Beauchamp Vick, split from his mentor in 1950 in a dispute over authority.[216] He founded the now defunct Soul’s Haven Baptist Church in Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania and in the early 1980’s founded the Heritage Baptist Church in Loganville.[217]

    Pastor Grove and his church had fought over the years against evolution taught in the schools, against gay rights, against abortion, and against anything he felt was in opposition to good, Biblical teaching and commands among the public, whether Christian or not. A prominent local Christian pastor who replaced Grove in his pulpit likened him to Christ. A former mayor of York, Pennsylvania, a city of around 40,000 in the late 1900’s, was interviewed in the article and commented about how Grove and his followers were always “in your face.” Grove was politically active, running for the elected position of Sheriff in York County in the late 1990’s, operated a cable television show, Call the Preacher, won a $50,000 free speech lawsuit against the City of York, and because of his insistence on putting a float featuring aborted baby pictures in the Halloween Parade changed the sponsorship of that parade from the city to a private firm and the banning of politically motivated expressions in the now privately run parade.[218]  This is the kind of commotion that one Independent Baptist preacher with a congregation that never exceeded 50 people could cause. The controversy that began in print in the 1960’s hit the churches full force in the 1990’s, dividing many. The important point to consider is that whatever issue splits a political movement dilutes its ability to exert pressure locally and nationally. That issue is significant and worthy of study.

Chapter Six: Conclusion

    Christianity Today, in its 1995 article entitled “King James-only Advocates Experience Renaissance,” accurately explained some of the differences within the King James Only Movement, the crux of the Bible version controversy that came to a boil in the last decade of the twentieth century. It identified some of the major players in the controversy such as Gail Riplinger, Sam Gipp, and James White and accurately portrayed their viewpoints. Granted, it was a brief article, but it was typical of the lack of importance that the majority of Fundamentalists and those outside of Protestant, Christian fundamentalism granted to the movement.[219] The issue, for many, was an issue of the final authority to which an Independent Fundamental Baptist appealed on spiritual matters and this issue was not trivial to many.

    This thesis revealed that there was a division within the IFB movement in the latter half of the twentieth century that split the IFB churches on what constituted the Bible, whether it was the original autographs of the presumed Bible writers only that were inspired by God followed by various trustworthy but imperfect translations or whether there existed a perfect, inerrant Bible on which to depend. The latter was identified as the King James Only Movement and was started almost singlehandedly by a Baptist pastor from Florida in 1964. The thesis revealed the foundation and origins of the conflicts by way of a number of noteworthy books on the subject of dissatisfaction with modern Bible translations and methods. The thesis revealed the leaders on both sides of the Bible version debate from the King James only to the originals only and the gray areas in between. Also, the thesis defined and confirmed through authorities such as Drs. Peter Thuesen and James R. White that not only has mainstream scholarship been relatively silent on this specific issue but revealed a possible reason why, other than sheer ignorance of it, that they believed it to be a trivial or unimportant matter. It was even shown that at least one of the protagonists themselves believed the matter to be of little importance.

    In addition, the thesis revealed how churches were unwilling and unable to unite for a common political or social cause, in part, due to their individual stance on the Bible version issue. Churches that called themselves Baptist and existed within a matter of a few miles or so of each other did not unite for any purpose because of their positions on the Bible version issue. However, small Independent Baptist Churches had the capacity and the will for political action and involvement in community action and conflict. It does not take too much of a leap of imagination to picture what kind of impact, positive or negative, on their communities that these churches could have had if they cooperated in spite of their disagreement on this issue. So, calling the issue trivial or unimportant appears to be rather a “dodge” for the problem presented by ignoring it.

    It is difficult to obtain information on churches that have no affiliation outside of an informal association with other like-minded churches, churches that do not appreciate surveys and statistics. Using the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey an article published in the March 1990 Review of Religious Research entitled “Classifying Protestant Denominations”  revealed itself that may have given a clue as to an additional complicating factor. It stated that “the complex nature of America’s denominational profile” makes research difficult with over eleven hundred different denominations identified by the late 1970’s.[220] In any event, one weakness of all of the research sources studied was the reliance on a view of the individual church in its relationship to a denomination or even an informal association, leaving many IFB churches flying just under the proverbial radar. If they didn’t belong to the Baptist Bible Fellowship International, J. Frank Norris’ World Baptist Fellowship, or a similar organization they were practically invisible.

     A search of the Association of Religion Data Archives sponsored by Pennsylvania State University did not turn up information on unaffiliated Baptist churches from 1971 through 1990 although there was a wealth of information on actual organized religious denominations in America. A search of many scholarly articles such as Thomas W. Crawford’s 2005 article for the Journal of Cultural Geography entitled “Stability and Change on the American Religious Landscape: A Centrographic Analysis of Major U.S. Religious Groups” produced no results when the search for Independent Baptists was attempted. Bill Leonard, writing an article entitled “Independent Baptists: From Sectarian Minority to ‘Moral Majority’” for the journal Church History in 1987 reported that there were approximately 1.4 million members in Jerry Falwell’s loose-knit network, Baptist Bible Fellowship started by Beauchamp Vick, alone. Leonard admitted that Independent Baptists had “been overlooked by students of American religion.”[221] However, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, in its 2008 “Religious Landscape Survey” listed that at that time Independent Baptists, either self-defined in the evangelical tradition or non-specified, constituted nearly 3% of the U.S. population.[222]

    A website, www.biblebelievers.com,  that lists churches that volunteer their information lists only those that regard the King James Bible as inspired by God. There are over fourteen hundred congregations listed nationally from Maine to Washington State and over one hundred and fifty congregations internationally listed from Canada to the Philippines on that site’s church directory although actual congregant numbers are not available. It is easy to estimate them as in the low hundreds of thousands remembering that even small numbers can have a significant local impact. The states with the largest reported number of IFB congregations that hold the King James Bible as inspired by God are Ohio with over one hundred and twenty congregations, Florida with eighty seven, North Carolina with eighty, California with seventy, and Tennessee with sixty seven. This does not represent the total number of the churches that hold this view as many churches, being fiercely independent, reject being listed in any directory.[223]  These numbers, although clearly a minority of IFB churches with the Baptist Bible Fellowship alone having more than a million members, but clearly a “vociferous minority amongst evangelicals” as Gordon Campbell put it, in all likelihood are not vastly different than they were in the late twentieth century.[224]

     Fundamentalism, to quote Joel Carpenter, was a literate movement of readers and publishers. “Without a doubt, fundamentalism was a readers’ and publishers’ movement.”[225] The popularity of written material in the form of books, newspapers, and periodicals had a long tradition in Fundamentalism. This paved the way for the acceptance and the publishing popularity among Fundamentalists of different stripes of the King James only partisans such as Ruckman, Gipp, and Grady but also created the platform from which its opponents such as Rice, White, and Carson could fight and the self-publishing enterprises from which they operated. With the growing dominance of the internet the conflict became a war of websites where books were sold and opinions were aired and on forums where Fundamentalists argued and called each other names that betrayed a lack of Christian charity toward the brethren.

    Peter Ruckman is ninety one years old in the year of this thesis paper’s writing. Gail Riplinger is in her sixties and suffers from health problems. Sam Gipp is also in his sixties. There are no writers today in the King James Only Movement with the force of personality and passion to push their ideas to the mass of Fundamentalists with the exception of William Grady who recently retired to the pastorship of a small church in Michigan. On the other side of Fundamentalism men like John R. Rice and Curtis Hutson passed away years ago. James R. White, the most avid debater of KJV only stalwarts has recently experienced heart problems.

    Finally, as Dr. Thuesen confirmed, there is a dearth of writing on this subject by mainstream scholarship. Writers like Douglas “Bible Doug” Stauffer are self-publishing books from the King James only side such as One Book, One Authority: 2000 Years of Bible History but lacks the charisma to expand far beyond his yearly round of small churches where authors speak and lay their books and cassettes out on folding tables for the faithful to purchase.[226] Should he become popular on the national scene, no doubt, James R. White will offer to debate him.

    The King James only Bible believer had many positive reasons to exalt the Bible he or she used, the Bible they were “saved” (converted to faith in Christ) with, and the Bible they felt that God used to speak to their hearts. On the most minor level its sheer literary power was unrivaled by modern translations. As a Lampson Literature professor at Yale said in the early 1920’s,

We Anglo-Saxons have a better Bible than the French or the Germans or the Italians or the Spanish; our English translation is even better than the original Hebrew and Greek. There is only one way to explain this; I have no theory to account for the so-called "inspiration of the Bible," but I am confident that the Authorised Version was inspired.[227]

The unique quality of the literary structure of the translation was lauded by scholars as being without equal. Adam Nicolson, in writing his history of the translation, said, “The translation these men made together can lay claim to be the greatest work in prose ever written in English.”[228] Alistair McGrath, professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, claimed “The two greatest influences on the shaping of the English language are the works of William Shakespeare and the English translation of the Bible that appeared in 1611.”[229] This Bible version had a profound impact on the English language. David Crystal reported that two hundred and fifty seven common English idioms come directly from the King James Bible.[230] Olga Opfell also observed that it was a carefully executed project.  “Altogether, the King James Bible was destined to be the product of the best and most careful scholarship of its age.”[231] Another unique quality was the combination of so many people, conditions, and events as to make this translation unrepeatable in modern times. Referring to the genius of one of the leaders of the translation, Adam Nicolson said, “It is because people like Lancelot Andrewes flourished in the first decade of the seventeenth century – and do not now – that the greatest translation of the Bible could be made then, and cannot now.”[232]

    Besides the majesty of the prose and the carefulness of the scholarship there was the response to the criticisms against the translation made by many modern scholars. Bible believers learned from Riplinger, Gipp, and Ruckman among others such as linguist John Chadwick that there was no fixed Greek translation of a word into English that wasn’t based on the context in which it was found. As Tom Griffith, a translator of Plato’s The Republic, pointed out in the challenge translating Greek into English presented to himself and his editor, the translation process was “a laborious task which involved reading the whole text against the Greek, flagging the hundreds (literally) of passages where he did not agree with what I had written, explaining in precise detail why he disagreed (bless him), suggesting an alternative in each and every instance.”[233] So, those criticisms against the King James were reduced to a matter of men’s opinions rather than having any basis in incontrovertible fact. They also knew from the King James only authors in regard to translating criticism that the background manuscripts depended upon for the modern translations weren’t even the same as those used for the King James. Those manuscripts used for the Traditional Text represented the majority while those used for the modern texts were a small minority as they were told. Fundamentalists already had a history of not trusting in modern scholarship on many issues from textual criticism to evolution dating from Philip Mauro’s complaints against the Anglican Revision of 1881 and the publicity disaster of the “Scopes Monkey Trial” at which Fundamentalists claimed victory in spite of the testimony of the trial transcripts. [234]

    White, in The King James Only Controversy, tried to defend the modern versions of the Bible in the same way that the adherents of the King James only side defended their favorite version by taking verse by verse, word by word, and explaining why the modern translations were different. He downplayed conspiracies of deliberately attempting to corrupt the word of God. He defended variations found in newer versions by saying, “Most of the time a translation that differs from the KJV is just as valid and reliable as the one found in the AV itself…”[235] This kind of statement wasn’t very comforting or assuring to the defenders of the traditional Bible. To the conservative Baptist Christian there needed to be a compelling reason to surrender beliefs and practices. “Most of the time” and “just as valid and reliable” hardly carried the weight required to overthrow nearly four hundred years of the guiding Scriptures behind the great missionary movements of Protestantism and the great evangelical, “soul-winning” efforts of the mainline and Evangelical, Fundamentalist churches. Those words hardly carried the weight that justified overturning the Bible that led the Christian side of reform movements like the anti-slavery, woman’s suffrage, child labor laws, prohibition, and labor reform in general. Truthfully, politicians and people on both sides of these issues quoted the King James Bible.[236] To the King James only advocates, regardless of political persuasion, and certainly most of the IFB churches were extremely right wing, “most of the time” and “just as valid and reliable” hardly carried the weight necessary to justify overturning the authority of the King James Bible.

    The KJV Only Movement was passionate and very vocal. They had a tendency, as shown, to be even brutal, unkind, and perhaps vulgar in their denunciation of traditional Fundamentalism. However, they viewed their cause as a righteous one, defending the word of God. They regarded skeptically the traditional Fundamentalist view of an inspired Bible containing manuscripts that couldn’t logically appear in one Bible at any time in history as the forty or so original writers wrote over a span of fifteen hundred years. Those originals all turned to dust by the time there was a complete Bible that anyone held in their hands. They viewed with a jaundiced eye appeals to original manuscripts that no one could see, question, look into, or read because they did not exist in 1975.  All disputes, to them, over the translation of individual words or phrases in the Bible were mere matters of scholarly opinion and lacked the authority to justify destroying the confidence of the man or woman in the pew in his or her Bible. The KJV Only Movement had a Bible, one that many of them had been converted with or saved using and believing. They had the Scriptures in their hand. They could question them, read them, memorize them, and above all, feel confident that God spoke to them through the words they held in their hands.[237]

    The traditional Fundamentalist saw the KJV only radicals as ignorant and unlearned, even if only willfully so, and anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-scholarship. The best and most available manuscripts that they regarded as reliable witnesses to the past showed the errors in the King James Bible in their minds. Many translations, though never in any Fundamentalist’s mind all, were valid and trustworthy and not one major doctrine of Protestant Fundamentalism was called into question by any change in any verse that the new versions made. To the traditional Fundamentalist the modern versions provided clarity, contemporary speech, and phrasing that opened the Bible to more readers who would be lost in what they considered to be archaic words and phrases that long ago had either lost or changed their meaning. The Fundamentalist was offended at the insulting way many men whom they considered Godly and righteous were treated by the King James only radicals and their leadership. Men like Curtis Hutson, John R. Rice, and Jerry Falwell were great “men of God” and stood head and shoulders above the riff-raff who defended the old Bible to many of them.

    Both sides in the dispute appealed to humanistic methods to establish their point of view. Both sides had their scholars and scholarship. Although they disagreed in most particulars both sides talked about the same manuscripts, the same historical figures like Erasmus and Tyndale, and the same methodologies for translating, collating, and studying even if certain points such as the nature of the Greek of the New Testament were disagreed upon. Rarely was there any discussion about how reading the Bible, whatever version, had changed their lives, or how, if God spoke to them through the Scriptures how it did affect them, or how they knew that was happening. There was very little public discussion about the power of a Bible version but a lot of discussion about its value, authority, or credibility from a purely human perspective. In many cases they could make the same arguments about completely secular works. The only thing that by necessity was “religious” in nature was the insistence that one Bible that was physical and tangible was inspired by God, or none.

    One of the few writers who was impartial, Peter J. Thuesen, in his book Discordance With the Scriptures said that “one could argue, of course, that a single Protestant Bible was unnecessary and even undesirable.”[238] Certainly, there were a great many arguments put forward that insisted that many translations made understanding the message in the Bible easier. And certainly, in other faith traditions there were reactions against modernistic changes, such as the more traditional Roman Catholics who resented the changes involving the use of Latin from Vatican II. To those in the Protestant faith traditions, particularly the Evangelical and Fundamentalist Baptist who regarded the Bible as their guidebook that contained important doctrines and messages from God the issue had been blown way out of proportion. However, the issue was, is, and will remain so for many Fundamentalists, although probably never a majority, who regarded every word of the Bible as the way a literal, physical God spoke to His people, changed their lives, and made them fit for His use, an issue of final authority.

---

[1] William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants: A Safe Way to Salvation (1638, repr.

London: Henry G. Bohn, 1846), 463. http://www.archive.org/stream/religionofprotes00chil#page/n3/mode/2up. (accessed 2.7.2013).

               [2] Henry Clarence Thiessen, Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1949 ), 79.

               [3] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1873, repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1940), Vol. 1, ch. 6, Kindle edition.

               [4] John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture (New York: HarperOne, 1992), 40. Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Modern Use of the Bible (1925 repr.,New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1961).

[5] Hans Frei, The Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century

Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 1.

[6] F.F. Bruce, History of the Bible in English ( Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press, 1961) , 97.

http://tinyurl.com/d3zw3oz. (accessed 4.17.2013).

               [7] Olga Opfell, The King James Bible Translators (London: McFarland & Co., 1982), 7.

[8] Ibid, 157.

[9] Robert Glenn Howard, "The Double Bind of the Protestant Reformation: The Birth of

Fundamentalism and the Necessity of Pluralism," Journal Of Church & State 47, no. 1 (Winter2005 2005): 104. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed 4.9.2013).

[10]  Ibid., 103.

[11] Harriet A. Harris, Fundamentalism and Evangelicals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 4.

http://tinyurl.com/cmg3gcu. (accessed 4.18.2013).

             [12] James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamental Baptist Church (New York: Random House, 2004), 6.

             [13] George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI.:Wm. B. Erdmans Publishing, 1991), 3. http://tinyurl.com/9wbbwtf. (accessed 2.6.2013).

             [14] Joel Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 61. http://www.questia.com/read/25054452. (accessed 2.6.2013).

[15] Ault, Spirit and Flesh, 1.

[16] Robert M. Price, Inerrant the Wind: The Evangelical Crisis in Biblical Authority (New York:

Prometheus Books, 2009), 79. http://tinyurl.com/bqu3m2h. (accessed 4.18.2013).

               [17] James R.White, introduction to The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1995), iii.

[18] Ibid., iv.

[19] Harris, Fundamentalism and Evangelicals, 6.

[20] George W. Dollar, A History of Fundamentalism in America (Greenville SC: Bob Jones University Press,

1973).

[21] J.I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s Publishing, 1958),

90. http://tinyurl.com/czme2jo. (accessed 4.19.2013).

[22] White, The King James Only Controversy: Can you Trust the Modern Translations back cover.

[23] H.C. Hoskier, Concerning the Genesis of the Versions of the N.T. (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1910).

Codex B and It’s Allies: A Study and An Indictment, 1914. Richard Chevenix Trench, On the Authorized Version of the New Testament: In Connection with Some Recent Proposals for Its Revision (New York: Redfield, 1858). http://openlibrary.org/works/OL1093353W. (accessed 4.24.2013).

[24] Adolf Deissmann, Bible Studies: Contributions Chiefly from Papyri and Inscriptions to the History of the

Language, the Literature, and the Religion of Hellenistic Judaism and Primitive Christianity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1903). http://openlibrary.org/works/OL1426953W. (accessed 4.24.2013). Light from the Ancient Near East: the New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910). http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6527179M. (accessed 4.24.13).

[25] American Revision Committee, Anglo-American Bible Revision: Its Necessity and Purpose

(Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1879). Kenneth Barker, ed.,The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Translation (Grand Rapids, MI:Academie Books, 1986). Arthur L. Farstad, The New King James: In the Great Tradition (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2003).

[26] Opfell, The King James Translators. Ward Allen, Translating for King James: Notes Made by a

Translator of King James’ Bible, (1969, repr. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994), The Coming of the King James Gospels, (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1995).

[27] David Norton, A Textual History of the King James Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press,

2005), 15. http://tinyurl.com/c6brt6k. (accessed 4.17.2013).

[28] F.F. Bruce, The English Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961). History of the Bible in

English (Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press, 1961). Benson Bobrick, Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010).

[29] Laurence Vance, King James, His Bible, and Its Translators (Pensacola, FL: Vance Publications, 2006).

[30] Ward Allen, Translating for King James: Notes Made by a Translator of King James’ Bible, (1969, repr.

Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994),,

[31] David Crystal, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language (New York: Oxford University

Press, 2010), 258. http://tinyurl.com/bugqewe (accessed 4.17.2013). Gail Riplinger, In Awe of Thy Word (Ararat, VA.: AV Publications, 2004).Margaret Magnus, Gods of the Word: Archetypes in the Consonants (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999). Marc-Alain Ouaknin ,Mysteries of the Alphabet (New York: Abbeville Press, 1999.) Robert K. Logan, The Alphabet Effect: The Impact of the Phonetic Alphabet on the Development of Western Civilization (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1986).

[32] Mark A. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism:Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America

(Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 2004). http://tinyurl.com/cbp47mu. (accessed 4.18.2013).

[33] Melanie J. Wright, Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2003), 91. http://tinyurl.com/cnmu3vm. (accessed 4.18.2013).

[34] Melvyn Bragg, The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011 (Berkeley,

CA: Counterpoint Press, 2011), 245. http://tinyurl.com/c6gv8y5. (accessed 4.18.2013).

[35] Howard, "The Double Bind of the Protestant Reformation: The Birth of Fundamentalism and the

Necessity of Pluralism."

[36] Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). http://tinyurl.com/adoxt3w. (4.24.2013).

               [37] Peter J. Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

http://www.questia.com/library/78962836. (accessed 2.15.2013).

[38] .White, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? , 28.

[39] Allen, The Coming of the King James Gospels, 48.

[40] Bernard A. Taylor, John A. L. Lee, Peter R. Burton, & Richard Whitaker, eds. Biblical Greek Language

Lexicography (Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans Publishing Co., 2004), xi.

[41] John Chadwick, Lexicographica Graeca: Contributions to the Lexicography of Ancient Greek (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 27.

[42] Peter Thuesen, email message to author, February 25, 2013.

               [43] Philip Mauro, Which Version? Authorized or Revised (1924, repr., Orlando, FL: Vance Publications, 2001).

[44] Thuesen, Discordance with the Scriptures, 60.

               [45] Benjamin G. Wilkinson, Our Authorized Bible Vindicated (Payson, AZ: Leaves of Autumn Books, 1930),  256.

               [46] Eldon Jay Epp, foreward to The Greek New Testament with Dictionary, by B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort (1881 repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007), xi.

               [47] F.F. Bruce, foreward to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, by W.E. Vine (Nashville, TN: Royal Publishers, 1952), x.

[48] Jasper James Ray, God Only Wrote One Bible (Eugene, OR: The Eye Opener Publishers, 1955), 106.

               [49] Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended (1956 repr.,Ankeny IA: Christian Research Press, 1984), 184.

               [50] David Otis Fuller, Which Bible? (Grand Rapids: Grand Rapids International Publications, 1970). True or False? The Westcott-Hort Textual Theory Examined, 1973. Counterfeit or Genuine?1978.

[51] Thuesen, 118.

               [52] D.A. Carson, The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1979). Google edition.  http://tinyurl.com/aa2uck7 (accessed 2.20.2013).

[53] Ibid., ch. 8.

[54] Ibid., ch. 8.

[55] D.A. Carson, "In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles Over Translating

the Bible," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44, no. 1 (2001): 125-125. http://search.proquest.com/docview/211166816?accountid=8289. (accessed 4.20.2013)

               [56] White, The King James Only Controversy,  22.

[57] James R. White, “A Critique of the King James Only Movement,” in Translation That Openeth a

Window, ed. David G. Burke (Atlanta: The American Bible Society, 2009), 199. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/apus/docDetail.action?docID=10354018. (accessed 4.24.2013).

               [58] Joe Maxwell, “King James-only Advocates Experience Renaissance ,” Christianity Today, October 23, 1995, Vol. 39, Issue 12, 86. http://search.proquest.com/docview/211940908?accountid=8289. (accessed 3.1.2013).

               [59] Kenneth Hagen, The Bible in the Churches; How Various Christians Interpret the Scriptures (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1998), 142. http://www.questia.com/library/7410918. (accessed 2.21.2013).

               [60] Roy E. Beacham & Kevin T. Bauder, eds., One Bible Only? Examining Exclusive Claims for the King James Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2001) Kindle edition.

[61]  James D. Price, King James Onlyism: A New Sect (Singapore, Saik Wah Press, 2006).

[62] Ibid, 1.

[63] Gordon Campbell, Bible: The Story of the King James Version, 1611-2011 (New York: Oxford

University Press. 2010), 265.

[64] Paul C. Gutjahr, “From Monarchy to Democracy: The Dethroning of the King James Bible in the United

States”,  in The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences ed. Hannibal Hamlin & Norman Jones (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010),  164. http://tinyurl.com/cowcpcq. (accessed 4.17.2013).

               [65] David S. Schaff, The Life of Schaff: In Part Autobiographical (New York: Charles Scribner & Son, 1897), 354.

               [66] Herbert S. Marsh, Lectures on the Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible (London: J. Smith, 1828), 279. http://openlibrary.org/works/OL13124924W.  (accessed 2.21.2013).

               [67] George P. Marsh, Lectures on the English Language (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885), 549.http://openlibrary.org/works/OL1556752W/.  (accessed 2.22.2013). The last names of these two lecturers on separate continents are purely a matter of coincidence to my knowledge.

[68] Schaff, The Life of Schaff, 357.

               [69] P.R. Ackroyd & C.F. Evans, eds., The Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to Jerome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 8.

             [70] F.F. Bruce. Foreward to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words with their Precise Meanings for English Readers (Nashville, TN: Royal Publishers, 1952), xi.

                [71] Bruce, Vine’s Expository Dictionary, x.

                [72] Chadwick, Lexicographica Graeca.

               [73] Arthur Westcott, Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, Volume 1 (New York: MacMillan & Co., 1903), 229.

               [74] Arthur Fenton Hort, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, Volume 1 (New York: MacMillan & Co.), 1896), 420.

[75]  Ibid., 445.

              [76]  John William Burgon, preface to The Revision Revised (1883 reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1971), xi.

            [77] Ernest Sandeen,“Toward an Historical Interpretation of the Origins of Fundamentalism,” Church History, Vol. 36, no. 1 (March, 1967), 72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3162345 (accessed 1.18.13).

[78] Ibid., 77, 78.

            [79] Eldon Jay Epp, foreward to The Greek New Testament by B.F. Westcott & F.J.A Hort (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007), xii.

               [80] Sandeen, “Toward an Historical Interpretation of the Origins of Fundamentalism,” 74.

[81] Kern Robert Trembath, Evangelical Theories of Divine Inspiration: A Review and Proposal (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1987), 15.  http://tinyurl.com/clalypl. (accessed 4.18.2013).

[82] Ault, Spirit and Flesh, 372.

[83] Sandeen, “Toward an Historical Interpretation of the Origins of Fundamentalism,” 69.

             [84] James H. Moorhead,  “The Erosion of Postmillennialism in American Religious Thought, 1865-   

1925.” Church History 53, no. 1 (March 1984): 61-77.http://www.jstor.org/stable/3165956 (accessed 4.18.2013).

[85] Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, 31.

[86] G. Elijah Dann, Leaving Fundamentalism: Personal Stories  (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier

University Press, 2008), 7. http://tinyurl.com/babgblv. (accessed 4.19.2013).

[87] Michael Wilson Casey, The Interpretation of Genesis One in the Churches of Christ: The Origins of

Fundamentalist Reactions to Evolution and Biblical Criticism in the 1920’s (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University, 1989)

[88] White, The King James Only Controversy, 28.

               [89] R.B. Bademan, ""Monkeying with the Bible": Edgar J. Goodspeed's American Translation," Religion and American Culture : R & AC 16, no. 1 (2006): 57. http://search.proquest.com/docview/205888061?accountid=8289. (accessed 3.2.2013).

               [90] White, introduction to The King James Only Controversy, vii.

[91] Peter S. Ruckman, Bible Babel (Pensacola, FL: Bible Believer’s Press, 1964), v.

[92] Ibid.

[93] Ibid., 43

[94] Ibid., 113.

[95] Ibid., 135.

[96] Peter S. Ruckman, The Book of Genesis (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1969), vii.

               [97] Peter S. Ruckman, The Full Cup, A Chronicle of Grace: Autobiography (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1998), 1.

[98] Peter S. Ruckman,  The Christian’s Handbook of Manuscript Evidence (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Press, 1970).

               [99] Ibid., 128.

               [100] Peter S. Ruckman The Book of Matthew (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1970), 627.

               [101] Peter S. Ruckman, Satan’s Masterpiece: The New ASV (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1972). NASB for New American Standard Bible and NASV for New American Standard Version refer to the same Bible version.

               [102] Peter S. Ruckman, The Monarch of Books: An Illustrated Account in Layman’s Language of the   English Bible (1973 rep., Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 2002).

[103] Peter S. Ruckman,  A Survey of the Authorized Version (1978, repr. Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 2003).

              [104] Peter S. Ruckman, About the New King James Version  (1983 repr., Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 2007).

              [105] Peter S. Ruckman, Differences in the King James Version Editions (1983 repr., Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1999).

              [106] Peter S. Ruckman, The Christian’s Handbook of Biblical Scholarship (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1988).

              [107] Barry Burton, Let’s Weigh the Evidence: Which Bible is the REAL Word of God? (Ontario, CA: Chick Publications, 1983).

              [108] Samuel Gipp, An Understandable History of the Bible (Miamitown, OH: Daystar Publishing, 1987). The Answer Book, 1989.

               [109] Peter S. Ruckman, The NIV: An “In-Depth” Documentation of Apostasy (1990, repr., Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1998). King James Onlyism versus Scholarship Onlyism, 1992.

               [110] Gail Riplinger, New Age Bible Versions: An Exhaustive Documentation  of the Message, Men, and Manuscripts Moving Mankind to the Antichrist’s One World Religion (Ararat, VA: AV Publications, 1993).

[111] Bauder, One Bible Only?, Kindle edition.

[112] Riplinger, New Age Bible Versions, 4.

               [113] Laurence Vance, Double Jeopardy; The NASB Update (Orlando, FL: Vance Publications, 1998), A Brief History of English Bible Translations, 1993.

[114] Chick Salliby, If the Foundations Be Destroyed (Taylors, SC: Faith Printing Co, 1994).

               [115] William P. Grady, Final Authority: A Christian’s Guide to the King James Bible (Knoxville, TN: Grady Publications, 1993).

               [116] Ibid,. 321.

[117] Peter S. Ruckman, The Scholarship Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Professional Liars?

(Pensacola, Fl: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1996), xiii.

               [118]. The Mythological Septuagint: A Fairy Tale for Grownups,(Pensacola Fl: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1996.)  The Christian Liars Library, 1997. The Alexandrian Cult Series, 2000, The Last Grenade, 1990.

               [119] Gail Riplinger, The Language of the King James Bible, (1998, repr., Ararat, VA: AV Publications, 2003), 128.

[120] Ibid., xvii.

[121] Ibid.

               [122] Robert Alter & Frank Kermode, “General Introduction.”The Literary Guide to the Bible, Edited by Robert Alter & Frank Kermode (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 7.

[123] Hammond, Gerald. “English Translations of the Bible.” The Literary Guide to the Bible. 650.

[124]  Ibid., 656.

[125] Gail Riplinger, In Awe of Thy Word (Ararat, VA: AV Publications, 2003). Hazardous Materials, 2008.

               [126] Peter S. Ruckman, The Full Cup, 260. The word “book” in this quote was a reference to other Bible versions while “THE BOOK” was a reference to the King James Bible. All capitals and italics were in the original quote.

               [127] Ibid., 260.

[128] Ibid.

               [129] Ruckman, The Full Cup, 262. Ruckman’s use of the word “man” was a reference to himself.

[130] Ibid., 184.

               [131] Peter S. Ruckman, How God Opened My Eyes to the AV 1611 (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1990).

               [132] John Kotchenruter (Independent Baptist evangelist), interview by author, February 24, 2013.

               [133] James R. White to Peter S. Ruckman, 5 April 1995, “The Debate That Never Was,” Alpha and Omega Ministries: Christian Apologetics and Theology: The King James Only Movement, http://vintage.aomin.org/ruckcor.html, (accessed 2.23.2013).

[134] White, The King James Only Controversy, 109.

               [135] Peter S. Ruckman to James R. White, 22 April 1995, http://vintage.aomin.org/ruckcor.html. (2.23.2013).

              [136] Ibid. Typefaces, italicized words, and capitals in any quotation are simply duplicating what is in the actual quote as written.

[137] Ibid.

               [138] Marcet Haldeman-Julius, A Report of the Rev. J. Frank Norris’ Trial (Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1927), 18.

               [139] Ibid.

               [140] James R. White to Peter S. Ruckman, 12 May 1995, http://vintage.aomin.org/ruckcor.html. (accessed 2.23.2013).

               [141] Peter S. Ruckman to James R. White, 18 May 1995. http://vintage.aomin.org/ruckcor.html. (accessed 2.23.2013).

[142] Ibid.

               [143] Ruckman, The Scholarship Only Controversy, xvii.

[144] Ruckman The Full Cup, 300.

[145] Geneha Kim, Ruckmanism Ruckus (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 2010), 2.

               [146] Curtis Hutson, “Unnecessary Divisions Among Fundamentalists,” The Sword of the Lord, Vol. LV. No. 17, September 1,1989.

[147] Peter S. Ruckman, The Whole Story, Tape Five, (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1991).

               [148] Hutson, “Unnecessary Divisions Among Fundamentalists,” The Sword of the Lord, 7.

               [149] Al Hughes to Curtis Hutson, 5 Sept. 1989, in The Last Grenade: A Military Record of the Biblical Apostasy of Modern Christianity ed., Peter S. Ruckman (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1990), 118.

               [150]  Al Hughes, email message to author, February 25, 2013.

               [151] Kevin T. Bauder, introduction to One Bible Only?, Kindle edition.

[152] Ibid.

[153] Gail Riplinger, Blind Guides (Ararat, VA: AV Publications, 1995), 22.

              [154] Ibid., 5.

              [155] Ibid., 6.

              [156] Ibid., 9.

[157] Ibid., 12.

[158] Ibid., 13.

[159]  Ibid., 35.

               [160] Herb Evans, email message to author, 2.25.2013. This refers to John R. Rice, pastor and author.

               [161] Bill J. Leonard & Jill Y. Crainshaw, eds., Encyclopedia of Religious Controversies in the United States, 2^nd ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO LLC, 2013), 244.

http://tinyurl.com/aprvgex. (accessed 2.25.13).

               [162] Ruckman, The Last Grenade, 81. Herb Evans, email message to author, 2.25.2013.

[163] Ibid.

               [164] Ibid.

               [165] Ibid.

[166] Ibid., 84.

               [167] Robert Lee Pate, Jr., “A Strategy for Calming the Troubled Waters of the Bible Translation Controversy Among Independent Baptists,” (PhD diss, Liberty University, 2008), 69.

               [168] Ibid.

[169] Ibid.

               [170] Ruckman, The Last Grenade, 96.

               [171] Herb Evans, Dear Doctor John, Where is My Bible?: A Written Dispute with John R. Rice (Boulder, CO: Wonderful World Publishing, 1976), 12.

[172] Kim, Ruckmanism Ruckus, 26.

               [173] Ibid., 227.

               [174] Peter Ruckman & Earl Kalland, The NIV Debate. DVD, (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1987). www.kjv1611.org, (accessed 2.28.2013).  The King James Bible Debate: Are there Errors in the King James Bible, 1990.

               [175] James White & Gail Riplinger, Gail Riplinger vs. James White, 1993, KRDS Radio (Phoenix, AZ:Alpha & Omega Ministries, 2008). http://youtu.be/BVXjw4jd61M. (accessed 2.28.2013). James White & D.A. Waite, King James Bible “Only” Debate: Is the KJV the Only Real Translation?, 2011.

http://youtu.be/BVXjw4jd61M. (accessed 2.28.2013.

               [176] Is the King James Version of the Bible the Only Bible Christians should Trust and Read (Chattanooga, TN: The John Ankerberg Show, 1995). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI7fbQc1Oyw. (accessed 2.27.2013).

               [177] Herb Evans, email to author, 2.25.2013.

[178] Ruckman, The Full Cup, 261.

[179] Norton, A Textual History of the King James Bible, 107.

               [180] Frank Logsdon, “From the NASV to the KJV,” O Timothy, Way of Life Literature, Volume 9, No. 1, (1992) pg. 1.

[181] Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880 (Palo

Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 110. http://tinyurl.com/co3cqfj. (accessed 4.18.2013).

               [182] Frank Logdson, “From the NASV to KJV,” The Biblical Astronomer, volume 4, no. 69, summer, 1994.

               [183] William P. Grady, “Why I Believe the King James Bible,” Fundamental Baptist Sermons. (Lompoc, CA: Lompoc Valley Baptist Church, 1989). http://fundamentalbaptistsermons.net/sermons8.htm. (accessed 2.28.2013).

[184] Jack Hyles, “Logic Must Prove the King James Bible,” Fundamental Baptist Sermons. (Lompoc,

CA: Lompoc Valley Baptist Church, 1989). http://fundamentalbaptistsermons.net/sermons8.htm. (accessed 2.28.2013).

[185] Ruckman, The Full Cup, 256.

[186] Wright, Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative, 91.

               [187] Ruckman, The Full Cup, 190.

[188] Ibid.

               [189] Ibid., 191.

               [190] Ruckman, The Full Cup, 192.

               [191] Doug Kutilek, J. Frank Norris and His Heirs: The Bible Translation Controversy (Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications, 1999).

[192] Peter S. Ruckman, The Anti-Intellectual Manifesto (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1991), 33.

               [193] Peter S. Ruckman, Things I Have Not Learned (Pensacola, FL; Bible Believer’s Press, 1995), 55.

               [194] Peter S. Ruckman, How to Teach the Bible (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1990), 3

[195] Daryl Coats, NKJV Nonsense (Pensacola, FL: Bible Believer’s Press, 1992), 8.

               [196] Riplinger, New Age Bible Versions,14.

               [197] Kim, Ruckmanism Ruckus, 14.

               [198] Ibid.

               [199] Ibid.

               [200] Ibid.

               [201] Beacham, One Bible Only?, Kindle edition, Appendix C.

[202] 2 Tim. 3:16 AV

               [203] Job 32:8

[204] 2 Pet. 3:15

               [205] John R. Rice, “Some Questions for King James Fans,” The Sword of the Lord, Vol. XLV. No. 6, March 30, 1979, 3.

              [206] “The ‘King James Only’ Debate Has Divided Bible Believing Baptists, Why?” All About Baptists,

http://allaboutbaptists.com/issues_Bible_Versions.html. (accessed 3.1.2013).

[207] Ault, Spirit and Flesh, 166.

               [208] Ibid., 193.

               [209] Ibid., 387.

               [210] White, introduction to The King James Only Controversy, iv.

[211] Ibid.

               [212] Ibid.

               [213] Ibid., vii.

[214] Peter S. Ruckman, The Local Church (Pensacola, FL: Bible Baptist Bookstore, 1989), iv.

[215] Kotchenruter, John. Interview by Frederick Widdowson. MP3 Recording. Stewartstown, PA.

 3.3.2013.

              [216] Bill J. Leonard, “Independent Baptists: From Sectarian Minority to ‘Moral Majority’”, Church History , Vol. 56, No. 4 (Dec., 1987), 507.

[217] Kate Harmon, “Pastor Who Pushed Free Speech Dies,” York Sunday News, January 6, 2013, 1A.

[218] Ibid.

[219] Maxwell, “King James-only Advocates Experience Renaiissance,” Christianity Today.

              [220] Tom W. Smith, "Classifying Protestant Denominations," Review Of Religious Research 31, no. 3 (March 1990): 225. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 6, 2013).

              [221] Bill J. Leonard, “Independent Baptists: From Sectarian Minority to ‘Moral Majority’”, 504.

              [222] “Religious Landscape Survey,” Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 12. http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf. (accessed 3.19.2013).

              [223] “Bible Believers’ Church Directory,” Bible Believers. www.biblebelievers.com, (accessed 3.19.2013).

[224] Campbell, Bible, Google edition.

[225] Carpenter, Revive Us Again, 24.

               [226] Douglas Stauffer, One Bible, One Authority: 2000 Years of Church and Bible History (Millbrook, AL: McCowen’s Mills Publishers, 2012).

               [227] William Lyon Phelps, introduction to Human Nature and the Bible, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923), x. http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/hnb/index.htm. (accessed 3.2.2013).

             [228] Adam Nicolson, God’s Secretaries: the Making of the King James Bible (New York: Harper Collins, 2003), xi.

[229] Alistair McGrath, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a

Language, and a Culture (New York: Random House Digital, 2008), 1. http://tinyurl.com/cg4frod. (accessed 4.17.2013).

[230] Crystal, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language , 258.

             [231] Opfell,  The King James Bible Translators, 26.

             [232] Nicolson, God’s Secretaries: the Making of the King James Bible, 33.

             [233] Tom Griffith in the translator’s introduction to Plato: ‘The Republic,’ G.R.F. Ferrai, editor & Tom Griffith, translator (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), vii.

[234] Ray Ginger, Six Days or Forever: Tennessee Versus John Thomas Scopes (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1958), 191. http://tinyurl.com/c6ctvg5. (accessed 4.19.2013).

[235] White, The King James Only Controversy, 146.                                                                                                      

[236] Bragg, The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011, 245.

[237] Noll, Between Faith and Criticism:Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America, 155.

[238] Thuesen, Discordance With The Scriptures, 81. 

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