Fundamentalists like to pretend the Bible, full and complete, fell into our laps straight from Heaven. Despite a certain passion for Scripture, they often have no idea at all how the Bible came to be.
Further, they like to insist that every word — every word! — contained in some English version of the Bible (usually the King James Version) is completely and literally the perfect Word of God.
My conversations with fundamentalists about this topic usually go something like this:
Fundie: Every single word of this Bible is God-breathed and perfect!
Me: Every single word?
Fundie: Every single word!
Me: Like, every single word in the King James Version?
Fundie: Especially every single word in the King James Version! It’s the most accurate and dependable version of the Bible, ever!
Me: Well, how about its use of the word Easter in Acts 12:4? The Greek word behind the word Easter in Acts 12:4 is pascha, which, in every other instance, is translated Passover. In fact, In the first century, the Catholics hadn’t yet stolen the pagan holiday, Oestre, and changed it into Easter — that wouldn’t happen for hundreds of years. So is the word Easter in Acts 12:4 God-breathed and perfect?
Fundie: Well, maybe not that word … but that’s just one word! And that’s an unimportant word! It has nothing to do with our eternal salvation! All the other words — the really important words — are perfect!
Me: You’ve just gone from saying "Every word in the Bible is perfect!" to "Some words in the Bible aren’t important."
Fundie: Stop talking to me, you hell-bound homosexual freak!
The Bible itself is a loose collection of many little books. No original copies of any of these books have ever been found. The text as we know it is based on a number of fragments, written by different hands, discovered and assembled over time.
None of these texts is in English. Your Bible — whatever English version you read from — is a translation … a human effort. The translators choose certain early texts and, according to their own political or religious beliefs, assert that those texts are the best. They then, based on their own level of scholarship, their political and religious beliefs, and their personal agendas, translate the texts they’ve selected, substituting English words for the words of the older text.
The resulting translation is a human creation. As a translated document, its accuracy can vary. The translators have made judgment calls, influenced by human conclusions about what the originals (if we had them) might have meant (if we understand them correctly).
The Bible does claim that "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim 3:16). But that claim refers to scripture itself, not to any particular translation of scripture.
People who claim that any English translation of the Bible is "the perfect and error-free Word of God" are lying. People who make such claims have confused their reading of the Scripture with Scripture itself. Such confusion is entirely to their advantage, since they hope you, too, will mistake their conclusions about Scripture for "the perfect and error-free Word of God."
It’s a trick. It’s a powerplay. Don’t fall for it.
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