Pastor Steven Anderson is an American Baptist Pastor who is part of the King James Only movement. He has absolute faith in the King James Bible; a translation that I’m not too fond of. But he believes in the perfection of this 17th century document.
In the above video, he is challenged by a caller on the translation for Job 39:9. In the KJV this verse reads:
Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?
Here are some other Protestant translations of this verse:
“Will the wild ox consent to serve you? Will it stay by your manger at night?
– New International Version
“Will the wild ox consent to serve you, Or will he spend the night at your manger?
– New American Standard Bible
“Will the wild ox consent to being tamed? Will it spend the night in your stall?
– New Living Translation
So these popular Protestant translations seem to like the translation ox. Steven Anderson says that the description of the animal doesn’t work with the word ox. He also makes a good observation and points out that the word unicorn isn’t some sort of ethereal stallion. Anderson says that uni means one and corn means horn.
After this explanation, Anderson concludes that the animal being described here is probably a rhinoceros. I actually agree with the logic used here. It probably is a rhinoceros. Why is Anderson’s KJV not giving that as the word and giving unicorn instead which is a very misleading term?
When going to bible.cc and comparing all of the Bible translations, there is actually one translation that uses the word rhinoceros and that is the Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible. Is Anderson ready to admit that the DRB did a better job than the KJV, at least on this one verse? If that’s true, then so much for the infallibility of the translation that Anderson is defending.
Shall the rhinoceros be willing to serve thee, or will he stay at thy crib?
– Douay Rheims translation
Another interesting thing about the King James Bible is about 75% of it is taken from William Tyndale. A valid question is, why should we use William Tyndale as a reliable source? I don’t know a single Protestant of any denomination who uses this translation for their personal reading or Bible study. I know of no Protestant pastor who uses it for preaching. Even among Protestants, this Bible isn’t used. I don’t even own a copy of it.
William Tyndale is an interesting character. He probably disliked the Pope and the Catholic Church just as much as Steven Anderson does. The big misinformation about his life is that he was executed for translating the Bible into English. That is incorrect. He was executed for openly promoting and spreading Protestantism.
William Tyndale is considered a hero among Protestants. He was a very early reformer and had an ardent opposition to the Church of Rome. There’s something interesting in his New Testament of which most Protestants aren’t aware. In the Gospel of Luke, Tyndale translated Luke 1:28 as follows:
And ye angell went in vnto her and sayde: Hayle full of grace ye Lorde is with ye: blessed arte thou amonge wemen.
This wasn’t among the portion that Anderson’s KJV took from.
One of those moments when Anderson is not kicking the pulpit or yelling “Get out of here, idiot!” This guy’s obnoxiousness sometimes rivals that of Ruckman, which is quite the achievement.
“Why is Anderson’s KJV not giving that as the word and giving unicorn instead which is a very misleading term?”- be careful here, you’re throwing your Vulgate (which reads “unicornis”) under the bus, given that the English “unicorn” originated from there. The Septuagint (highly valued by St. Augustine) reads “monoceros”, literally meaning “unicorn”. That’s why the Orthodox Bible retains the reading “unicorn”. The KJV has certain faults here and there, but this is not one of them. The DRB could be correct (if we assume that “unicorn” refers to the Indian rhinoceros), but this doesn’t mean that the KJV is misleading. It remains one of the best English translations of the Bible, being much better than the NIV (which gets worse with every subsequent revision) or Bart Ehrman’s favorite NRSV (“the scholarly version” of the Bible).
May God help us all.
These are very good points. I must be honest I was somewhat careless here in an attempt to take a shot at Steven Anderson. I was going with English translations only without looking at the Greek and Latin translation history.
The good thing about the KJV is that it’s one of the only translations out there where Byzantine manuscripts are reflected. Almost everything else is Alexandrian – not that Alexandrian is bad, but it’s good to have both.
God bless,
Allan
Of all modern English translations of the Bible only three are based on the Byzantine textform of the NT- KJV, NKJV and MEV. The rest are (mostly) Alexandrian. Not necessarily a bad thing, but we have to ask ourselves a question: if the Alexandrian textform is the superior one, why has it gone into oblivion for like (at least) 10 centuries?
The East was reproducing the Greek Byzantine text-type, the West was reproducing the Vulgate (mostly Byzantine in nature). The Alexandrian text-type pretty much suffered extinction. Yet most Protestants prefer translations based on it, which, as I’ve already pointed
out in a previous comment, makes the defense of Sola Scriptura a really painful endeavor. The fathers of the Reformation had only the allegedly defective Byzantine textform at their disposal, while most of the mss of the “infallible” Alexandrian text were rotting in the sands of Egypt during the Reformation.
Well, we have to keep in mind that Alexandria was under the iron fist of Islam. Islam conquered two thirds of the Christian world so after 700, Western Europe and Anatolia were the only Christian areas not conquered, hence an excess of Greek Byzantine and Latin Vulgate manuscripts.
I do know the argument that you’re trying to make though and how this would have implications for a Sola Scriptura position. I wouldn’t want to defend this either, though this isn’t even the biggest problem with Sola Scriptura.
The loss of Christian territory to Muslims is a tragedy. If one were to make a list of great theologians before Islam, most of them come from now Muslim lands. Augustine, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and many others. The Church couldn’t thrive like it used to and it stopped producing manuscripts and theologians. Of course exceptions exist such as St. John of Damascus.
Sadly, we have to realize that Christians contributed to this as well. The Crusades and iconoclasm helped the decline, both done by Christians. I really want to go to St. Catherines in Sinai because they have some of, if not the only pre-iconoclasm icons in existence. It’s this monastery where we also get codex Sinaiticus, probably the greatest Alexandrian text. Perhaps due to the remoteness of this monastery, it preserved great manuscripts, icons and relics of the Church from Islam, iconoclasts, and crusaders.
Btw Orangehunter, I really recommend the Chronicle of Theophanes which I’ve talked about recently on here since it covers Islam and the iconoclast controversy.
Thanks again for your always valuable contribution.
God bless,
Allan
1. “Western Europe and Anatolia were the only Christian areas not conquered, hence an excess of Greek Byzantine and Latin Vulgate manuscripts.”- sure, but that doesn’t explain why the Alexandrian stream went extinct in these regions as well. The Western textform also fell out of use. For some reason all Christian scriptoriums started producing the Majority text stream (“Byzantine” is not very precise, because this form of the text predates the Eastern empire with at least a century and a half) or translations based on it (i.e. the Vulgate). Another important thing is that many Egyptian papyri display text is either a mixture of Alexandrian and Western readings or
of Alexandrian and Majority ones. The Alexandrian form clearly wasn’t dominant in some regions of Egypt.
2. “…This isn’t even the biggest problem with Sola Scriptura”- of course
not. The biggest problem with SS is that it goes against the Bible and the Church.
3. “Thanks again for your always valuable contribution.”- you’re welcome, Allan, I really hope that my contributions are valuable, because these are topics that I take very seriously.
May God help us all.
Apart from its archaic language, the KJV has various issues with translation choices, doctrinal insertions and source materieal. By all means it is a GOOD translation, and some can even argue that it is the BEST version, but it’s a stretch too far to say that it is PERFECT.
For ease of use I usually went with the NIV as a first recourse. Lately I lean towards the ESV due to its more literalness.
The two major pushes were its update from ‘The Lord’ to ‘Jesus’ in Jude 5 based on the Coherence Based Genealogical Method; and correctly rendering Exodus 24:1 as ‘Then he said to Moses’ which means that it is Exodus 23’s Angel of YHWH speaking to Moses.
Both of these point to the preexistent Son manifesting to the Israelites. (Yes Allan, it’s because I read ‘Our God is Triune’ and ‘The Preeminence of Christ Part Two’.)
No single translation fully does it for me however – I’d prefer that YHWH be kept as a proper name instead of translated into LORD; that ‘ani hu’ and ‘ego eimi’ be translated ‘I am’ without any added words after; that various other Hebrew and Greek words be more literally translated in order to preserve their implicit meaning (for example, see Genesis 13:10 where ‘plain’ is actually the Hebrew for ‘disc/circle’ and compare it to the topography).
That being said… Perhaps wanting a way to smoothly indicate the plural verbs of Genesis 1 & 11 and the imperfect tense of John 1:1 is hoping for a bit much.
Steven Anderson. A vicious anti-Semite.