Fellowship Baptist Church

THEOLOGICAL REASONS

Some new Bible are dangerous because of the theological bias of their translators. The 
Revised Standard Version (R.S.V.) of the Bible was presented to the public as a 
completed work in 1952. The notoriously liberal National Council of Churches 
authorized it. The unbelieving bias of the majority of the translators is evident in such 
readings as Isaiah 7:14

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold a young woman shall conceive 
and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (R.S.V.)

The difference between this reading and the way the verse reads in the King James 
Version (K.J.V.) is very important. The old Bible says that “a virgin shall conceive, and 
bear a son.” The liberal bias against the doctrine of the of the virgin birth of Christ is 
reflected in the R.S.V. translation of this verse. To make matters worse this liberal 
version translates Matthew 1:23, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” This 
is a correct rendering of the Greek, but with the incorrect translation Isaiah 7:14 in the 
same Bible, the impression is given that Matthew misquoted Isaiah. Not only is the 
doctrine of the virgin birth undermined in the R.S.V., but also the doctrine of the 
infallibility of the Bible! No fundamentalist Christian would accept as his standard a 
theologically liberal translation of the Bible like the R.S.V.

The Good News Bible, (or, properly, Today’s English Version) was translated by neo-
orthodox Richard Bratcher, and purposely replaces the word “blood” with the word 
“death” in many New Testament Passages that refer to the blood of Christ (such as 
Colossians 1:20, Hebrews 10:19, and Revelation 1:5). Bratcher also replaces the word 
“virgin” with “girl” in Luke 1:27. His theological bias ruins his translation.

The N.I.V. (probably the most popular version of recent days) calls into question these 
same doctrinal issues, as well as teaching the false doctrine of baptismal 
regeneration. In Acts 8:26-40 you will find the account of Philip and the Ethiopian 
Eunuch, the N.I.V. completely omits the 37th verse, which says, “And Philip said, if thou 
believest with all thine heart thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that 
Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” This leads the reader to believe that salvation is not a 
prerequisite to baptism.

Liberal or neo-orthodox religionists also produced other versions, such as Phillips 
Translation and the New English Bible. For this reason we will not use them.





TEXTUAL REASONS

Many in the pew do not know that most of the more than one hundred new versions of 
the Bible are not translated from the same Hebrew and Greek texts that the King James 
translators used! When somebody says that the translation of a certain verse in the 
King James Version is “unfortunate,” usually the problem is text rather than translation. 
In the late 1800’s a committee of British and American scholars began work on a 
revision of the King James Bible. It was decided by them that the Greek text of the New 
Testament used in the translation of the old Bible was seriously defective. Although that 
text represented the New Testament as most Christians had accepted it over the 
centuries, it was spurned because is disagreed with some of the older manuscripts. 
Almost all of the new versions are actually translations of the new Greek text generated 
by this committee. This new text is significantly different from the traditional text.

When the reader comes to John 7:53-8:11 even in conservative translations such as 
the New American Standard Bible (N.A.S.V.) or the N.I.V., he finds the whole story of the 
woman taken in adultery set apart with lines or brackets. A note is place in relation to 
the bracketed section that says something like this:

“The earliest and most reliable manuscripts do not have John 7:53-8:11.”
Something similar is done to the Great Commission in Mark 16:9-20. What the textual 
critics of a century ago were saying is that a large amount of the New Testament read, 
believed, preached, and obeyed by most of our spiritual forefathers was actually 
uninspired material added to the text! If this new text theory were true, it would be 
revolutionary news to the church. However, the new theory is still very controversial. 
Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of 
the mouth of God! A man’s needs will not be met unless he has received “every word” 
that God has spoken. So said the Lord Jesus. Jesus also said “Heaven and earth shall 
pass away. But my words shall not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35) With this promise, 
Christ assured us that the very words we need in order to live as we should would be 
preserved throughout the ages, through wars and persecutions and disasters, even 
through the fiery end of creation!

So-called “textual criticism” is more faith than it is science. If one studies the thousands 
of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament with the belief that God has preserved His 
Word through the years, he will come to different conclusions than one who studies the 
same documents with the belief that such preservation is unlikely. Much of the work is 
guesswork and many of the conclusions are debatable. For this reason, thoughtful 
conservative Christians will decide that it is safer to stay with the traditional text than to 
adopt the revised one. The only widely used English versions that are translated from 
the traditional text are the King James Version and the N.K.J.V.





PHILOSOPHICAL REASONS

Christians ought to be interested in having the very words of God, since this is what 
Jesus said we need! The King James Version is a translation that seeks what scholars 
call “formal equivalence” to the original text. Others, however, seek “dynamic 
equivalence.” The “formal equivalence” approach seeks to express in English the 
meaning of the words in Greek. The dynamic equivalence” approach seeks to express 
the meaning of the writer in modern idiom. Anyone who takes seriously our Lord’s 
admonition in Matthew 4:4 will want formal equivalence” translation. Most of the new 
versions do not offer this to us. The so-called “Living Bible” does not even pretend to be 
translation of the words. Copies of this book clearly identify it as a “paraphrase” of God’
s Word. Dr. Kenneth Taylor wrote the Living Bible, and freely admitted that it was his 
paraphrase of the scriptures. In other words he was putting the Bible into his own 
words. When a pastor reads John 3:16 to his congregation Sunday morning, that is one 
thing. When he rephrases it in his own words in order to explain what the verse means, 
that is another thing. Preachers make it clear when they are reading God’s Word and 
when they are paraphrasing it. It is acceptable to paraphrase the scripture in explaining 
it, but it is unacceptable to confuse the paraphrase with the actual Word! The Living 
Bible is not a Bible; it is Dr. Taylor’s paraphrase of the Bible. Please keep in mind the 
distinction. Sadly, the result of Dr. Taylor’s paraphrasing was not always very helpful 
even though he claims to hold “a rigid evangelical position” in his theology.

For example, in 1 Samuel 20:30, he introduced vile profanity in the Holy Writ without 
warrant from the original text!

The very popular N.I.V. is a “dynamic equivalency” translation. The looseness of the N.I.
V.’s translation is admitted by the publishers and well known. The scholars who did the 
translation believe that it is possible and beneficial to put into English what the writers 
of scripture meant rather than what they actually said. One great problem with this 
approach is the element of interpretation that is introduced into English. To interpret is 
to explain what it means. Experts will say that all translation involves some 
interpretation even when this is not the object of the translators. However, much more 
interpretation will go on when the composers of a new version try to convey the thoughts 
rather than the words. If we let the translators interpret the Bible for us, we might as well 
let the priest do it! Our belief in the priesthood of the believer calls on us to reject highly 
interpretive versions.