If it ain't King James, it ain't Bible

I grew up in the Show Me State. "Show me where you find that in the Bible" was a common rejoinder to challenges to fundamental doctrine, and if you accepted that ground rule, the discussion became one of biblical knowledge, cross reference, and just enough Greek or Hebrew to confound your opponent.[1]

It was generally a warm environment, and the sparring gentle and loving, but it was missing something very important.

Arguing solely from biblical authority is called "sola scriptura,"[2] and I believe it's untenable, because:

1. Basic church practices, including the two central sacraments common to all Christians - baptism and communion - preceded the earliest letters of Paul or the first written gospel.

(Some of the earliest letters were written to say "Hey, you're doing it wrong," by which we can only assume they were already trying to do it right. To point out the obvious, Paul reminds the Corinthians that he already told them about communion - I Cor 2:23ff - which means they were conducting it.[3])

2. All gospel is a translation of a translation. At the very least Jesus/Aramaic -> Apostles/Greek - > English.

Since you and I weren't there, we will never hear Jesus' words in Aramaic. Neither will we hear them as they were first written down, in Greek. Neither in fact, will we ever hear them with the intonations and meter of John Wycliffe's 1382 England. (Wycliffe's bible was a landmark English translation.)

3. All understanding of all things comes through millions of others who spoke the language we speak (past and present), and wrote the words we read (past and present). We are members of a speech community, fixed in time and place, and inextricably bound (and liberated) by the language and language tools that they have given us.

Just as the brains we have came through our parents, and their parents before them, AND from our teachers, and their teachers before them, so language.

We rely on formal institutions to control this process - schools, communities, religions, states, etc.

The end of the matter:
You can cherry pick parts that appeal to you from any menu or political platform or religious tradition (I certainly do), but you cannot do that without rejecting countless other pieces that contributed to them.

We sometimes diminish the whole by sanding off the rough edges.

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So the issue isn't if tradition, but what and how much.

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I read many bible versions and find something to recommend each. I grew up with the King James and it holds a special place for me. I still have and still read the Scofield bible given to me by Bethel Baptist Church in Erie, PA upon my graduation from McDowell High School. I still remember when Pastor Ken Andrus put it in my hands. That was at a convocation ceremony for all young people graduating that year.

It was the best gift they could have given me. It has a yellowing page glued inside marking the occasion. The name "Scofield" was ubiquitous in church and home. I considered it a bible version until I got to college and realized Scofield wrote the study notes.

(You don't know what you don't know.)

My brother Tom says the Scofield is out of print right now. That's too bad. Much of my early theological perspectives came from that bible; it has some good insights.

I have two bibles I consider "my bible" right now. One is that Scofield, the other is a RSV New Testament I am reading through. There are, however, many others throughout the house that I have read through or read substantial portions of.

Left: The Scofield King James Bible given to me by Bethel Baptist Church when I graduated from McDowell High School in Erie, PA in 1981.
Right: The inside front page of the Scofield King James Bible given to me when I graduated; it's been signed by pastor Kenneth L Andrus, then pastor of Bethel. You can see that the glue holding in the message is aging and discoloring the paper.

Left: This is the front of a prayer card I have been using as a bookmark. It was a prayer card from my Grandpa Cairns's funeral. We were not Catholic, but Grandma thought they were pretty. I'm glad she did, they were nice keepsakes. I believe the damage is from Charlie chewing on it when he was a baby.
Right: This is the back of Grandpa's prayer card. You can see that it's stamped Dusckas Funeral Home. Dusckas is in Erie. The card reads:

Thomas G Cairns
March 10, 1911
January 10, 1993

There was always some debate in the family over Grandpa's birthday. Grandma remarked frequently that he intentionally changed it at some point and she was suspicious about it. I never heard Grandpa's side of the story.

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[1]
Bethel Baptist Church, where I grew up, is a member of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, a fellowship of bible-believing fundamentalist churches with no central leadership but a shared belief in biblical authority and Baptistic doctrines. They split from the more liberal American Baptists in 1923.

When I read the history of that split, I can tell you that the things they were arguing over in 1923 must have been very important, because I learned them as a boy without ever realizing I was leaning "Regular Baptist" distinctives. They include separatism, salvation by grace, and predestination.

[2]
That's a fancy Latin phrase that means "bible only," ie, "if it isn't in the bible, I don't believe it. Keep your saints and rosaries to yourself."

I love a good ol' bible-thumping sermon, BTW, and I'll be standing next to a lot of bible thumpers when I get to heaven, I'm sure. Don't be surprised if I lean over and say "I told ya so."

[3]
As an interesting aside, I was taught in college that Homer's Odyssey and Iliad were memorized by performers who could recite both in their entirety (I think the Odyssey is 23,000 lines long) and customize the recitation based on the occasion. The epics could be condensed into an hour or stretched over days.

I heard only recently that at one time, this theory was quite controversial, but that this ability and practice has been found in modern Yugoslavia. When I was fist taught this, I was told modern examples exist in Turkey.
My point here is that oral traditions can survive generations nearly unaltered and Paul's' words may indeed be very close if not precisely those of Christ at the Last Supper.

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Started: 2012-10-09