AV or not AV: The question reconsidered 2

By J.P. Thackway

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A critique of an article by Dr. Alan C. Clifford entitled, AV or not AV: this is the question. Why Norwich Reformed Church uses the NKJV (with considerable sympathy for the GENEVA BIBLE also).

In our last issue of the Quarterly we began to consider Dr. Clifford’s strictures upon the Authorised Version (AV). Before we continue, I need to correct something that strangely crept into the first article last time. On page 105, second paragraph, a point was made that Anglicanism was the predominant church of James VI’s time, “thanks to the Reformation and the Glorious Revolution of 1588.” It is the second clause that is the mistake. The Glorious Revolution was, of course, in 1688 and was relevant to later Protestantism, not to the ecclesiastical context at the time of the AV.

Here now are the remaining points to be answered:

5] The AV is a “backward step” from Tyndale’s NT and the Geneva Bible. The AV reflected “politically correct establishment tendencies” and “even the Pilgrim Fathers (1620) considered that the AV contained some ‘popish’ features!”

6] “Furthermore, on grounds of accuracy, honesty demands the acknowledgement of the AV’s errors, not least where dubious theology and ecclesiastical ideas arise.” He then lists these.

a] “Easter” in Acts 12:4, which should be “Passover.”

b] “Bishop” in 1 Timothy 3:2, which should be “overseer.”

c] “Mitre” in Exodus 28:4, which should be “turban.”

d] “Righteousness” in Romans 5:8 and Revelation 19:8, which should be “righteous act(s).”

e] “Numerous other instances,” for example “Jesus” in Hebrews 4:8, which should be “Joshua,” and “Faith” in Hebrews 10:23 which should be “hope.”

7] The article concludes with a brief commendation of the Geneva Bible, which was preferred by the Puritan separatists.
Dr. Clifford says that those who want an older, Protestant version of the Bible should prefer the Geneva Bible to the AV. This is because “it is more accurate” and was “the Bible that established the Protestant Faith in British hearts and minds.”

The article concludes with this paragraph: “Despite its occasional defects, the New King James Version (or original RAV, 1982) is closer to the Geneva Bible than the AV, and therefore more satisfactory for modern use.”

Let us continue to take these up in order.

5. The apparent “backward step” of the AV from Tyndale and the Geneva Bible, its alleged “political correctness and ‘popish features.’”
Was the AV really a “backward step” from Tyndale? Is it not truer to say that the AV built upon Tyndale’s pioneering work and took it forward to completion? The great Tyndale scholar David Daniell believes so. He writes,

That famous ‘translation’ (the AV) was in fact almost entirely, in the New Testament, made from Tyndale’s words … Its importance as a translation of the New Testament in particular is that so much of it directly transmits the work of Tyndale.

Tyndale translated nearly half the Old Testament and all the New Testament. When we remember that the AV is between 70% to 90% Tyndale, it can hardly be charged upon those men that they have undermined his work. In seeking to show this, Clifford complains that Tyndale’s “love” in 1 Corinthians 13 is spoilt by the AV’s “Latinate ‘charity.’” However, it could be argued the other way. The word charity comes from the Latin caritas, from the ancient, classical Latin language. It means “dearness” or “high price.” But it may go on to mean “affection,” “esteem” or “love” in its charitable form towards others. This is not such a bad rendering, as one writer says,

Charity better captures the biblical idea of love, for charity is love in action for the glory of God not a mere warm mushy feeling as we use the word today.

Dr. Clifford has more recently circulated another, fuller, article in which he defines more fully the “popish features” of the AV. They include,

… the reversion to “Easter” instead of ‘Passover’ in Acts 12:4, thus promoting the perpetuation of the ‘popish’ church calendar (saints days, Lent, etc.). The use of ‘Saint’ in the author’s details in the NT books (the Greek omits this) assumes a Roman Catholic conception of ‘sainthood’. There were also concerns about published images in the first edition and too high a regard for the Apocrypha.

The rendering of “Easter” in Acts 12:4 for passover (pascha) was from Tyndale. He struggled to turn pascha into an English equivalent. To simply translate it as “passover” would be unfamiliar to people at that time and he was unwilling to use a foreign word. Therefore, he opted for “Easter,” being the equivalent known to his readers. He did this on more than a dozen occasions, but the AV translators in this one instance retained Tyndale’s preference. It is true that “Passover” would be the more exact rendering, however, it is hardly likely that in this place the AV is going to lead readers back to Rome with her church calendar and saints’ days!

The same is true of “St.” in front of the apostles’ names in the NT books. Especially when, for instance, in “St.” Paul’s epistles all Christians are called saints. In some of the Trinitarian Bible Society Bibles this prefix is omitted and the objection disappears that easily.

Another alleged “popish feature” is the inclusion of the Apocrypha in the early editions of the AV. This was the decision of Archbishop Richard Bancroft. However, every English Bible up to that time had editions containing the Apocrypha, including the Geneva. In later times this was discontinued, but its inclusion did not mean it was held to be canonical.

6. The lack of accuracy, with dubious theology and ecclesiastical ideas.

a] “Easter” for “passover” in Acts 12:4 has already been discussed.

b] “Bishop” in 1 Timothy 3:2 instead of “overseer.”
Also “mitre” in Exodus 28:4 instead of “turban.”
In both these, our author claims the AV lends support to the “unbiblical diocesan episcopacy” and “mitred bishops.” Regarding “bishop,” this translates episkopos, which means “overseer.” The AV’s word has come from the Saxon “biscop” through Tyndale. Given that the Geneva also has bishop (as does Dr. Clifford’s beloved NKJV) this can hardly be said to be a big problem!

Regarding “mitre,” it is true that the Hebrew mitsnepheth comes from a word which means “to wrap, wind around,” to denote the High Priest’s turban. This word would have been preferable, but shall we make the AV an offender for every word less than ideal? Geneva has “mitre” also – hardly supporting the allegation that in this instance the AV is leading us Romeward. While not the best word, it is a familiar word that can easily be adjusted in one’s mind if necessary.

c] “Righteousness” instead of “righteous act” in Romans 5:18; Revelation 19:8.
This is a more serious allegation since it touches on a foundation doctrine, namely justification by faith. Here we quote Dr. Clifford in full,

… AV ‘righteousness’ in Romans 5:18 and Revelation 19:8 … should be ‘righteous act’ since the Greek is dikaioma and dikaiomata respectively rather than dikaiosune. This inaccuracy has implications for a correct view of Christ’s imputed righteousness (the idea of His imputed active – as distinct from His passive – obedience being unbiblical).

For the benefit of readers who may be unfamiliar with these terms, our Lord’s “passive” obedience is His yielding to the penalty of the law we have broken, i.e. His atoning death on the cross. His “active obedience” is His having kept the precepts of God’s law in His life. Together they are imputed, or reckoned ours, when we believe. This is how God constitutes us “righteous” in His sight, or justifies us.

This not only absolves us from all sin and condemnation (for One has borne this all for us), but also reckons to us a positive righteousness (for One has obeyed the law’s precepts in our place). This grants us a status as righteous as Christ is righteous – “accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6).

Dr. Clifford believes that because the Greek in the texts above is not dikaiosune – meaning righteousness itself imputed to us (active obedience) – therefore it should be rendered simply as “righteous act” i.e. the one righteous act of Christ’s death and resurrection. This, of course, would limit the reference to our Lord’s passive obedience. This view is reminiscent of that promoted in the 19th century by J.N. Darby and seems to be that of Dr. Clifford also.

However, is this objection valid? A Greek lexicon will show that “righteousness” is a correct translation of dikaioma and dikaiomata (plural). Thayer’s, for instance, says that although it can be rendered “a righteous act or deed,” it can also mean “a judicial decision, sentence; of God … the favourable judgment by which he acquits men and declares them acceptable to him, Romans 5:16).” This equates to the AV’s “righteousness” in these verses, i.e. the whole obedience of our Lord in His life and death (active and passive) which is imputed to all who believe, and is actually found in the second part of Romans 5:18, where it is rendered “justification of life.”

Moreover, David Brown in his commentary on Romans wrote,

(Some would render the peculiar word here employed, ‘one righteous act’ [ALFORD, etc.]; understanding by it Christ’s death as the one redeeming act which reversed the one undoing act of Adam. But this is to limit the apostle’s idea too much; for as the same word is properly rendered ‘righteousness’ in Romans 8:4, where it means ‘the righteousness of the law as fulfilled by us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,’ so here it denotes Christ’s whole ‘obedience unto death,’ considered as the one meritorious ground of the reversal of the condemnation which came by Adam.

That there is an active and passive righteous imputed to us in clear in the New Testament. For instance, in 2 Corinthians 5:21. Christ takes our sin; it is imputed to Him: “made him to be sin for us” – passive obedience. We take Christ’s righteousness, which is imputed to us: “made the righteousness of God in him” – active obedience. And not just constituted “righteous,” but “righteousness.” Not an adjective but a noun. A status or standing that is equivalent to the thing itself.

This is how Spurgeon understood the matter. Preaching on December 20 1868 he declared,

One of the first gospel blessings is that of complete justification. A sinner, though guilty in himself, no sooner believes in Jesus than all his sins are pardoned. The righteousness of Christ becomes his righteousness, and he is accepted in the Beloved. Now, this is a delicious dish indeed. Here is something for the soul to feed upon … To think that I, though once an heir of wrath, am now as accepted before God as Adam was when he walked in the Garden without a sin; nay, more accepted still, for the divine righteousness of Christ belongs to me, and I stand complete in him, beloved in the Beloved, and accepted in him, too! Beloved, this is such a precious truth, that when the soul feeds on it, it experiences a quiet peace, a deep and heavenly calm, to be found nowhere on earth besides.

Also Dr. Lloyd-Jones, preaching on Romans,

In justifying us, God tells us that He has taken our sins and our guilt, and has ‘imputed’ them to, ‘put them to the account of,’ the Lord Jesus Christ and punished them in Him. He announces also that, having done that, He now puts to our account, or ‘imputes’ to us, the perfect righteousness of His own dear Son. The Lord Jesus Christ obeyed the Law perfectly; He never broke it in any respect. He gave a full and a perfect satisfaction to all its demands. That full obedience constitutes His righteousness. What God does is to put to our account, to put upon us, the righteousness of Jesus Christ. In declaring us to be justified, God proclaims that He now looks on us, not as we are, but as clothed with the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This truth is a grand comfort to we who feel our deep unworthiness. As we are sometimes overwhelmed by all we have done wrong it is a blessed thing to think of Him who actively (as well as passively) did everything right, and whose righteousness is ours. In his last days, J. Gresham Machen sent a telegram to his friend Prof. John Murray, on New Year’s Day, 1937. They were his last recorded words: “I’m so thankful for [the] active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.” He died that evening about 7:30. The AV’s translation, far from being inaccurate and unbiblical, surely gives us the truth in its clarity and blessedness.

“Numerous other instances” are mentioned by Dr. Clifford, but only two more are cited: “‘Jesus’ should be ‘Joshua’ in Hebrews 4:8 and … ‘confession of faith’ in Hebrews 10:23 should be ‘confession of hope’ as in the correct NKJV.”

Regarding “Jesus,” this is the literal English rendering of Iesous in the verse. The Hebrew name Joshua comes out in the Greek as Iesous, as can be seen in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament). It could be argued that since we know Paul meant Joshua from the context – giving the Israelites rest in Canaan – therefore “Joshua” would be the better rendering. However it is “Jesus” in the Greek and the AV translators, with their concern for exact equivalence, rendered it as such. Hardly inaccurate – at worst only over-literal.

As for “confession of faith,” it is true that elpidos should be “hope” and not “faith” (pistis). This is seen by the fact that in the other 53 occurrences of elpidos (or its noun form elpis) it is uniformly rendered “hope.” However, Alan Macgregor makes a good case for seeing this as un uncorrected printing error rather than a mistranslation. If this is so, it is hardly the fault of the AV translators.

Dr. Clifford then says that, while the RAV/NKJV “too has its blemishes,” it is nonetheless “a preferable version for modern use.” It is the version that Norwich Reformed Churches uses. However, what he has alleged against the AV can justly be alleged against the NKJV and a lot more besides. Much has been written to show that this translation has more against it than mere blemishes. A scholarly two-part series on what is wrong with the NKJV is available to read on the Trinitarian Bible Society website Also TBS publish a 30-page booklet written by Malcolm Watts incisively critiquing this translation, leaving us in no doubt as to its defects. Moreover, in Alan Macgregor’s fine book 400 Years On, he devotes a chapter of 33 pages to it. While acknowledging in fairness that, “there are times when the NKJV offers a worthwhile improvement over the AV,” nonetheless,

I would suggest, when the NKJV is viewed overall, it makes too many unnecessary, and sometimes detrimental, changes to the text of the AV, making it, in my view, an inferior translation.

7] The article concludes with a brief commendation of the Geneva Bible, which first appeared in 1560 and was preferred by the Puritan separatists.
It is true that the Geneva Bible was a great translation. Published in 1560, the work of English Protestant exiles in Geneva, it was the first English translation from the original Hebrew and Greek. It was also the first to divide and number the verses, to italicise the text to complete the sense, and the first “Study Bible,” with its copious annotations in the margin, together with maps, tables, illustrations, a concordance, etc. Between 1560 and its last printing in 1644, 140 editions had been printed.

However the Geneva Bible had its limitations. Unlike the 47 translators of the AV, it was the work of only a few men: William Whittingham, who produced the New Testament in 1557, together with Anthony Gilby, Thomas Sampson, William Cole and Christopher Goodman. It was not entirely original in its translation. Whittingham borrowed heavily from Tyndale, with some reference to the Great Bible. The same was true to an extent with the Old Testament section. Its aim was for a idiomatic and vigorous style, but it sometimes overdid this, like in Mark 15:29,

And they that went by, railed on him, wagging their heads, and saying, Hey, thou that destroyest the Temple, and buildest it in three days,

– notice the colloquial “Hey”! This is not ideal, and we agree with Dr. Michael Barret who wrote of the AV,

Interestingly, the translators intentionally rejected some contemporary idioms of their day in favour of retaining archaic expressions in order to produce a Bible with a sound of dignity, particularly for its public reading. If that were a concern then, how much more now?

Although the Geneva Bible was the Bible of Puritans until the 1650s, it was not a Bible of permanent worth and importance.

Moreover, if the Geneva Bible was so valued by the Puritans, why did they ask for a new translation at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604? The answer is thought to lie in its Hebrew and Greek scholarship. “David Daniell, followed by Derek Wilson, believes that Rainolds was thinking of the advances that had been made in Hebrew and Greek scholarship over the fifty years that lay between his proposal and the publication of the Geneva Bible and that this alone necessitated a new work.” In other words, the Geneva Bible was out of date.

The main reason for the Geneva Bible’s downfall, however, was its marginal notes. Although immensely valuable for the most part, some of them were deemed politically controversial when kings and temporal powers were mentioned. King James intensely disliked it for this reason. Yet, when commissioning the AV he allowed the translators to consult it, and according to Nicolson, “many … phrases were adopted by the King James translators.” The AV’s eventual triumph over the Geneva Bible is no mere accident of history, since all history is His-story. It is no use wistfully desiring it instead of the AV when the Lord Himself has affirmed the latter, and blessed the church with it for 400 years.

Peter Hallihan’s words fittingly conclude the points we have sought to make,

The Authorised Version is no museum piece, but a regular part of life in homes, churches and colleges, in large quantities. Many evangelists, missionaries and preachers still make preference of the AV. In current worldwide sales figures of Bibles, the Authorised Version is listed second, after the NIV, both on monetary figures and quantities. If we could figure in the production, distribution and use of Bibles in other languages which rejoice in the same pedigree as the AV, there is no telling what the numbers might be. Then add the quantities which are granted free of charge to those who ask, and the copies distributed during earlier decades of its four hundred year reign — the numbers would be staggering.
Not only is the AV in use, it is blessed in use! Comparisons with other versions are not here attempted, only the squashing of the ‘God can’t/won’t use that old thing’ remarks. Souls are being called and saved; congregations are being nurtured; lives and families are being directed in holiness: all under the strong spirit and good hand of God in the faithful use of the Authorised Version. The last chapter of our book this may be — but it is nowhere near the last chapter of the wonderful and unfinished story of the Authorised Version.