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Central to the
Christian faith is the belief in the deity of Jesus
Christ. This is inescapable, and few things pose such an
affront to Christianity as those who attempt to deny our
Savior’s deity. He is one of the three persons of the
triune God, and Christians are compelled to counter any
belief that He was simply a good man – a prophet. Muslims
believe Jesus was a prophet, but they reject His
divinity. Baha’is believe Jesus was one of many
manifestations of God, just as Isaiah, Buddha, Muhammad,
and others. Mormonism teaches that Jesus was a God, but
separate from Father God and the Holy Spirit
(non-Trinitarian). Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus
was a god, and a lesser god than Jehovah.
Attacks on the
deity of Christ are nothing new. Early in Christian
history, a heretic named Arius spoke out against the deity
of Jesus. Arius gained a following, and was effectively
debated by a staunch defender of Jesus’ divinity –
Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria. So important was
defending Jesus’ deity, that the Council of Nicea pounded
the point home in the Nicene Creed in A.D. 325:
I believe
in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in
one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God,
Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not
made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all
things were made...
You’ll seldom
find me arguing more passionately than when I am arguing
in defense of the Trinity and the deity of Jesus.
Typically, I do so with the aid of my NIV Bible. It seems
ironic that those who believe that the King James Version
of the Bible is the only true Bible in the English
language will argue that the NIV and NASB try to hide the
deity of Christ. It’s hard to read a King James Only (KJO)
book or website without finding such a contention. For
example, the King James Bible Handbook says, “The
KJV exalts the Lord Jesus Christ. The true scriptures
should testify of Jesus Christ (John 5:39). There is no
book on this planet which exalts Christ higher than the
King James Bible. In numerous places the new perversions
attack the Deity of Christ, the Blood Atonement, the
Resurrection, salvation by grace through faith, and the
Second Coming. The true scriptures will TESTIFY of Jesus
Christ, not ATTACK Him!”1
It is not my purpose in this article to malign the KJV or
even the KJO activists. Rather, I will demonstrate that
this argument is baseless. In fact, I will demonstrate
that the NIV and NASB actually provide a clearer
picture of the deity of Jesus than the KJV.
The Modern Translation
“Conspiracy”:
KJO proponents always accuse
the modern translations of “deleting” words, phrases, and
whole verses from God’s Word. They frequently use tables
comparing the wording of the KJV (also known as AV1611)
and modern translations such as the NIV and NASB. This
can be an effective tool in their effort to show a
conspiracy on the part of modern translations. The
following table is similar to some you might find in KJO
works to show that modern translations attack the deity of
Jesus:
|
Passage |
AV1611 |
Modern Translations |
|
Matthew 4:18 |
Jesus |
OMIT |
|
Matthew 12:25 |
Jesus |
OMIT |
|
Mark 2:15 |
Jesus |
OMIT |
|
Mark 10:52 |
Jesus |
OMIT |
|
Luke 24:36 |
Jesus |
OMIT |
|
Acts 15:11 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
Acts 16:31 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
Acts 19:4 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
Acts 19:10 |
Lord Jesus |
OMIT |
|
1 Corinthians 5:4 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
1 Corinthians 9:1 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
1 Corinthians 16:22 |
Jesus Christ |
OMIT |
|
2 Corinthians 4:10 |
Lord |
OMIT |
|
2 Corinthians 5:18 |
Jesus |
OMIT |
|
2 Corinthians 11:31 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
1 Thessalonians 3:11 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
2 Thessalonians 1:8 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
2 Thessalonians 1:12 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
Hebrews 3:1 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
1 John 1:7 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
2 John 1:3 |
The Lord |
OMIT |
|
Revelation 1:9 |
Christ |
OMIT |
|
Revelation 12:17 |
Christ |
OMIT |
Looking at a comparison like
this can be troubling, and it’s easy to believe that
modern translations are subtly erasing Jesus Christ from
the Bible. However, comparisons such as the one above are
dishonest. First, by using the word “omit”, they are
suggesting that the KJV is the standard, and any deviation
from it is a deviation from the only true Word of God. As
we’ve discussed in previous articles, the modern
translations follow older and better manuscripts than
those available to the KJV translators, so the variants in
modern translations are based on variants between ancient
texts, not from taking “White-Out” to the KJV. There are
places were even the KJV translation differs from the
majority texts upon which it is based. Yet the KJO
proponents maintain the KJV as the standard by which other
translations (including the Greek) must be measured.
Second, the table above only presents part of the
picture. Let’s recreate this table, but this time put the
variant readings of the NIV/NASB:
|
Passage |
AV1611 |
Modern Translations |
|
Matthew 4:18 |
Jesus |
He* |
|
Matthew 12:25 |
Jesus |
He |
|
Mark 2:15 |
Jesus |
He |
|
Mark 10:52 |
Jesus |
He |
|
Luke 24:36 |
Jesus |
He |
|
Acts 15:11 |
Lord Jesus Christ |
Lord Jesus |
|
Acts 16:31 |
Lord Jesus Christ |
Lord Jesus |
|
Acts 19:4 |
Christ Jesus |
Jesus |
|
Acts 19:10 |
the Lord Jesus |
the Lord |
|
1 Corinthians 5:4 |
Lord Jesus Christ |
Lord Jesus |
|
1 Corinthians 9:1 |
Jesus Christ |
Jesus |
|
1 Corinthians 16:22 |
The Lord Jesus Christ |
the Lord |
|
2 Corinthians 4:10 |
Lord Jesus |
Jesus |
|
2 Corinthians 5:18 |
Jesus Christ |
Christ |
|
2 Corinthians 11:31 |
Lord Jesus Christ |
Lord Jesus |
|
1 Thessalonians 3:11 |
our Lord Jesus Christ |
Jesus our Lord |
|
2 Thessalonians 1:8 |
Lord Jesus Christ |
Lord Jesus |
|
2 Thessalonians 1:12 |
Lord Jesus Christ |
Lord Jesus |
|
Hebrews 3:1 |
Christ Jesus |
Jesus |
|
1 John 1:7 |
Jesus Christ |
Jesus |
|
2 John 1:3 |
The Lord Jesus Christ |
Jesus Christ |
|
Revelation 1:9 |
Jesus Christ |
Jesus |
|
Revelation 12:17 |
Jesus Christ |
Jesus |
* Whenever the pronoun “He” is used in this chart, the
passage makes it clear that “He” refers to Jesus
As you can see, by putting a
little more context in this chart, the modern translations
haven’t eliminated Jesus from these verses as the original
chart implies. Rather, the modern translations list less
expansive names and titles for Jesus. The ancient texts
that form the basis for the modern translations have
slightly variant readings in these verses from the later
texts upon which the KJV was based. For some time,
textual critics have understood a tendency on the part of
scribes to inflate sacred names, especially in the case of
Jesus Christ. James R. White referred to this as
“expansion of piety.”2 It would have been
highly unlikely for a scribe to take away from Jesus name
as written on the source document from which they copied,
but it wasn’t uncommon for them to add to it, in a
subconscious effort to afford the Lord all the worship and
honor that is His due. This view was put forth by the
father of modern textual criticism, an 18th
century German scholar named Johann Jakob Griesbach.
Among his canons of textual criticism, Griesbach wrote, “The
shorter reading (unless it lacks entirely the authority of
the ancient and weighty witnesses) is to be preferred to
the more verbose, for scribes were much more prone to add
than to omit. They scarcely ever deliberately omitted
anything, but they added many things; certainly they
omitted some things by accident, but likewise not a few
things have been added to the text by scribes through
errors of the eye, ear, memory, imagination, and judgement.”3
A clearer translation:
As I said earlier, I almost
exclusively use my NIV Bible when debating the deity of
Jesus Christ. This isn’t because it’s easier to read, or
because it has really nifty maps of the Holy Land. I use
the NIV because it is a better translation than others,
and provides a less ambiguous view of the deity of Jesus.
In The King James Only Controversy, James White
listed a dozen verses of Scripture that are most central
to the deity of Jesus. He then lists whether the
reference to Jesus’ divinity is most clear, clear, least
clear, ambiguous, or absent in the KJV, NASB, and the
NIV. The results may surprise you.
|
Comparison Chart of Passages on the Deity of Christ4 |
|
Reference |
NIV |
NASB |
KJV |
|
John 1:1 |
Clear |
Clear |
Clear |
|
John 1:18 |
Clear |
Clear |
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