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AWFUL Mar 03, 2008
This book is typical of the type of literature found within the King James-Only movement. It is riddled with syntactical, factual and logical errors and it engages in personal attacks upon individuals who oppose the movement's dogma. Most importantly, it makes a number of unsubstantiated claims as to the supernatural origins of the Textus Receptus and the divine inspiration of the King James translation. It arbitrarily substitutes the entire body of Greek biblical manuscripts with the King James Bible, thus making it the standard against which all modern translations are judged; any differences are said to suggest both the superiority of the King James Bible and the existence of vast satanic conspiracies put in place to attack the deity of Christ and advance Catholic doctrine. Of course, logically speaking, assuming something in order to prove the very thing one has assumed, such as in this case, is a fallacy called Circular Reasoning.
In terms of substance, there is hardly any original research to be found within the pages of this book. The bulk of the writing constitutes either the re-stating of general ideas previously expressed by various other pro-King James-Only writers, most prominently Gail Riplingler and Samuel Gipp, or the re-printing of large sections of the Bible in order for Gallagher to make points, which at times seem to lead nowhere. Technically, the book is written in such a manner as to make it difficult to determine where a quotation ends and the author's own words begin. There also seems to have been very little proofreading done for this publication, since aside from numerous typographical errors (i.e., sentences with no spaces between words), the author seems to have trouble with plurals and possessives, often referring to his own ideas as the "authors". There are also many editing mistakes, mainly in the form of redundant and/or repeated words within the same sentence and the odd use of the phrase "emphasis added" in places where no emphasis has been added to the text.
From the outset the book promises to address a number of important pro- and anti- the King James-Only issues, and to provide definite "proof" that the King James Bible is the perfect and only true word of God. However, it overwhelmingly fails to deliver on all accounts. For example, a chapter titled "The King James Only Controversy" about the anti-King James-Only book of the same name, where one would reasonably expect Gallagher to address and refute points raised in the book in question, does no such thing. Rather, the chapter is both a long attack on the integrity and the faith of the book's author James White, and a rather convoluted explanation of why the King James translators claimed neither divine inspiration nor perfection in their work (Gallagher's answer: they were too humble). It also castigates said translators for their belief in the existence of the Septuagint (some in the KJO camp deny the work's existence). Similarly, in a 2-page chapter entitled "What About The Errors In The King James Version" Mr. Gallagher, claiming 30 years of biblical research, offers the following amazing defence of the inclusion of the Comma Johanneum in the King James translation: "1 John 5:7 is supposed to be a mistake as it is written in the King James Bible because it is not found in most Greek manuscripts. This is an important verse and has been accepted by the aggregate Body of Christ throughout the church age." Aside from the absurd proposition that text belongs in the Bible merely on the basis of tradition (Appeal to Tradition, another logical fallacy), Gallagher fails to mention that this verse is in only 8 out of more than 5,300 Greek manuscripts, that none of these is older than the 10th century, that most of these 8 manuscripts contain the verse in the form of marginal notes or alternate readings, or even that the first two editions of Erasmus' Greek New Testament (the basis for the Textus Receptus) did not include this verse at all. This is deception by omission. While Gallagher ends the chapter with the sentence "The fact is that no mistake has been found in the King James Version", one is left to wonder whether he has ever encountered the hills where "thou mayest dig brass" in Deuteronomy 8:9 or the two "cherubims" of gold of Exodus 25:18, two of the most easily demonstrable translation errors in the King James Bible. [In the former, brass is an artificial alloy of copper and zinc that does not occur in nature, and in the latter, the plural of cherub is cherubim without the "s" --"cherubims" is incorrect and would be equivalent to the plural of foot being feets. The same applies to Anakims in Deuteronomy 1:28, nethinims in 1 Chronicles 9:2 and seraphims in Isaiah 6:2.]
It is clear, after studying this book, in addition to works by the likes of Peter Ruckman, Samuel Gipp, Jasper Ray and Gail Riplinger, that the King James-Only movement represents no more than a fanatical devotion to a 17th century Anglican translation of the Bible into a language that would not exist for some thousand years after Jesus walked the earth. It is an ideology firmly rooted in faulty logic, misinformation, the misrepresentation of facts, Anglo-centrism, the use of conspiracy theories, the disregard for the truth and the blatant abandonment of rational thought in favour of supernatural explanations. As such, it relies fully on the ignorance of its audience about topics relating to the origins of biblical texts, textual criticism, translation techniques and even basic historical facts. It does not stand up to any serious analysis and thrives only within the small confines of the Fundamental Baptist movement.
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