The reason the King James Controversy has divided so greatly in churches and some communities is at least in great part because of a misunderstanding of WHAT the issue is, and WHETHER IT IS CRITICAL. If there is a basic misunderstanding about why people argue for and against the King James Version and the texts it is based upon, then the issue will be dismissed as merely 'preference' and lead to the conclusion that it is not a critical issue . Most persons who hear of the controversy, become even indignant because they think that a group of people they label "King James Only" are unlearned and trying to force their personal Bible preferences on other people. The reason for this error is partly because many KJV only persons lack patience in presenting the issues, and more importantly because there is a general and very serious but commonly held ERROR that all Bibles are translated off the same Greek and Hebrew, and that all Greek and Hebrew come from the original writings of the prophets and apostles. If one sees the KJV as simply a translation among translations, then it would in deed be a trivial issue and pursuit (no pun intended)! Likewise, if one begins the discussion with controversies over the "transmission of Greek and Hebrew texts, and text families" then another yawn comes quickly into view and is dismissed as an issue only for scholars. The KJV though, IS NOT BASED UPON THE SAME GREEK AND HEBREW as the modern Bibles. There are significant differences. This makes the issue one of whether God Kept His Word---of whether there is a true Bible so close to the original as to not be different, preserved as the Word of God through 5000 years. If one text bears the test of time far more than all others, the the issue is one of CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH & THE WORD OF GOD and not a trivial choice. In order to see the TRUE LINE of the Bible from the time the Apostles put pen to paper till today, and which bible is the result of the True Line of Bible transmission, is basically to ask which bible today is the real Bible. First one must understand the 'transmission' of texts, or text families, or much more simplistically, how our Bible came to us.

The first point of 'transmission' or the path each of the translations took, begins when the documents were first spoken and recorded. All Bibles , like all churches would like to trace their histories back to the very beginning, when Jesus spoke, Apostles wrote, and Paul in prison wrote letters explaining the depths of Christ and his bride the Church. Unfortunately, many do not trace back to the beginning. Nonetheless, after Jesus and the Prophets of the Old Testament spoke, the original was the 'writing' down of the Old and New Testament. Many more liberal scholars claim there was a basic document they call the "Q" document which all the variations of the Gospel was taken from, but they bemoan the "Q" document, like the 'missing link' as having never been found. Early church 'fathers' or writers such as Clement report that as Paul and the Gospel writers wrote down their gospels and epistles, copies of the first documents were sent to the churches, one or a few to each church, where they were read aloud. Individual believers would then copy the documents for their own use: Clement remands early believers to do daily devotions in the Word: a feat only possible if at that point many had extant copies in their hand. The original letter

THE PATH OF GOD'S WORD AND ONE TRUE TEXT

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