In James 4:5, we read the following:
Do ye think
that the scripture saith in vain, The Spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to
envy?
The problem this verse poses against KJV-onlyism is that there is
no text in the Old Testament that matches this quotation.
The Greek text from The Trinitarian Bible Society Greek New
Testament (based on the Byzantine text) of this quotation is Πρὸς φθόνον ἐπιποθεῖ
τὸ πνεῦμα ὃ κατῴκησεν ἐν ἡμῖν. There is no equivalent from the Old Testament
texts employed by the KJV authors, nor is it found in the LXX (the existence of
which some KJV-onlyists deny!)
This refutes the more extreme forms of KJV-onlyism as it shows
that the biblical authors themselves used sources no longer extant and not part
of the sources used by the KJV translators.
Other examples of texts from the KJV itself refuting this
preposterous position include Jer 38:6:
Then took
they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelech, that was in the court of the
prison: and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there was no
water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire.
From reading the KJV, one can be excused for thinking that Hammelech is a proper name of Malchiah’s
father. However, this is an error by the KJV translators as they incorrectly
transliterated the underlying Hebrew instead of translating it. The Hebrew is הַמֶּלֶךְ which means
“the king.” It is not a proper name. To be fair, this is not an error unique to
the KJV. The Geneva Bible, for instance, also transliterated instead of translated
this term. However, this is another verse in the KJV that (1) contains a clear
mistake and (2) can be improved upon.
There are some other verses in the KJV that can be improved upon
based on recent Greek grammatical discoveries, such as Granville Sharp’s sixth
canon, which shows that the term θεος (“God” in
Greek) is to be predicated upon Jesus in Titus 2:13 and 2 Pet 1:1 (the KJV
rendition of these verses are very ambiguous, with the texts distinguishing “God”
from “Jesus”). For a book-length discussion of this rule, whose (re)discovery
post-dates the completion of the KJV, see Daniel Wallace, Granville Sharp’s Canon and its Kin: Semantics and Significance
(Peter Lang, 2009).
A lot more can be said about this utterly inane, anti-intellectual position (e.g., how the KJV translators themselves did not privilege their translation in the way KJV-onlyists do), but such should show that KJV-onlyism is an anti-biblical position to hold, one that the KJV itself refutes.
