The Plowboy’s Bible: God’s Word for Common Man

A Book by:

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.

Shocking conclusions from the man that brought you The King James Bible Song.

This book represents years of study and a significant change in understanding.

Raised on and trained in a “King James Only” position, most of the author’s teaching ministry was centered on the defense of the KJV. He had early associations with major proponents of this position and their followers. He actively taught classes and seminars on the subject of Bible versions. For many years he distributed thousands of books from a collection of over 100 different titles in support of the KJV position.

Here he shares what he has come to see that has caused him to abandon completely his former position.

http://www.pilkingtonandsons.com/1611books.htm

Ordinary Surroundings

Something struck me as I was recently reading J.B. Phillips’s book, Ring of Truth: A Translator’s Testimony. Here is what I read:

I was, and indeed am, impressed by the fact that the New Testament letters were written not in some holy retreat but sometimes from prison, sometimes from ordinary, probably Christian homes. Moreover, they were written to people who were called to live Christian lives in a thoroughly pagan world. (1967, p. 37)

After reading that I got to thinking: why would it be any different when it comes to translating? Doesn’t all of God’s life and work take place in the middle of ordinary surroundings, in commonplace circumstances? If the Bible was not written in holy retreats, why should it be preserved or translated there? Why not in ordinary Christian homes?

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
Bible Student’s Notebook

Fear and Trembling

Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12).

I had for some time been worried about the expression “fear and trembling.” It did not seem likely to me that Paul in writing to the Philippians could have meant literally that they were to work out their salvation in a condition of anxiety and nervousness. We all know that fear destroys love and spoils relationships, and a great deal of the New Testament is taken up with getting rid of the old ideas of fear and substituting the new ideas of love and trust. I realized that the Greek word translated “fear” can equally well mean “reverence” or “awe” or even “respect,” but I was bothered about the “trembling.”

Surely the same Spirit who inspired Paul to write to Timothy that “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of a sound mind” could not also have meant us to live our entire lives in a state of nervous terror. I came to the conclusion, a little reluctantly, that the expression “in fear and trembling” had become a bit of a cliché, even as it has in some circles today. As I went on translating I found that this must be the case. For when Paul wrote to the Corinthians and reported that Titus had been encouraged and refreshed by their reception of him, he then went on to say that the Corinthian Christians received him with “fear and trembling”! (II Corinthians 7:15). Now this makes no sense, unless it is a purely conventional verbal form implying proper respect. For, little as we know of Titus, we cannot imagine any real Christian minister being encouraged and refreshed by a display of nervous anxiety. We get the phrase occurring again in Paul’s advice to Christian slaves (Ephesians 6:5), where the context makes it quite clear that faithfulness and responsibility are much more what Paul means than “fear and trembling.”

J.B. Phillips
Ring of Truth: A Translator’s Testimony (1967), pages 62-64

Meaning of Words

If we fail to study the meaning of the words of Scripture, then we will be in very serious danger of making Scripture mean what we want it to mean, and not what God wants it to mean.

William Barclay (1907-1978)
Daily Celebration, page 21

Language of Daily Life

People read each other’s letters, their daily newspaper or the latest paperback in the language of daily life. Why should they not have God’s Word available to them in a language they can understand and respond to?

Eugene H. Glassman
The Translation Debate, 1981, page 117

And Artificial

It is amazing how many unnatural and artificial expressions Bible readers are willing to put up with. Perhaps it is because … we have read them so often in the Bible that we are not even aware of how strange and foreign they sound to a person listening to the message for the first time … I refer to simple matters of everyday mundane grammar and usage.

Eugene H. Glassman
The Translation Debate, 1981, page 114

Rapidly Changing Language

No Scripture is regarded as fully effective for more than fifty years, so rapid is the change which takes place in languages.

Eugene A Nida
The Bible Translator: Bible Translation in Today’s World, 1966, page 60

A Word That Will Not Be Misunderstood

That Word must come to people in a language they can understand – and not only can understand, but will not misunderstand.

Eugene H. Glassman
The Translation Debate, 1981, page 20

The Bible Translating Itself

Pertinent to any discussion of translation and paraphrase is the question of how the Bible itself, when it has occasion to do so, translates …

When the Bible itself “translates,” it does so, not in a literal, slavishly word-for-word manner, but in a broader sense, concentrating on the meaning and intent of the passage.

Eugene H. Glassman
The Translation Debate, 1981, page 33, 34

Translation Errors

Translators are mere men and often succumb to fears and the pressure of opinion when doing their work. Our popular English Bible carries the name of an earthly monarch and so bears mute testimony to the influence the English King had over the translators. His directive to “do nothing that will disturb the tranquility of the church,” appears to have been taken very seriously by the translators since they often chose to interpret certain Greek words to support then-current church doctrine and practice, rather than render a faithful and consistent translation of the original.

Bert Bauman
The Gospel, page 22