King James Bible anti-perfectionist, Mark Ward, has put a lot of effort into trying to argue that it is getting to difficult too understand the King James Bible.

He is trying to create a profile for himself with some books and materials which try to identify words that might be wrongly understood in the KJB.

What Ward did not do is approach the area like he wanted to actually help people. Instead, he approached the area like as if he was being funded by certain sources, with the intent of extending markets of sales. That is, the attempt to break people from solely relying on the KJB and an attempt to sell more people more Bible study “resources” in line with that view.

Further, Ward has been approaching his work not in a “ministry” sense (i.e. to serve the other without being a burden) but in a marketing sense, creating lines of revenue to sustain himself.

I believe in prosperity doctrine, so I am all for ministries giving and receiving. Maybe Mark Ward could learn a thing from Kenneth Copeland and put out his own Reference Study Bible, King James Version, Pure Cambridge Edition. (After all, Copeland himself put out the PCE several times, so his really was a ministry of excellence!)

In Mark Ward’s crusade against certain words in the KJB, he surprisingly didn’t highlight some very significant resources, like W. Aldis Wright’s Bible word-book.

If he’d used that book, and its preceding incarnation, he would have seen what mid-19th century people called “archaic” in the KJB. He would have noticed that the same words that get attacked today were already listed and defined there.

When we hear Mark Ward speak, then, we are not hearing a dispassionate, fair and impartial treatment of the subject. No, we are hearing a propagandist. Ward’s background and interests are much more around visual communication and public relations than about teaching and edifying the dumb lambs of the Body of Christ.

Besides his self-promotion, he has a very clear agenda, and it is about product sales and trying to infect King James Bibles users with modernist thinking.

So there’s no need to buy Mark Ward’s books when plenty of superior information is freely available:

https://archive.org/details/biblewordbookag00eastgoog

https://archive.org/details/biblewordbookag01eastgoog

https://archive.org/details/thebiblewordbook00wriguoft

https://archive.org/details/biblewordbookglo00wrig

https://archive.org/details/biblewordbookglo00wrigiala

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, the men of old were men of renown.

Isn’t it funny that the same words which are said to be “archaic” or difficult or whatever then are the same today… maybe we are reading Biblical English after all, and not “1611 English”. I’d go so far to say that these same words would be ones ploughboys in 1611 would have struggled with.

Tim Berg, a young rejector of the perfection of the King James Bible, on increasing his scholarly repertoire, was reading David Daniell.

David Daniell, a literary scholar who has now passed away, much preferred the Tyndale Bible to the King James Bible and wrote quite negatively of the King James Bible.

In the Preface to his book, The Bible In English, he bemoans the collapse in knowledge of the Scripture. One might offer to him the solution to the problem: reinstate the King James Bible. But it is apparent that DD did not want to do that, because he wanted to tear it down.

I want to focus on one paragraph, called “Lighting”. He writes, “Some of the work in this book has to be the switching-off of special lighting, to reveal an illusion for what it is.” He is trying to say that the King James Bible has been wrongly exalted and loved, that the KJB is really false light and its beauty, power and magnificence is merely an illusion.

DD exhibits absolute blindness to the achievements of the KJB, and is clearly fighting against the Providences which are with it.

He writes, “The sudden elevation of that 1611 ‘AV’ (KJV) to near divine status in 1769, and, for many people, for ever after, so that ‘Avolatry’ went hand in hand with the mindless adoration of Shakespeare (‘Bardolatry’) for two hundred years and more, is a strange phenomenon, especially as it went with the radical alteration of both texts.”

This statement is packed with lies. It seems strange to assert that the KJB suddenly was elevated in 1769. He doesn’t provide documentary evidence for this assertion. (Why isn’t it a good thing that the KJB has been upheld?)

Second, he exhibits his cynicism towards Shakespeare, but links the KJB and Shakespeare — something which ordinary Christians haven’t gone out of their way to state, though some literary types will praise the KJB and Shakespeare, but this seems quite mad to question.

Third, he charges the KJB with having been radically altered. This is a clearly delusional charge, as the KJB has barely changed at all, except mainly in orthography.

He goes onwards, writing, “Stranger still is a twentieth-century insistence in large parts of the United States of America that this version, imagined to be the personal work of King James the First, and known. often as the ‘Saint James Version’, is the ‘inerrant Word of God’, unchallengeable even to its merest dot and comma.”

Here is conflates two different things, one is that there are some people who ignorantly think that King James made that Bible, and they even call the Bible the “St James”. The other is that the KJB should not be changed even in a dot or comma.”

Well, those two things are completely unrelated, yet for propaganda purposes he affixes them. In reality, the second position is a real one, and has found expression in the doctrine of the Pure Cambridge Edition, which came to world attention after DD wrote his book in 2003.

But to make it clear, the purity of the KJB to the dot and letter is not based upon some special “revelation” or special inspiration or something, which is what DD is really implying is being believed. He doesn’t describe the believing side well at all, here or in other places in his book.

DD really is the same as the rest of the unbelieving scholars who hold a low view of the King James Bible, such as F. H. A. Scrivener, C. Hill, M. Black, D. Norton, D. McKitterick, A. Nicholson, etc. (Three Davids among their number.)

DD’s desire to bring back the Bible is good, but he could not have been trusted to do it since he quite unscholastically believed that the KJB had suffered “radical alteration” of its text since 1611.

There is of course no proof of that. The same readings and translation that is there in 1611 is there today. We have a history of editorial work, but that is not designed to change the actual work of 1611, just do things like correct printing errors, standardise spelling and other such editorial regularisation.

Tim Berg would do well to not uphold David Daniell as a guide or hero. Notwithstanding DD did make some good points about the need to recognise the Bible in 16^th century history and the importance of the KJB over the Geneva in the minds of mid-17^th century Christians, he nevertheless had many negative and blindingly bad views of the KJB.

One cannot wish for the permeating knowledge of the greatness of the KJB on one hand, and yet pull it down and delegitimise it with the other. That is why I say DD was mad.

Near the end of DD’s book is a whole section dedicated to ridiculing those who use the KJB, mischaracterising the exclusive use of the King James Bible and making some very strange, ignorant and downright untrue charges, all of which is designed to make a Bible lover look a maniac. (There have been actual extremists and problems of course.)

DD shows his colours in making out that the lovers of the KJB are “anti-communists” while drawing a quote from the heretical Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This is the early 2000s way of saying that KJB precisionists (to draw on the old name for Puritans), are worse than a certain political ideology of the 20th century.

He is driven to label the KJB “already archaic in 1611, often erroneous, sometimes unintelligible”, and he seems perplexed that people still uphold the KJB in present day America.

Tim Burg has chosen his side, aligning to those who would dethrone the KJB and to besmirch those that uphold it. It’s a sad thing to see that Tim Burg didn’t instead think that he could promote and uphold the KJB better than those he saw doing a bad job of it, and instead has shaken his fist at it.

SETTING THE SCENE

There are two examples that enemies of the King James Bible’s perfection like to bring up. The first is Ruth 3:15 and the second is Jeremiah 34:16.

In Ruth 3:15, the First 1611 Edition read at the last part of the verse, “and he went into the citie.” Compare that to today, where it says, “and she went into the city.”

The change from “he” to “she” happened in the Second 1611 Edition. Sometimes it has been printed “he” over the years, but most editions have “she”, and that is by far the common wording seen today.

The other example is Jeremiah 34:16, where today’s Cambridge Editions read, “But ye turned and polluted my name, and caused every man his servant, and every man his handmaid, whom ye had set at liberty at their pleasure, to return, and brought them into subjection, to be unto you for servants and for handmaids.” But Oxford Editions have, “whom he”.

Enemies mention these two examples because they ask, “which one of these two words are inspired? Is it ‘he’ or ‘she’? Is it ‘he’ or ‘ye’?” Etc.

RUCKMAN

Peter S. Ruckman was a well known King James Bible only teacher in the second half of the twentieth century. He even wrote several articles on these issues.

“Our problem text today is from Ruth Chapter 3. This is one of the ‘last resorts’ used by the Cult to prove a ‘contradiction’ in the AV. The thinking behind this is that some editions of the AV had ‘SHE went into the city’ while others said ‘HE went into the city’ … Now the fact is, they BOTH ‘went into the city.’ Observe Ruth 3:16 — Ruth’s mother-in-law, Naomi, is IN THE CITY. Observe Ruth 4:1 — Boaz had to go into the city to get to ‘the gate.’ Either reading would have been the truth of God without contradiction.”

“’She went into the city’ has been corrected from ‘He went into the city’ (Ruth 3:15), which constituted no error for both of them went into the city, which is perfectly apparent to anyone who can read two-syllable words.”

Ruckman approaches the King James Bible as if it literally is the truth of God, and if he finds it saying “he”, then he says that that is true, and if he finds it saying “she”, he will say it is true, and now he finds that some editions have “he” and others “she”, he is forced to say that both are concurrently correct, that both must be right.

He does the same when holding an Oxford and a Cambridge on his desk. I wrote to Peter Ruckman years ago about this issue, his secretary wrote back saying that either are correct, though that he preferred the Cambridge.

“Well, BOTH variants in the AV (Jer. 34:16) were correct grammatically, if one deals with the English text or the Hebrew text. They (‘ye’ in the Cambridge) were being addressed as a group (plural, Jer. 34:13; as in Deut. 29), but the address was aimed at individual men (‘he’ in the Oxford edition), within the group. Either word would have been absolutely correct according to that great critic of critics, the word of God (Heb. 4:12-13).”

Ruckman did not seem to insist on the idea that there was one true set of words, or that one reading should be preferred over another. In fact, he went as far as D. A. Waite did, and talked about the Hebrew.

MY RESPONSE TO RUCKMAN’S POSITION

God’s word is truth. When it comes to Ruth 3:15, this was clearly a typographical error, because it was corrected straight away the same year.

Now I know that Scrivener thought that “she” is the typographical error, but even his fellow scholars disagreed with him on that point.

The reality is that we are to regard the very words of God.

But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Matthew 4:4.

God does not speak in contradictions, and he does not have alternative readings to what He said.

But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. 2 Corinthians 1:18

God’s true word in Heaven is an absolute set of words, there is no shadow of turning with them. Purity demands the right words, not two differing and opposing words!

Thus, it is madness to think that “he” and “she” could both be correct, when it has to be one or the other.

Again, truth compels us not to serve two masters, but we must choose between Cambridge and Oxford.

Importantly, since the Cambridge can be shown right at all such places of difference between it and the Oxford, it must be right here also.

One simply does not have to go to the Hebrew to explain or find any truth.

Continue reading →

PART ONE

Bryan Ross, an American Baptist pastor, used to believe that Matthew 5:18 was referring to the jots and tittles of Scripture.

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. (Matthew 5:18).

Even Textus Receptus Onlyist D. A. Waite understood that this verse was speaking about the written Scripture, though he applied it to the original languages only, at least saw that it applied to the New Testament as much as it did the Old.

But Bryan Ross has come to question this interpretation altogether, seemingly denying God’s care for the very parts of letters of His Scripture, and now taking a position, in alignment with modernists, that this verse is only talking about promises in the Old Testament about Jesus, and not about the words and letters that contain those promises. In other words, Pastor Ross has completely disconnected the meaning of the passage from the implication that God’s words, God’s law itself, is made up of words and letters.

People win court cases over a comma in the constitution or a law! When we are told that God’s law is perfect, surely the very form of it, the very writing must needs be perfect in and of itself!

How did Bryan Ross come to question the obvious, natural interpretation of this passage? Well, he began by being bamboozled by walking by sight. Specifically, he read in a book by David Norton that there had been changes made by editors in the King James Bible. (How that was a shock to any Norman Normal out there, I don’t know.)

Now this is rather strange, since F. H. A. Scrivener had written about this in 1873 and 1884. And that D. A. Waite had made copies available of Scrivener’s book. I’d written about the subject since 2007 online too. So how is it that Bryan Ross turned to Norton’s book, and instead of thinking like I did, or like D. A. Waite did, he started to approach the thinking of Norton and began to think like the modernists?

And so, seeing editorial changes (more than just Norton’s data), he accepted elements of Norton’s perspective.

Bryan Ross has written, “My decision to use David Norton’s book A Textual History of the King James Bible to frame this discussion came under scrutiny this past week on social media. It has been asserted that Professor Norton is unsaved and therefore is not to be trusted in his reporting of textual data/facts. This assertion is coupled with the premise that Norton edited his own edition of the KJB from Cambridge University Press called the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible (NCPB). I have never supported or advocated for the NCPB. Just because Norton makes editorial decisions in his NCPB that I would not approve of does not mean that his presentation of the textual facts as it relates to the printed history of the KJB text are in error. One needs to distinguish between Norton’s cataloging of textual variants in the printed history of the King James text and his editorial work on the NCPB.”

I personally questioned why Bryan Ross was relying heavily upon Norton, but it certainly was not me who said that Norton could not be trusted in his reporting of data/facts. I in fact, do trust what he records about the 1611 to the present time. What I strongly disagree with is his interpretation of that data, his turning to an 1602 manuscript as being an alleged draft and his going to the original languages in how he then makes judgments on editing. (Besides his modernisation of the KJB and weird changes in places.)

Further, I said that it appeared that Norton was not an evangelical.

But if Bryan Ross is representing what I said, then he is grossly misrepresenting me, as badly as he has accused others of misrepresenting others.

Let me say that I am very much against the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible, and it is pleasing to see that Ross says he is also not advocating for it.

Bizarrely it appears as if he is attempting to lecture me on distinguishing between Norton’s catalogues and Norton’s editorial work, when that is exactly my position — has Bryan Ross read my materials?!

Norton’s method is to compare editorial variations in the printed history of the KJB with an annotated 1602 manuscript from the Bodleian Library (which may have been annotated after 1611) and reference to the original languages.

What Bryan Ross is fighting against is the simplistic idea that spelling changes and typographical errors are the only thing that ever happened in the printed history of the KJB. I understand that. But instead of taking a balanced or reasoned view (e.g. consulting multiple sources like Scrivener, Norris, me etc.) Ross has limited himself to only Norton. Now, I don’t actually advocate for the so-called “balanced” view, but that’s how modern academia works, which is that you should look at multiple perspectives when studying a discipline, not railroad yourself to the scholarship of one man.

Free self promotion here, but my material is freely available and Ross could use that to augment or “counterbalance” a sole reliance on Norton… of course, he could primarily follow in my path, which is at least is not discounting D. A. Waite and Gail Riplinger … and I am not 100% with either of those two people’s positions, but I think we should be fair and friendly and take up when teachers have said the right things or helped further the good cause of God’s words. To be very honest, I could not have written my monograph Glistering Truths without having read materials from both Waite and Riplinger.

So it almost looks like Byran Ross is disconnecting with all of one side, but connecting with Norton and liaising with anti-King James Bible agitator Mark Ward (without being in full agreement with either of those two.)

Though the warning is:

Can two walk together, except they be agreed? (Amos 3:3).

Continue reading →

There’s a website called “Original Bibles”, which I won’t link here, but which is purporting to have the “Pure Cambridge Edition”. Except it isn’t. What they have on their website is the 1611 Reprint as edited by W. Aldis Wright, which was made in 1909. It’s a good resource text to know what was printed in 1611, but it clearly is NOT the Pure Cambridge Edition.

I’ve contacted them, or tried to find out what their reasoning is, to no satisfaction. They obviously have their aim of listing various pdfs of old Bible printings. That’s reasonable enough, but it’s evident that they are using the words “Pure Cambridge Edition” inaccurately.

They admit that their 1611 Reprint does not match the PCE, since the PCE has spirit not Spirit in 1 John 5:8, saying that this test “is not met. We are looking into this matter and should post further updates in due course.”

To find out about the real Pure Cambridge Edition, just read this website. Have a look at the blog articles below.

Especially useful is this book which shows the actual dates of the PCE and also that their 1909 is a 1611 Reprint:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OvPV46NKLxcH5UT8v7y_SNNnhqeif4CW/view?usp=drive_link

Alan O’Reilly is one of those obscure people who actually sort of believes that the 1769 Edition of the KJB itself is the perfect Word of God. He states, “It took millennia for God to perfect it, the task not being finalised until Dr Benjamin Blayney’s AV1611 Edition of 1769 but Final Authority is and always will be the 1611 Authorised English Holy Bible”.

Except, he realises that there a few small issues with the 1769, so he has to encompass all editions, like Oxford, London, Cambridge Concord, PCE, etc., in other words, he is clumsily trying to tell us that he supports the 1769 family.

He says that his word/Scripture from God is “the 1611 Holy Bible in its current bona fide perfected editions that follow Dr Blayney’s 1769 Oxford Edition. With the understanding that perfection does not mean verbatim, the Cambridge Cameo and Cambridge Concord Editions are two such perfected editions even though they differ in a number of minuscule aspects from each other and from the 1769 Oxford Edition.”

As you can see, he can’t actually have the 1769 as his final standard because he knows the Cambridge Concord and the Pure Cambridge Edition (PCE) came after it and that they all differ to each other!

So he refers to the “book of the LORD” and is talking about perfection, but actually cannot define exactly where the exact words are… this is because he has confused the concept of version and translation with Edition (let alone setting). What he doesn’t get is that the Book of the Lord is first of all the Scripture itself, and then it is the version and translation of the King James Bible. Quite separate to that agreed truth, we have to see that we want a properly edited form of the King James Bible. Yes, Blayney’s work is good, but it certainly is not precisely perfect editing.

The Blayney Bible of 1769 is perfect in as much as the version and translation of 1611 is perfect. So that’s not the perfect we need to be talking about. We need to know what actually is correct right down to the very words and spellings. Well, Mr O’Reilly can’t tell us that, because he is busy with his arms wide saying all the editions which follow from 1769 and their little differences here and there. It seems like there is a pantheon.

He then tries to say that Dr Blayney’s 1769 Oxford Edition is “the standard edition for current bona fide perfected editions”. But how can a standard precede what came after it which is perfected? Isn’t it, as the translators of 1611 themselves stated,

“Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the latter thoughts are thought to be the wiser: so, if we building upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen by their labours, do endeavour to make that better which they left so good; no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us”?

Well, we know that the PCE is better than the 1769.

Mr O’Reilly then takes the 12 tests to identify the PCE and analyses them in comparison to the 1769. That’s really not how the tests are to be used, as there are lists available from my website which give a more comprehensive list of differences between the PCE and 1769, and also I have a list comparing the PCE with the Cambridge text that was being printed prior to it. (As well as information on the PCE versus the Concord.)

Just using the 12 tests method, he concludes that the PCE follows the 1769 four times and restores 1611 readings eight times. This is an unscientific methodology, seeing as the PCE as a whole is like a Cambridge form of the 1769 with a few corrections, which mathematically would make it probably more than 99.99% the same as the 1769 Edition.

Mr O’Reilly then makes another kindergarten level statement, writing, “The Cambridge Cameo and PCE Pure Cambridge Edition match for all 12 readings.” If he bothered to understand what the PCE is, he would know that (a.) the PCE has been printed in many editions including the Cameo for many years, (b.) when I made the electronic text of the PCE I extensively consulted a 1938 Cameo and (c.) the Cameo of today is not PCE.

So then, Mr O’Reilly has to admit that he accepts, “the 1769 Oxford and bona fide post-1769 Editions”. Well, that is a step towards the PCE, but the problem is he is keeping his arms wide, so he wants to accept the Concord as right as well, even though the PCE and the Concord are not the same!

He then tries to explain what he calls “PCE onlyism”. He says, “Insistence on the PCE as exclusively the perfect AV1611 comes from a certain Matthew Verschuur in 2007. … He has a useful link to the PCE Text as a PDF but he also lists what I suggest that we can take as his perception of the major differences between the PCE and other AV1611 Editions that don’t follow it 100%.”

So far, what he has tried to do is minimise any of the real differences between 1769 and the PCE, or any real differences between the PCE and the Concord. He wants to keep his arms wide, and redefine what “perfect” or probably words like “exact” or “pure edition” mean.

But notice he introduces the concept that I am one who insists that the PCE is the exclusively perfect AV1611. This of course is imprecise. As I have said many times, the version-text-readings of 1611 and the translation of 1611 are right. That version and that translation is there in 1611, 1613, 1629, 1638, 1769 and even the Concord Edition… No, as we see, Mr O’Reilly misunderstands my position and seems to imply as if I were saying that the PCE alone is the Word of God and nothing else. Actually, I am saying that only out of editions, there is one perfect Edition.

But because Mr O’Reilly doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t seem to have a perfect, exact or final edition, but his arms are wide and he accepts a group of editions without drilling down to where there are important differences in them.

His view is that the differences between the PCE and say that Concord, or the 1769, are “actually minuscule with no effect on meaning.” Remember he is looking at the 12 tests of the PCE here, so they are not the lists I have made showing notable differences between the Concord and the PCE.

According to Mr O’Reilly, the difference between “spirit” and “Spirit” in Acts 11:28 and 1 John 5:8 are apparently no problem to him, bizarrely, he says, “both readings are correct because each of those scriptures refers to a Spirit-filled man”. While it is true that these verses are referring to people with the Spirit, what is distinct is that the use of the lower case “spirit” tells us it is the Spirit’s knowledge in the human, which information you don’t get if you have just “Spirit”.

Is Mr O’Reilly really going to suggest that we need to know both editions on this point, because he is implying you need both renderings to get the full information, and such a view is both ridiculous and the very same approach as modernists.

No, what we would need is a perfect presentation of a perfect Book which exclusively shows the truth, which is what the PCE does for us. We see “spirit” and that is the information we need. The contradictory or differing information of “Spirit” is confusion and implies that there is no “one word from God” or one to the letter reliable edition.

But Mr O’Reilly calls the PCE view “fraudulent”. Why? Because of some other unrelated accusation. Apparently “PCE onlyists like Verschuur are no different from other Nicolaitans … trying to lord themselves over ‘the body of Christ’”. That’s a wild accusation of course, that comes completely out of left field.

So now the argument is not about why “spirit” is correct (true), or why “spirit” and “Spirit” are both correct (false), but rather an entirely different view, that somehow a boogey-man like me is saying you can only use one edition as everything else is not right (false!). The fact is I am not saying that and I have even said things to such opposite effect as “the Vulgate is the word of God for people who only know Latin”! So then, one questions why I am such an apparently bad person.

Maybe Mr O’Reilly feels lorded over that the PCE is a correct edition (which of course he willingly won’t admit) but doesn’t like the messenger. So then he has to communistically keep his arms wide and say all editions are right.

Well, it does get that nonsensical. Listen to his ultimate schizophrenic thinking:

“This writer’s view is that the differences listed … are less significant than ‘ye’ Jeremiah 34:16, Cambridge editions and ‘he’ Jeremiah 34:16, Oxford editions. Dr Ruckman has shown that both readings are correct and, as indicated, the supposed difference is ‘a thing of nought.’”

No, “ye” and “he” are two different words with two different meanings. There is no way possible that these two words are both right or mean the same thing, or don’t matter, or is a nothing… if jots and tittles matter, and they do, then a “ye” and a “he” difference must be resolved.

He says, concerning “and” or “or” in Joshua 19:2 that “The variant readings are both correct.” Anyone knows that “and” and “or” are two different logical parameters! They do not mean that same thing, they do not express the same meaning.

He says, concerning the difference at 2 Chronicles 33:19, “The variant readings are both correct.” Variant? If variant, varying from what standard? How can a variation be correct? It has to be one or the other, not both.

Even though “farther” or “further” are two different words, which has been shown from the Oxford English Dictionary itself, he claims they “are interchangeable. The variant readings are both correct.”

He says that when comparing the Oxford with the Cambridge that whether it is “son of David” or “Son of David” apparently it doesn’t matter, “the difference is inconsequential” …

That is all opinion, that is just arbitrarily saying two things are both correct when two different things are not the same!

With his re-definition of my beliefs and his label of “PCE onlyism” he says, “The above notwithstanding, given the potential discouragement to genuine Bible believers that PCE onlyism could cause, it is wise to apply Song of Solomon 2:15 ‘Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.’”

Let us weigh the matter properly. We need to have an exact knowledge of the very words of God. We cannot say that variations are equally true. One word is not the same as another.

Therefore this pathetic attempt to summon the hounds to destroy the little foxes is an utterly ridiculous analogy.

And “Nicolaitans” is the PCE spelling, the standard, unsurprisingly Mr O’ Reilly didn’t use the 1769 and Oxford spelling “Nicolaitanes”. That’s because there really is a standard Edition, and it also seems that God has supplied Mr O’Reilly a Cameo to use.