An answer to Bryan Ross’ view on Psalm 12 and marginal notes

Bryan Ross is a good man, a believer and he does believe that Psalm 12 is about the preservation of Scripture … but does not see the psalm as specifically prophetic, only generally prophetic. Thus, he does not see that the psalm would have something about the KJB in particular, but takes it about the Scripture in history in general.

Bryan Ross says, “Many King James advocates hold either explicitly or implicitly that Psalm 12:6-7 is referring to the KJB. In other words, they have in their thinking the notion that David is speaking directly about the KJB in this passage.”

Actually, the Holy Ghost is speaking about the KJB, David obviously didn’t know about the KJB.

Ross then goes on to talk about, “The expression ‘as silver tried in a furnace of earth purified seven times’ at the end of verse 6 is taken to be a direct reference to the KJB. This argument is made because the KJB is the seventh translation of the Textus Receptus into the English.”

The correct phrasing is that there are seven major Protestant iterations of Bible translations in English from Tyndale to the KJB. The KJB is the seventh. Even Richard Bancroft, in instructing the KJB translators, told them to look at these six Bible translations.

Ross says, “This assertion is based upon the numerical argument that seven is the number of perfection coupled with King James having been the seventh translation of the TR into English; therefore, it is argued that the King James is ‘perfect.’”

Actually, the reasoning is based upon the fact that the Bible prophecy says seven times, and there are seven major Protestant translations from Tyndale to the KJB.

Ross then suggests that the passage might “necessitate a sevenfold refinement process in any receptor language in order for God’s ‘perfect’ word to exist in that language.”

This does not make sense, since God’s words are perfect, and the process prophesied of in Psalm 12 is about English translation, not about Scripture itself becoming more perfect.

Ross then turns to the modernist view, which says that the words are pure, not that they go through any process. This of course makes no sense since the Scripture is passing through the Earth, and even Ross says the passage is about preservation, so preservation must be a process not merely a state of being.

Ross bizarrely can see nothing of the Holy Ghost as he regards the Psalm being written by someone who did not have “an early 17th century English translation in mind. Rather David is referring to the ‘words’ he is the process of writing in Hebrew.”

Ross then is dangerously locking himself into the modernist mentality, as if Scripture is human, limited to the human mind of its author, and most dangerously, the modernist hermeneutic that Scripture was only for the time it was written in.

Does Ross believe the same thing about Messianic prophecies in Psalms or Isaiah? No, I am sure he believes them. Suddenly he recognises the Holy Ghost being able to know the future, but when it comes to Psalm 12, poor David is only limited to his own mind?! Surely the Holy Ghost is looking ahead to the KJB, and is showing where the process of preservation would lead.

While Ross does understand that David wrote Hebrew and these words went into English, he does not allow the prophecy to be able to talk about the KJB, which is very much how the modernists also think.

Ross also discusses the margin notes in general and in relation to this psalm.

Ross argues that marginal notes are “alternatives” and are often essentially synonymous to the main rendering. This is a wrong approach, in that they are clearly variant, as close as they might be. Ross tries to argue that the textual variants (approx. 20) are mainly saying something synonymous. This approach does not stay with the clarity and certainty of the textual readings of the KJB, but allows ambiguity rather than textual resolution rule. Pastor Ross is doing exactly what the modernists do, in that they think the margins/centre columns are glorifications of uncertainty rather than resolutions on rejected variants.

When it comes to the variant translation in Psalm 12:7, and there are hundreds of these throughout the KJB, and the KJB translators were noting what was a more literal rendering of the Hebrew, but where the sense was to be given as they have it as their main rendering, not the margin.

Marginal material, particularly the “Or” type notes, came from disagreements among the translators, and drawing upon other sources, e.g. other translators, commentators, Fathers, etc. Whatever the majority of the committee(s) decided as the preferable rendering stood as the main text, while the less supported one (i.e. rejected) was put to the margin. In this way, we do not read the KJB margins as any way viable alternatives or as valid possibilities, etc., but as words, which after over 400 years of KJB use, are to be considered as permanently rejected.

Unfortunately Bryan Ross has a non-exactist or non-precisionist view of the KJB words, and seems to give more current and future credibility to other words that are not actually the main text of the KJB than what should be given to them.