a fun trick to play on someone with an esv bible

Ask them to read Mark 7:16

I've always thought it would be funny to do that at a bible drill. It's probably a good thing I wasn't aware of this stuff back in my bible drill days. I think we need to be careful though, you could really mess up some kid in the head with this because they aren't able to comprehend ancient manuscript scholarship.

The verse numbers were arbitrarily forced onto the text of a particular manuscript. Recent scholarship using older and better manuscripts has questioned some verses. KJV only people call these "missing verses". You should probably be aware of this as you will get a question in ministry like this one day.

There are a couple other places like this also:
Matt 17:21
Matt 18:11
Matt 23:14
Mark 7:16
Mark 9:44
Mark 9:46
Mark 11:26
Mark 15:28
Mark 16:19-20
Luke 17:36
Luke 23:17
John 5:4
Acts 8:37
Acts 15:34
Acts 24:7
Acts 28:29
Rom 16:24
1 John 5:7
(list is not all inclusive and I may have typed the wrong thing)

These are basically the proof texts for the King James only people. In reality, they are also proof texts for why Textus Receptus, the main KJV source document, is questionable.

One of these KJV only sites had this rather bold claim: "The NIV removes 64,576 words!" I'm just glad it wasn't my job to count every time the NIV didn't use a "thee or thou". I feel sorry for whoever had to do that. I'm curious if any Greek or Hebrew Scholars actually hold to KJV only anymore.

Personally I don't really like the TEV, CEV, NIV, Living Bible, The Message, Good News for Dudes and Stuff and those that paraphrase it into, "And Jesus was all, dude, dude. I sense a lot of hostility dude. You gotta go with the flow. Live and let live man, you're cramping the loveflow buzz. "

For a while I was really into the CEV and I was using it in children's ministry and I tried to read the bible through and failed miserably. In both these situations I was getting frustrated cause I couldn't tell what the heck the bible was actually saying. I kept having to stop and go fish out my ancient KJV to get some clarification. (I mean what things in the sentence were related or acting on other things, not overall interpretation.) You don't have this problem in Latin but you can really be ambiguous in English if you want to.

I predict that in the near future we will see a couple more of these translations. They will probably cut out the gay parts, add in a lot of universalism, and paraphrase the really definite verses that make us uncomfortable. I just don't understand why they do this. If you don't like what the Bible says, why not just reject it? I don't really understand apostates and liberal churches either. If you believe the bible's all a lie and geschichte and fairy stories, why go? You can get better fairy stories from Hollywood that don't make you feel guilty about your sin and you don't have to put so much effort into being good, donating money, or cutting out the parts you don't like.

I guess Satan is keeping that going.

Anyway, I like the formal vocabulary and syntax of the KJV though but not the archaic pronouns and source documents. We used to have weirdos come through our church every once in a while promoting KJV only and a bunch of other stuff. Sometimes I wonder about how I'm going to deal with that in the future. One conservative pastor told me the conservatives are always more trouble than the liberals. hahaha

I'm really looking to being proficient enough in Greek to be able to just read the bible for myself. After listening to all these word studies though, I'm afraid it won't be that helpful to read quickly in greek but it will be better to look up every single word. I'd really like to read quickly as in english but with understanding. It's going to be difficult. I'm glad it's not like learning to ski or something and I will instead have God's help.