Acts 5:30: King James Version Mistranslation? James White & TR KJV Only Controversy Debate Review 15

Does Acts 5:30 contain a mistranslation in the King James Version or King James Bible (KJV, KJB, Authorized Version or AV)? Debate Review part 15 of the James White / Thomas Ross King James Only debate (or perfect preservation, or Confessional Bibliology debate) examines that question.

Dr. James R. White and Dr. Thomas Ross debated the topic:

“The Legacy Standard Bible, as a representative of modern English translations based upon the United Bible Society / Nestle Aland text, is superior to the King James Version, as a representative of Textus Receptus - based Bible translations.”

In their debate, Dr. James White placed great weight upon Acts 5:30, claiming the KJV was clearly mistranslated in that passage; the King James Version, he claimed, taught that Christ was killed before His crucifixion. The Legacy Standard Bible had a superior translation.

Compare the translation of Acts 5:30:

The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. (KJB)

The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you put to death by hanging Him on a tree. (LSB)

Acts 5:30 was James White's only real attempt in the debate to attack the accuracy of the English in the King James Bible. James published his anti-King James Only book The King James Only Controversy around three decades ago, so if, in a public debate after thirty years of opposing King James Onlyism, Acts 5:30 is THE passage White will go after, he presumably must view this verse as a serious, a seemingly fatal flaw in the King James Bible. There must be, in his mind, nothing better to attack than Acts 5:30, such is the weakness of the KJV in that verse.

James R. White's argument, in the debate and in his book The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2009) is as follows:

1.) The King James Version in Acts 5:30 teaches that the ungodly first slew Christ, and after He was slain, they hanged Him on a tree or cross. This would destroy the gospel by denying that the Lord Jesus died on the cross for our sins; rather, the KJV (supposedly) teaches the heresy that Christ was first killed and then His dead body was hanged on a tree or cross.

2.) The LSB is a superior translation to the KJV because in Acts 5:30 it states that His enemies killed Christ “by hanging Him on a tree,” that is, by crucifying Him.

3.) The Greek of Acts 5:30 contains the participle kremasantes, which must indicate means and be translated as affirming that Christ was slain “by hanging.” It cannot be translated “and hanged.”

4.) The KJV translators simply “missed” that kremasantes was a participle, and not realizing that kremasantes was a participle, they translated it like a finite verb.

5.) “Every English translation” translates kremasantes as a participle of means (“by hanging”). The KJV “is the only one” that translates the Greek as “and hanged.”

6.) No Greek for “and” appears in Acts 5:30. The KJV mistranslates the verse by adding words not found in the Greek text.

7.) Since the KJV (allegedly) teaches heresy in Acts 5:30, the translators were sloppy and missed that the verse had a participle and so disagreed with every other English translation, and the KJV adds in the extraneous word “and," the KJV is an inferior translation in Acts 5:30, and everywhere else. The LSB (and every other English translation, all of which oppose the KJV in Acts 5:30) are superior, not just in Acts 5:30, but in the entire Bible.

However:

1.) James White’s own argument from Acts 5:30, if consistently applied, would condemn the NA text and the LSB because of the abominable heresy found in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus in Matthew 27:49.

2.) Dr. White’s criticisms of the King James Version in Acts 5:30 are astonishingly uninformed and inaccurate.

3.) White’s claim that the KJV translators simply “missed” that Acts 5:30 contained a participle is laughably unserious.

4.) White claimed that the KJV contains a mistranslation because it supplies the word “and” before “hanged,” when the syntactical category of the attendant circumstance participle requires the insertion of an “and.”

5.) To attack the KJV in Acts 5:30, White’s King James Only Controversy invents a fictional Greek grammatical category called “instrumental circumstantial modal” and makes claims about the Greek grammar of Dana and Mantey that have no connection to the actual text of their book.

6.) Failing to account for the Old Testament allusion to Deuteronomy 21:22 in Acts 5:30 is another of many examples of what is lost on account of White’s writing the King James Only Controversy in only a few months.

7.) The favorite manuscripts of the Textus Rejectus teach the heresy that the Lord Jesus was murdered by a spear thrust before His crucifixion in Matthew 27:49. To be consistent with White’s line of reasoning, we must recognize the unambiguous superiority of the Textus Receptus because of the egregious error in the Westcott Hort and Nestle Aland texts in Matthew 27:49.