TITLES AND SUBSCRIPTIONS IN THE KING JAMES BIBLE©

TITLES AND SUBSCRIPTIONS IN THE KING JAMES BIBLE©

By DARYL R. COATS

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Is the entire King James Bible the word of God? Even if we allow that it "is given by inspiration of God," what about its verse numbering, paragraph marks, italicized words, titles, and subscriptions Ä are they also "inspired"?

Whereas various editions of the AV 1611 may differ in their notes and cross references, all editions agree concerning these five items: after all, these five items are all part of the AV text.

For that reason (and at the risk of sounding overly gullible, simplistic, or of "blind faith"), I fail to see how I can assert that the King James Bible is the word of God if I don't consider every aspect of its text Ä even its "jots and tittles" Ä as divinely given.

Although others have capably defended the AV's verse numbering, italicized words, and even paragraph marks, I know of no one who has defended (at least in print) the King James Bible's titles and subscriptions against the charges that, for any number of reasons, they are spurious and unreliable.

The Titles In The AV New Testament

One of the more ridiculous charges against the King James Bible is that its book titles are actually Roman Catholic in nature and therefore incorrect and unreliable.

How anyone who had bothered to read the dedicatory epistle to the King James Bible or "The Translators to the Reader" could possibly imagine that the Authorized Version of the Bible contained anything Roman Catholic Ä even if only a title Ä is amazing.

Unfortunately, most of the people who make this claim have never read these works. Instead, they notice that the word "saint" appears in the titles of five New Testament books and therefore assume that the AV's titles must be Roman Catholic titles.1

A look at all the titles in the King James New Testament, however, quickly dispels the notion that they are Catholic in nature.

For instance, though his name appears in 14 of the titles of the New Testament books, Paul is never described as "Saint Paul." Twelve times he is simply "Paul the Apostle"; twice he is called simply "Paul"; but not once is he ever called "Saint Paul."

If the titles in the King James Bible are Catholic titles, why do they refer to James and Jude simply as "James" and "Jude" and not "St. James" and "St. Jude"?

If the King James Bible contains Roman Catholic titles, then what happened to "The First Epistle General of Peter" and "The Second Epistle General of Peter"? Does anyone believe that a Roman Catholic title would refer to Peter simply as "Peter" and not as "St. Peter" or even "Pope Peter I?"

If the King James Bible uses Catholic titles, why is John referred to three different ways in the titles of his books? In the title of his gospel he is called "St. John," but in the titles of his epistles he is simply "John," while in the title of Revelation he is called "St. John the Divine." (The word "divine," as it occurs in the title of Revelation, is not an adjective but rather a noun [still used in Britain] that means "preacher."

"St. John the Preacher" is hardly a Roman Catholic designation! "Divine" can also mean "prophet" [certainly true in John's case], because a person who sees the future "divines" it. See the use of "divine" as a verb in 1 Sam. 28:8; Gen. 44:5; Ezek. 13:9, 13 and 21:29; and Micah 3:6, 11.)If these are Roman Catholic titles, why isn't John referred to as "St. John" in the titles of all five of his books?

The Titles Of The AV Compared With Those Of The NIV

The titles in the King James Bible are not Roman Catholic titles; rather, they are titles found in the Received Text of the Bible. (A favorite Alexandrian ploy for denying, say, that Matthew wrote "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" or that Paul wrote "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians" is to deny that "the original autographs" of the books of the Bible had titles.

How that can be determined when every complete biblical manuscript ever found Ä in any language Ä contains the same titles [which never vary] is never explained.) And unlike the titles found in the modern "bibles," the titles in the AV are true concerning the authorship and content of each book in the Bible.

For example, whereas the AV says, "The First Book of Moses, called Genesis" (my emphasis), the NIV simply says, "Genesis," thus upholding the JEDP hogwash "theory" of "biblical" authorship and denying that Moses wrote the book.

Whereas the AV says, "The Song of Solomon" (my emphasis), the NIV says, "The Song of Songs," thus denying that Solomon wrote the book. Whereas the AV says, "The Book of the Prophet Isaiah" (my emphasis), affirming that the book was written by only one person, the NIV says merely, "Isaiah," thus yielding ground to anyone advocating the nonsense about "deutero-Isaiah" and denying that single prophet named Isaiah actually wrote the book.

Whereas the AV says, The Lamentations of Jeremiah," "The Gospel according to St. Luke," "The Epistle of Paul the apostle to the Romans," and "The Revelation of St. John the Divine" (my emphasis), the NIV says only, "Lamentations," "Luke," "Romans," and "Revelation," thus denying the human author of each book.

The Pauline And Psalmi Subscriptions

At the end of each Pauline epistle in the King James Bible are found subscriptions, such as this one to the Book of Romans, "Written to the Romans from Corinthus, and sent by Phebe servant of the church at Cenchrea," or this one to the Book of Philippians: "It was written to the Philippians from Rome by Epaphroditus [the amanuensis who wrote down what Paul dictated Ä see 2 Peter 1:21]."

Subscriptions also are found in the King James Bible at the beginning of many of the Psalms, such as Psalm 18: "To the chief Musician, a Psalm of David, the servant of the LORD, who spake unto the LORD the words of this song in the day that the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul: And he said,". (In Martin Luther's sixteenth-century translation of the Bible into German, these Psalmic subscriptions are treated and numbered as the first verses of the Psalms which they accompany.)

Beginning at least as early as the Scofield Reference Bible, many "study bibles" have yielded to the consensus of modern "scholarship" and therefore omitted some or all of these subscriptions as somehow inaccurate and/or not actually part of the words of God. Is this consensus valid? Why does the AV 1611 contain these subscriptions?

The Pauline and Psalmic subscriptions found in the King James Bible are actually part of the Received Text from which the AV is translated.

They were not added to the Received Text by Erasmus, Stephanus, or Beza; they actually occur in "the ancient biblical manuscripts" themselves. (See, for example, Bruce Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, pp. 541, 571, 588, 599, 610, 618, 627, 634, 645, 651-652, 656, 658-659, and 678).

The subscriptions to the Psalms are found as part of the Masoretic text of the Old Testament, while the Pauline subscriptions are found in every known complete Greek manuscript of the Pauline epistles; even the corrupt Codex Vaticanus, regarded by apostate "scholars" as the "greatest" and "most important" New Testament manuscript in existence, contains subscriptions to the Pauline epistles!

(Granted, the subscriptions found in the codex Vaticanus are shorter than those found in the AV; but most of the text of Codex Vaticanus is shorter than that of the King James Bible. The important point here is not how accurately Codex Vaticanus renders those subscriptions but simply that it contains them Ä even if in mutilated form.)

Paul:

The Author Of Hebrews

Some will deny the validity of the AV's titles and subscriptions because those in Hebrews plainly claim that Paul is its author.2 Those who reject the Pauline authorship of the book might wish to consider that the oldest existing copy of Hebrews not only contains Paul's name in its title but is found between Romans and 1 Corinthians.

They might also wish to compare the titles of Paul's epistles with those of the other epistles. All of Paul's epistles are named for their recipients, not for their author; it's Romans and Titus, not "1 Paul" and "12 Paul."

All of the non-Pauline epistles are named for their authors, not their recipients. It's James and 3 John, not "The Twelve Tribes Scattered Abroad" and "Gaius." Furthermore, Paul's epistles are the only ones in the New Testament that have subscriptions at the end Ä and Hebrews has such a subscription.

And if Paul didn't write Hebrews, then it's the only book in the New Testament whose author isn't identified in its title Ä unless we decide to follow this infidelic reasoning further and reject the authorship claims of the other books as well. If we believe what the text says and pay attention to how it says it, then we cannot reject Paul as the human author of Hebrews.

Notes

1. When Catholic sodomite filmmaker Pier Paolo Passolini made a Catholic film adaptation of Matthew's gospel as "penance" for offending the Vatican, he deliberately left the word "Saint" out of the film's title: The Gospel According to Matthew. The Vatican had no problems with his new title.

2. If, as the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14:33, "God is not the author of confusion," who is responsible for some reference "bibles" having a King James text which says, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews," yet a note on authorship which says, "Author: Unknown"? Talk about subtly undermining a believer's faith.

(TORCH EDITOR: This article is copyrighted but can be copied for non-salable purposes provided no words are changed.)