Translations of the Bible are not unBiblical, and are, in fact, commanded.

In order 1. http://www.markdroberts.com... That deals with the end of your response to my first point. Jesus probably knew Greek, but it definitely wasn't his main language, as the main language of those He serviced was Aramaic. "He came to His own, and His own received Him not." As to the flawed inspiration, the two are mutually exclusive terms. God is, by definition from the Bible, perfect and meticulous in everything He does. He created the original autographs without flaw and with a signature. Your belief implies that God would do something imperfect, which would contradict what the Bible says. However, Baptists DO believe that the Holy Spirit works directly on the world. In fact, it is in most Baptist church statements of faith. However, We have no evidence, be it scriptural or not, that the Holy Spirit inspired any translation. What we believe is that when one is in God's will, God will bless all that he does, and, as He did with Jabez, expand their horizons so as to share His word more fully. What seperates us from Catholicism is the FACT that Mary was human, and as Paul stated in the book of Romans, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." That, and the fact that the Bible states that "vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord" and that Jesus is the ONLY mediator between God and man, not Mary, and not the pope, just Jesus. (going off topic, I am glad that God doesn't require me to go through rituals just to find forgiveness from Him, but that it is by His grace and not how many times I say the Hail Mary. Ok, my rant is done, back on topic.) As to Catholic intervention in the KJV translation, the evidence is there. Firstly, the only place where 1 John 5:7b-8a (specifically: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood:) is found is in 8 late copies of the Latin Vulgate, a fully Catholic Bible at the time. There is not a shred of non-Vulgate documents that have that particular passage in them. A true translation would, by definition, only include them as a footnote, if at all. The fact that it is found in the main text is evidence enough of Catholic influence. As to your ideas to history, if they are correct, then a whole lot of history classes at secular and Christian colleges need to get their act together, because they mention the influence more than once. 2. I am not speaking of using allusions to places in Jesus's time. I am speaking of using phrases such as "Have ye any bowels of mercy?" when it is explained in the pulpit as "do you have compassion and mercy?" Why not skip the middleman on that and simply say that? The phrases are a lot of the time specific to Old English phrases, not Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic. coming to your points on the second half I. Firstly, Jesus commanded us to go and spread the gospel at the end of all four gospels, and until the truths were written down, God continued to work miraculous things among the church. However, at the end of Revelations, God puts a "the end" on the age of miracles. He stated that any who add to or take from the scriptures (and in the Greek, the word is plural, not singular, meaning that it included ALL books of the Bible, not just Revelations) would receive the tribulations and trials offered in the Bible, specifically the punishments. That would mean that even adding what the Catholics hold dear would bring judgement on those who added and followed those things. This would also mean that God had deemed humans fit and able to do His work without Him giving step-by-step instructions. It doesn't mean that He won't bless those who do His work, only that He isn't going to do it for them anymore, for, as Jesus said, the man who believes and has not seen is more blessed than the one who has seen and believed. As to the ending on this point, I think that you have misnoted what the pro v con was, but no matter, I can continue the debate and start one where the sides are more established. :) II. I thought you would never ask that one. This is where I have my hayday. There are three ways of telling if something should be canonical: Quality of copying, quantity of copies, and time interval between the oldest copy and the autographs. Quality of copying refers to how well the copy was made. The Old Testament copies take the cake on this one, due to the extreme lengths the Masorites (I think that is how it is spelled, but I am talking of the group of people who copied the Old Testament prior to the New Testament) went to so that the copy was as close to perfect as possible. They were required to cleanse themselves and destroy their pen every time they wrote the name of God, whether it is Yehova, Yahweh, or Elohim, or any other one of His names (my favorite being El-Shaddai http://www.youtube.com...). When they were finished copying a page, they counted the number of letters on each page and if they were off by even one letter, they had to burn that incomplete copy and start back again. When a copy was found damaged or faded, it had to be recopied and then the old faded or damaged copy be burned or buried. THey took their job seriously. Quantity refers to the number of copies available. The New Testament takes the cake here, with upwards of 30000 non-Vulgate early copies of the New Testament. With that many copies, one can cross-reference to make sure they have a correct translation. Time interval is where the apocryphal books, such as the alternate gospels die out. There is upwards of 300 years from the first copy of the Gospel of Judas back to when Judas hung himself, while the canonical gospels hail as close as ten years from the autographs. Finally, after all this checks out, one must look at whether it contradicts the canon. The Macabees and the other books in the Catholic KJV (yes, the version now used by American Catholic churches is a KJV) fall out here, as they contradict main points of the Bible. Finally, I did respond to points 3 and 4, directly after I said "Moving on:" I didn't answer number four except to say that it bolstered my side of the debate.