#1067: Gail Riplinger

“King James Only” denotes the idea that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible from 1611 is the best or only genuine translation, and in the case of some – such as Gail Riplinger – that it possesses special magical properties. Whereas modern translations are made by a conspiracy of Bible-denying satanists, liberals and secular humanists, the KJV was genuinely dictated by Jesus, who obviously wanted a translation into God’s own language, 17^th century English.

Riplinger, a trained interior decorator, has written a textual analysis – New Age Bible Versions– comparing various contemporary translations side by side with the King James, which, given her tortured logic, quote-mining, fake quotes, lies, numerology and fallacious reasoning, ends up identifying a modern conspiracy among, well, Satan, secularists (Satanists), New Agers (Satanists) and child molesters to remove the name of God from the Bible and prepare the apostate church of these last days to accept the Antichrist, his mark, his image, and religion. “Watch out,” she says, “for the letter ‘s’ – sin, Satan, Sodom, Saul (had to be changed to Paul). The added ‘s’ here is the hiss of the serpent,” which is an interesting start of an approach to accuracy in translation. She also notices that the “Five Points” of Calvinism form a Satanic pentagram – which shows that Bible translations made by Calvinists are Satanic (she is unaware that the KJV was procured in part by Puritans, who were Calvinists themselves) – and identifies Henry Kissinger as the anti-Christ. Particular scholarly praise goes to her acrostic algebra to reveal “the ashy residue on which the NIV and NASV [newer Bible translations] rest”:

Indeed. Of course, “NISV” stands for the New American Standard Bible, which is usually abbreviated (also in Riplinger’s work) as NASB, but that abbreviation wouldn’t have “worked”. The NIV, on the other hand, is rejected because one of the translators, Herbert Wolf, is called “wolf”, therefore Satan (“they have devoured souls”). Her webpage is here.

Riplinger has of course received her share of criticism (e.g. here and here) from people who know language, history, or just the basics of critical thinking, as well as from those who claim that Riplinger is a woman and should therefore not be teaching the Bible at all (here, for instance; Mark McNeil and Bob L. Ross weigh in here, and David Cloud’s critique is here). An example of Riplinger’s scholarly responses to critics is here.

Related KJV-only ideas have been promoted by Jack Chick’s resident Biblical “scholar” David Daniels here, and by Peter Ruckman, who believes that the Septuagint, the Tanakh of Hellenistic Judaism and the Old Testament of Eastern Christianity, was a hoax.