STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 1611 KJV CROSS-REFERENCES
PART I: THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE AND THE JEWISH BIBLE
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 1611 KJV CROSS-REFERENCES
The original 1611 King James Version (KJV) Bible includes cross-references that show links between the Apocrypha and the New Testament.
Of course, allusions, references, and fulfilled prophecies will be debated until the end of time—there is, in fact, an entire religion filled with “Old” Testament scholars who believe that every single Christian ever is sadly deluded when we see allusions to the coming of Jesus Christ in what we wrongly call the “Old” Testament. And of course, every single Christian on Earth believes that every single Jew on Earth reads their Old Testament scriptures incorrectly as well.
E.g., many say that when Isaac carried the wood (that Abraham would have burned to sacrifice Isaac), that was a “type” prefiguring Jesus carrying the Cross. John F. MacArthur wrote that, “Jesus fulfilled it to the very letter. This is divine inspiration… This is how verbal and typical prophecy predicted to the very tiniest point the death of Jesus Christ.”[1]
Not so fast, say the Jews: “The image of Isaac’s carrying the wood on which he is to be burned adds enormous power to the story. A midrash relates this to a Roman (not Jewish) method of execution that was sometimes used on Jewish martyrs: ‘It is like a person who carries his cross on his own shoulder.’”[2]
No scholar can definitively answer whether Isaac is a type of Christ, a “type” of some other victim of crucifixion, or no type of anything at all. That is simply not how this works. There are Christian scholars, Jewish scholars, and skeptical scholars. Christian scholars disagree, too, on almost literally everything.[3] In the end, you must decide for yourself.[4]
In this book, I will cite from an endless stream of Protestant authors. However, I never cite to anyone in hopes that you just take their word for it or that you concede because so-and-so said you are wrong—I cite to them to show that a reasonable person should carefully consider what they said and why. In any event, the rest of this book lays out the possible New Testament references (those from the King James Version plus hundreds of others I have collected as part of my research) so that you can judge each of them.[5]
But before we do all of that, let’s look at the KJV references as a data set. Forget the specific references that the KJV saw (and those they missed): does the set of references have anything to show us with respect to the question of whether “the Jews” accepted Apocrypha as Scripture?
[1] John MacArthur Sermon Archive (Panorama City, CA: Grace to You, 2014), 1972, the Crucifixion, Part 1. Cribbed from David Limbaugh’s the Emmaus Code, Genesis, Isaac, FN 38.
[2] The Jewish Study Bible, Genesis 22:6.
[3] E.g., Revelation 9:7 (“the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle.”) William Barclay, Daily Study Bible: “It has always been noticed that the head of the locust is like the miniature head of a horse.” R.C.H. Lenski: “No natural grasshopper looks like a horse…” Just two legendary scholars, each seeing whatever they wanted to see.
[4] In fact, when billions of dollars are at stake in interpreting the ambiguous language of a contract, the decision is not for scholars to make. It is left to the men and women of the Jury to make the call. You determine the answer by (a) reviewing all the evidence, including expert witnesses (who are countered by the opponent’s experts and are grilled by the attorneys), then (b) listening as the lawyers for both sides present their arguments, before (c) reaching an informed decision. The sequence is important—and so are the roles. It is you who decide. Experts advise the Judge and Jury; they do not make decisions for them.
My goal is simply to (a) set out all the possible references I found for you to consider, (b) push for consistency, and (c) leave final decisions up to you—but with the advice that the process (evidence, then arguments from all sides, then decision) is crucial for making correct decisions.
[5] Most references are mentioned in many sources, so to save space, I did not identify sources except for the few that seemed unique finds.
