There’s another surprising place where provincialism raises its ugly head within the realms of Christianity. That’s in the area of translations.

Most people take a fairly healthy view toward translations. They choose a translation according to their needs and give others the freedom to do the same.

But within Christianity, there are some who feel that there is no choice among translations. They believe that only one translation bears God’s seal of approval. In the English-speaking world, that’s usually the King James Version, particularly the 1611 version of the KJV (from the first edition in 1611 to the 1769 revision there were some 75000 changes, mostly regarding spelling and grammar). In an Internet discussion, one minister made the comment:

I am of the persuasion that if there isn’t a perfect translation in the English language, I will stand down from the ministry and get a secular job rather than teach and preach falsehood. Mind you, I am NOT of the Ruckman mentality the the KJV is inspired and therefor equal (or even superior) to the originals. I believe it is perfectly preserved. It is exactly what God wants us to have. As God overrode the human element in divine inspiration and gave us His Word perfectly in the originals, He overrode the human element in divine preservation and kept His Word pure through translation.

To some degree, I wouldn’t have that much of a problem with the above, except that he used the same reasoning to reject all other translations. Since the KJV is what God wants us to have, according to this minister, no other translation will do.

So why is this an example of provincialism? Because such views only work when you limit yourself to one language. Someone in that same discussion group made a similar claim about the 1569 Reina Valera. I told these two men that their views were completely incompatible. If the KJV is a perfect translation, the R-V can’t be. And vice versa. First, because there are serious differences between the two. Second, because you can’t have an exact translation between two languages. Not word for word, jot for jot, tittle for tittle.

Only if you limit yourself to one language can you say that one translation is perfect, complete and infallible.

KJV-onlyism has lots of other problems, of course. But provincialism is a necessary ally. Without it, there is no way to hold to that view.