Pastors and saints, Bryan C. Ross wrote his investigation out of love for the King James Bible and out of a desire for clear, defensible witness. Ross is candid: he is “unequivocally a King James Bible Believer,” holding that the KJV is God’s word for English‑speaking people, a formal‑equivalent translation that preserves Scripture’s truth. His work is pastoral as well as scholarly — meant to strengthen confidence in the KJV while correcting mistaken claims about spelling and textual change.
Ross begins where many believers feel anxious: headlines and web articles that cry “counterfeit KJV” when modern printings alter spellings such as throughly/thoroughly, alway/always, ensample/example, and stablish/establish. He documents how those alarms have led some to insist that any change in orthography equals doctrinal corruption, and he presses back gently but firmly — not by denying the facts of variant printings, but by examining what those variants actually mean for preservation and inerrancy.
Method matters. Ross lays out four lines of argument, focusing primarily on orthography and the textual record. He emphasizes that demanding verbatim identicality of wording forces an impossible conclusion: one would have to name a single printed edition (e.g., 1611 or 1769) as the exclusive, inerrant KJV. Ross notes David Norton’s careful work (A Textual History of the King James Bible), which catalogs many non‑orthographic variants: Norton devotes 155 pages to 952 verses where wording differs among editions. That factual picture is the reason Ross insists we must distinguish between different ways of saying the same thing and genuine, substantive changes to meaning.
Ross’s own orthographic study consults the historical dictionaries and reference works he lists — Webster (1828), the Oxford English Dictionary, Skeat, Bailey and others — and shows how archaic spellings relate to modern forms. He demonstrates, for example, that historical dictionaries identify throughly as an archaic form of thoroughly and that the dictionaries do not sustain a claimed semantic “fine line” (inside‑out versus outside‑in) urged by some teachers. Ross confronts particular advocates (named in his book) who press discriminations the dictionaries do not support, and he shows that the usual English‑reference evidence ties the variant spellings to the same senses rather than to different doctrinal content.
The pastoral implication is plain and freeing. We may — and should — affirm the KJV as the preserved, inerrant English Scripture for this dispensation (a stance Ross himself affirms). But we should not insist on a standard of literal, verbatim identicality that the textual history of the English Bible does not warrant. Ross points out that orthographic change, capitalization conventions, and even some word‑order differences exist between early printings and later standardizations (1611 → 1769 and in American printings), yet these are largely non‑substantive. Defenders of the KJV weaken their testimony when they claim every spelling variation equals corruption.
So what do we do practically? Follow Ross’s pastoral counsel: hold fast to the truth that God has preserved His Word and that the KJV is a faith‑ful, literal rendering for English readers; study the textual and orthographic history so your confidence is informed, not merely sentimental; and speak with balance so critics cannot easily caricature the KJV position. Unity and clarity in witness matter as we contend for the faith. Ross wrote to strengthen precisely this kind of careful, courageous testimony — defending the KJV without making claims the evidence will not sustain.