XYZ Onlyist Due to Personal Dislikes and the Versionist Snobs

January 2003

There are those Christians who take their dislike of what is widely considered to be a legitimate, yet very poor and inaccurate version, (say, the Living Bible or Good News For Man) and then turn into something of an NIV-, NASB-, NLT- onlyist, or what have you.

Or they adopt a similar view, one that is not as quite condemning as the first, and become an 'xyz contemporary version' elitist version snob.

Other Bible versions that are not on the elitist's list of 'great' or 'accepted' bibles get treated, sometimes inadvertently and perhaps unintentionally, as though they are suspect.

The outcome from this can result in a similar outcome as that of KJV Onlyism: a stated or implied view that some versions are just not wholly God's word; 'they're lacking in some way, beware, don't use'. Some of these elitists may not be aware that this is how their views come across or that this could be a natural outworking of their view.

The irony is that many in these groups, all the "Reverend Gary's" (who supports the NASB but rejects the NIV and calls it "trash," for instance) and all the "version snobs" out there, would all agree that KJV Onlyism is a false teaching, but here they are rejecting one version or another based upon the same poor reasoning or attitudes of the KJV Onlyist movement.