I am breaking the "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And 'Is the ESV a Calvinist Bible'?)" post up into shorter segments so that each verse (or two) gets it own post.
#2: (updated) Revelation 13:8 in the ESV says "and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain." In the ESV, in Calvinism, the names of the elect were written in the book of life before the world was created, affirming their view of predestination, election.
But let’s see the KJV: ”And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."
And I think there are two possible ways to look at this according to the KJV (which I think is the most reliable translation, though not perfect because no translation is), both of which contradict Calvinism.
1) "From the beginning" could refer to the Lamb being slain. If so, I would suggest it means that Jesus was foreordained to be slain for our sins, that God knew from the beginning that we would sin and need a Redeemer, and so He planned from the beginning to pay for our sins with Jesus's death, which would be confirmed by 1 Peter 1:19-20 and Acts 2:23.
2) Or if "from the beginning" really does refer to names being written in the Book of Life, notice that it's "from" in the KJV, which is far different than "before" in the ESV. This would mean not that certain names were written/chosen before the world began (as Calvinist say, to support their idea of predestination and election) but that names started being added to the Book of Life from the beginning, meaning that new names are added as each new person comes to Christ, which would be confirmed in Rev. 17:8. (Or maybe it's about the Book of Life itself being created from the beginning.)
Either way, it contradicts Calvinism.
A note about the ESV vs King James (I'll be posting this note at the end of every post in this series. Just because.):
If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, read these articles about the men who wrote the Greek texts that the ESV is based on: "Westcott and Hort: Translator's Beliefs" and "Westcott and Hort and the Greek Text." The ESV is based on the RSV, which is based on the Greek Texts of these two men (who, it sounds like, rejected the infallibility of Scripture, despised evangelicals, questioned Jesus's divinity and an eternal hell, did not believe that Genesis and the creation story were literal, affirmed Darwin and evolution, etc.), which is based on two corrupted manuscripts which differ from the majority of the more reliable manuscripts that the KJV is based on.
So when something says that the ESV has only made 6% changes, it means "from the RSV," meaning that it's 94% the same as the RSV it was based on, a translation which was based on two corrupted manuscripts that disagree with the majority of the manuscripts available. It would be like if a journalist interviewed 100 people about an event ... and 95 of them said the exact same thing, but 5 told a different story ... and the journalist decided to side with the 5 and print their story as fact. Raises some red flags, doesn't it?
In the course of researching this issue, and after not knowing for decades what to think of the whole "which translation is most accurate" debate, I now side with the King James. I mean, I have several other translations, and I think different ones are good for different reasons, such as readability, compare and contrast, to hear God's Word in a fresh way, etc. But when having to decide which one is more reliable and accurate, especially considering the significant differences between them, I have to side with the KJV (not the New King James, just the King James). And I've never been more sure of it than now, after all this research.
