Perhaps part 2 of Hembd's article is better, but aside from many of the historical points (which I believe are simply wrong), his entire polemic is to sow doubt and cast aspersion upon the NKJV, and once again uses guilt by association (e.g., Dr Price was editor of the Old Testament, and he also worked on the Majority Text, ergo he doesn't believe that Textus Receptus is the only pure text and therefore the NKJV is suspect. QED
).
The conclusion sums up the polemic with purple prose:
- "We have demonstrated that the editors of the New King James Version are wrong for including the corrupt readings of the Egyptian text in their marginal notes, as though they were potentially valid"
- "They are wrong in disdaining the Providentially preserved text, the Textus Receptus" (disdaining by what measure?)
- "They are very wrong in including heretical readings from the Alexandrian text in their marginal notes, enabling a heretic to find refuge in the NKJV from these notes" (I find it hard to take that sentence seriously)
To be clear, so far the strong condemnation of the NKJV is for the apparently unforgivable sin of including alternative readings in
marginal notes (which the KJV also had), from which all kinds of unsubstantiated conclusions are drawn
. We haven't even gotten to the specific technical translational or textual arguments but the goal so far appears to be to destroy the reputation of the NKJV translators and only when we don't trust them, to explore the merits of the translation itself. I find that sort of polemic to be dishonest and manipulative.