But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding, Job 32:8.
When anyone drops the charge of double inspiration on a King James Bible Believer, the best response is to ask them if they believe in single inspiration. I make no bones about it, I believe and teach that the King James Bible is inspired. That draws a pretty quick response from some who have a pretty muddled understanding of inspiration.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, 2nd Timothy 3:16. Is that the only thing that inspiration can do? Inspiration was a one and done? I'm not talking about adding to the canon of scripture. There are 66 books in a King James Bible. Each of those books was given by inspiration. Yet, inspiration was not enough. The individual authors had to have the authority to add their writings into the canon. I claim no such authority for the King James translators. They didn't need it. They didn't use it.
The writers of our sacred text had at least two things. They had the inspiration of God. They had the in-breath of the Almighty give them understanding. Our English word "inspiration" means exactly that. It is one of the two parts of breathing. We inspire and we expire. There is inspiration and expiration. All scripture was given by the Almighty taking an in-breath within the author's understanding. Those same men were then recognized as having the authority to add to scripture.
Is adding to scripture the only time that God uses inspiration? What do we do with a verse like Acts 22:2? (And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith,). Was Paul speaking by inspiration when he preached? If he did speak by inspiration, was Luke inspired when he translated it into Greek and recorded it many years later? Here we have a scripture wherein one man spoke in one language and many years later, a second man records him in another language.
Both were given by inspiration. In the silly reasoning of those who bounce around terms like "double inspiration" the above scenario would be just that. It got inspired twice. God never lets go of scripture. If he inspired it, his breath is still controlling it. It is his word. It was given by inspiration and that is obviously a process that never stops. To think that he inspired it once upon a time, but he leaves its preservation up to the whims of men is simply unscriptural. As long as there are men to whom scripture is written, the inspiration of God will get them his word.
To say that a translation can never be inspired is to relegate even the words of Jesus Christ to being less than inspired. Every word he said other than a few utterances was recorded in Greek despite the fact that he did not say them in Greek. If no translation can ever be inspired then there never has been an accurate accounting of the words of Jesus Christ.
The issue at hand is not whether or not the King James Translators had the authority to add to scripture. The issue is whether or not they each had a spirit in accordance with Job 32:8, and whether or not God gave that spirit understanding by being inside of them and in-breathing. When they read the scriptures in the original tongues which they could do quite handily, did God give them understanding? Is understanding from God a thing of the past? (I speak as a fool.) When they wrote the English words of our sacred text, did they do so because God was on the inside of them and by in-breathing he gave them the same understanding that they had in the original tongues?
If so, did he give them understanding in the English tongue? If he did, (and he did) the words that they wrote in English were given because there was a spirit in them and the inspiration of the Almighty gave them understanding. God never lets go of scripture. "Single inspiration" and "double inspiration" are terms that will always identify a person as not having understanding.