My Review of the King James Version of the Bible
My love and respect for the inerrent Word of God is built on a foundation of solid, conservative instruction delivered from the pages of the King James version of the Bible.
The KJV has an extremely high quality of literal translation which is accurate and reliable and holds a beautiful literary form. It is also the only version of the Bible which is universally recognized and trusted as such. As far as popularity goes, it was virtually the only English version for over 300 years and the most popular for over 400 years.
The King James Bible is the Gold Standard by which all other versions must be compared!
There is much to be said for the KJV, and I have summarized it in a separate article, King James Exclusive. I will not repeat that content here, but recommend the link.
In terms of manuscripts used, the King James uses the Masoretic text for the Old Testament and the Textus Receptus for the New Testament.
In terms of Scholarship, the majority of the original translation was originally the work of William Tyndale (d. 1536), followed by Miles Coverdale (d.1569), and Thomas Matthew (d. 1555). The work of these men was then revised first into the Great Bible (1539), which was then revised into the Bishops Bible (1568), which was the direct basis for the King James Bible.
In 1604, King James commissioned the KJV. The project was enacted by a large team of 48-50 scholars from Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge, and the text was base on the Bishops Bible, with comparisons to the Geneva Bible (1557 revision of Tyndale not directly associated with the Great Bible or Bishops Bible) and other sources (Matthew, Coverdale, Luther, Vulgate, etc.). The King James version was published in 1611.
What about the TR Manuscripts?
Without addressing the TR vs Critical Text question here, suffice it to say that the King James Version used the best known Greek and Hebrew of the day, to literally translate the Scripture as accurately as possible into the English language.
For the Old Testament, the Masoretic text is used for the KJV and is also the text basis for modern critical text Old Testaments.
For the New Testament, the Textus Receptus (TR) or "Received Text" is an eclectic work compiled by scholars including Erasmus, Beza, and Stephanus. It is not based on any one manuscript, but was a compilation of 7 available manuscripts. One is dated from the 11th century, four from the 12th, and 2 from the 15th century. Imfamously, this collection was supplemented by a contemporary (16th century) manuscript which was only used for the extended text of 1 John 5:7-8, which was not in any of his existing manuscripts.
Erasumus' text was first published in 1516 (as Novum Instrumentum Omne) providing both the Greek and Latin of the entire New Testament. From the pubisher's preface came the phrase "Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum," from which we get the vernacular name, the "Received Text." The Novum Instrumentum Omne was revised in 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1536. This is the publication which Martin Luther used for his German Bible, and which Tyndale and others used for the King James family of Bibles.
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