My Review of the King James Version of the Bible
My own love and respect for the inerrant Word of God is built on a foundation of solid, conservative instruction delivered from the pages of the King James Version of the Bible. As far as popularity goes, the over 400 year-old King James Version (KJV) Bible was virtually the only English version used until the second generation of modern translations emerged at the end of the 20th Century.
The KJV is an extremely accurate literal translation rendered in beautiful literary form. It is also the only version of the Bible which is universally recognized and trusted as such. The King James Bible is the Gold Standard by which all other versions must be compared!
Constitutions/Bylaws requiring "the 1611 KJV"
The King James Version was published by commission of King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) in 1611. It is important to understand that none of the (around 20 at least) revisions to the KJV have changed the manuscripts used for translation or have retranslated any passages from the version produced in 1611. This faithfulness in maintaining the orginial translation explains why many fundamentalist churches confusingly specify exclusive use of the "1611 version" of the KJV in their constitution or bylaws, while in practice they actually use later KJV editions (typically Oxford 1769 or Cambridge 1873).
The purpose of specifying the 1611 KJV Bible is twofold; to strongly identify the KJV by including the year in the version name, and secondly, to exclude other similar translations, such as the New King James (1979).
Article: KJV Revisions since 1611 (pdf)
Article: The Legitimacy of Exclusive Use of the King James Version
Scholarship of the KJV
In terms of Scholarship, the majority of the original translation was 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 Geneva Bible (1557) and the Bishops Bible (1568), all of which directly contributed to the KJV.
In 1604, King James originally commissioned the KJV. The project was enacted by a large team of 48-50 scholars from Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge, and the text was based on the Bishops Bible, with comparisons to all the Bibles listed above as well as many other sources (Vulgate, Luther, etc.). The completed King James version was first published in 1611.
Article: History of the English Bibles
KJV Manuscripts
In terms of manuscripts used, the King James uses the Masoretic text for the Old Testament and the Textus Receptus for the New Testament.
Without addressing the TR vs Critical Text question here, suffice it to say that the King James Version used available Greek and Hebrew to translate the Scripture literally, as accurately as possible, into the English language.
For the Old Testament, The King James Bible was based on the Ben Chayyim Rabbinic Bible, a Masoretic text published in 1525. The Masoretic text is also the basis for modern critical text Old Testaments (but primairly from the Leningrad Codex of AD 1008).
Article: Old Testament Manuscripts
For the New Testament, the Novum Instrumentum Omne by Desiderius Erasmus was used. This was a presentation of the whole New Testament in both Latin and Greek, commonly know as the Textus Receptus (TR) or Received Text, and published with four revisions from 1516-1535. The Greek sources Erasmus used were mostly 12th Century manuscripts originating from Constintanople.
Article: The Textus Receptus
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