The history of the KJV

 

Anyone learning a language and doing even simple translating work knows that you can easily get the thought across but sometimes getting the exact word for word meaning is difficult to portray due to language differences. E.g. You have to translate idioms differently. Translating “take a seat” means sit down, not take the chair. And some words can be translated slightly different ways and all are correct. So there is always a little room for variation in small details which leads some people to debate over Bible translations, which you’ll see is as old as the Bible’s very first translations.

The problem is that languages are always changing. But with something as important as God’s Word, people tend to get comfortable with what they have, thinking it is perfect, and resist any change. They place this precious life source on a holy and revered place in their lives – they venerate it which is very understandable. But it’s important to remember that it’s not physical items or those exact words of our favorite translation, but the thoughts that the original writers intended that’s important – God’s message to us. That way as languages change you are okay with changing the words. It is surprising that this veneration and reluctance to change has actually happened with each major translation of the Bible. There are certainly some bad Bible translations out there so we need to be careful to find a good one. But on the other hand we also need to be aware that we could have an unnecessary negative bias against any new translations. So my first caution is to be sure we’re not to be overly protective of the exact version we have, because that does happen. Let’s see how this has happened in history:

The first major translation was the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament in the 2^nd and 3^rd century B.C. The people didn’t speak Hebrew anymore and needed a Greek version. This is so long ago that information is sketchy but a legend somehow developed that the 70 translators each did their own translation of the entire Old Testament alone and were surprised when they got together and found that each translation was all word for word exactly the same, a fantastic miracle. Right away this sounds odd because that’s not how a group of people do a translation. They divide the work up and then check each other's work. It is suspected that this is a legend propagated sometime after the translation was completed due to the veneration of it.  Different writing styles can be observed between different sections indicating that different people or groups of people translated the different sections.

The next major translation was in 400 A.D. when Jerome did his Latin Vulgate since the people by then spoke Latin. As a side note, Vulgate means in the common language just like the original Greek New Testament, which was written in the Koine Greek form, the Greek of the common people. And thereafter translators have always attempted to translate into an easy to understand language at the time. This is a very critical requirement for a translation that should never be undermined. But when people get to venerate a translation too much they don’t mind diminishing this key need for a translation in order preserve their venerated translation. They almost like it to sound ecclesiastical and holy even if it’s difficult to read. In fact we’ll see they can eventually remove the need to understand it at all as we see with this Latin Vulgate. The Latin Vulgate was to later become so venerated that people claimed it was the only true Bible and forbade any further translations in any language for almost 1000 years. So the Bible could not be read at all and caused the dark ages. But as honored as it came to be, even the Latin Vulgate started with contention. Jerome came across a difficult word to translate in the book of Jonah and the Christians almost rioted at his change in the word. (Interesting story, too long for this article).

Then English was needed. Because of the veneration of the Latin Vulgate People were actually killed for just trying to learn any part of the Bible in English. As we know, Wycliffe suffered persecution for translating the Bible into English. Then later Tyndale was killed for translating it into English.

And now we find the same thing going on. That English version of Tyndale, which thru some changes eventually became the KJV, has been venerated itself today.

Let's look closer at its history. After hundreds of years of dark ages and church corruption people were hungry for the reformation. But Greek manuscripts were somewhat rare in the middle ages. Wycliffe had to use the Latin Vulgate to translate his English Bible around 1380 AD.  Erasmus was a highly educated Catholic Priest and Scholar working with high government officials, and as such he had access to 9 Greek manuscripts that had been found by his time in the early 1500’s. He published a Greek/Latin New Testament and inadvertently gave the reformers the Greek to translate Bibles into their common languages, including Tyndale in 1526. Tyndale was later martyred for this translation and his dying prayer was “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.” Three years later the decadent King Henry VIII miraculously authorized an English translation that was a mere revision of Tyndale’s, the Great Bible – the first “Authorized Version”. The Geneva Bible, used by the Puritans who called for reform in the Church, was also published and that with a couple more Bible translations all became involved in a political power struggle. Eventually King James commissioned a new Authorized Version for mainly political reasons. The powerful State Church, the Church of England, finished the KJV in 1611, using an additional 16 manuscripts. So it too had a very small window of Greek manuscripts compared to the 5700 they have now. Sometimes people mistakenly say the KJV uses the “majority text” method, meaning they use the text that agrees with the majority of all the Greek manuscripts. But that’s not actually true. There are 2000 places where the KJV does not follow the majority text (in very minor ways). It just follows this handful of 25 manuscripts. And all but 3 of the 25 where from after the 11^th century from one location, the Byzantine Kingdome. (These 3 are probably what drove the KJV to add footnotes of alternate readings in their early editions and put an introductory note in the beginning of their translation expressing, among other things, their inability to always determine the exact original meaning.)

Greek began to phase out for the Roman Empire around the 4^th century (changed to Latin). But the Byzantine Empire continued to use it up until the 15^th century. So naturally as the centuries go on, more and more of the Greek manuscripts are Byzantine, up to the point where they vastly outnumber the other text types. So these Byzantine manuscripts easily make up the majority of the manuscripts (hence called “Majority Text”). They are especially common in the later centuries so they are what Erasmus and the KJV translators used. And as the Byzantine Empire and Christianity grew in prominence, the profession of copying manuscripts became more organized. So the later copies are more uniform (but not completely uniform). Remember, manuscripts copied before 325 A.D. were illegal copies by laymen. This is what drives a lot of the debate. Since the later ones are so numerous and more uniform, some hold that they are more trustworthy. The other side doesn't think we should only look at manuscripts from one area, and so they prefer to analyze all the manuscripts and compare them to better determine the exact reading. And in doing so they find that the basic message is very very similar, which gives credibility to the copying process. However they do find some minor differences this way. When they compare manuscripts and quotes in documents that are found from around the world they can see that manuscripts from the Western part of the Roman Empire (Italy, Gual, North Africa) are particularly prone to add things, even early on. Often times the KJV doesn’t even include them. So if a variant (difference in the text) comes from this area only and is absent from other early quotes and manuscripts from the rest of the world, scholars are prone to conclude it’s a localized addition and label it as questionable in a footnote even if it has an early date. So they take this location factor into account but generally they think older manuscripts are more reliable for the exact original wording than the abundance of later-date manuscripts which make up the majority of total manuscripts found (“majority text”). The belief was that as copies upon copies were made, small mistakes were made and copied from then on. So older manuscripts had fewer mistakes. There is actually a lot of forensics and other factors that go into trying to find the original wording of the Bible as exact as possible: comparisons of all 5700 manuscripts, other ancient translations, ancient witness, etc. It’s quite involved.

The differences are usually noted in most Bibles but if you want a more detailed explanation of why some Bibles chose a certain word or verse, you can get this very comprehensive but neutral book: “A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament A Companion Volume to the UBS Greek New Testament” by Bruce M. Metzger. It has the history of every important variant and which manuscripts have it and which don't. You can also go to this website for the 16 complete verses which are omitted in the new versions, though it is not as exhaustive as the book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_verses_not_included_in_modern_English_translations

The KJV didn’t even have a choice in the matter but just used the 25 manuscripts they could find. And since those manuscripts were mostly later manuscripts from the Byzantine area, which are numerous and all fairly similar, then much of the KJV does happen to follow the “majority text” most of the time. The KJV agrees even better with the “Textus Receptus” but it doesn’t actually follow it, because the TR is actually a Greek text that was formed later to match the KJV. So the TR actually came from the KJV, not the other way around.

Another thing to note is that the KJV committee were specifically instructed by Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London who oversaw the translation for King James, to use the Authorized Bible whenever possible to help keep the power of the Church. It’s also worth noting that Bancroft had a history of being against the Puritans, including their belief in the authority of scripture. [1] However they did stick to the Greek with only small word preference changes, so the KJV was an accurate translation. When translators are forced to stick to Greek they can’t really stray too far without being noticed so we can be comfortable with translations even under bad circumstances like this. And with the authority and backing of the Crown and the royal printing press along with a hungry public for the Bible, it spread far and wide so it became the world’s best-selling book and brought an end to the dark ages. The Puritan’s kept with their Geneva Bible though and that was the Bible that they crossed over to the new land of America with.

The KJV lit a fire and people became very interested in the Bible and these Greek manuscripts. And as more and more manuscripts were found (5,700), they learned how to sort them by location and date and compare them with each other and with ancient witnesses (early church fathers who quoted Bible verses). It became quite a collection and field of study to determine exactly what the original Bible said and what small changes were made over time.