In the previous thread, one poster incorrectly suggested that it was being negative concerning the KJV to accept that the KJV translators were honest when they pointed out that they did not provide an English rendering for every original-language word of Scripture in their underlying texts.
How is it being positive concerning the KJV to suggest in effect that the KJV translators were dishonest by trying to claim or suggest that the KJV is an every-word perfect translation when the KJV translators acknowledged that it was not?
According to its own title page and its preface, the 1611 KJV professed to be translated from the original languages. According to its title page for the New Testament, the 1611 KJV's New Testament was "newly translated out of the original Greek." The first rule for the translating referred to “the truth of the original.” The sixth rule and fifteen rule referred to “Hebrew” and to “Greek.” Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), a KJV translator, wrote: "Look to the original, as, for the New Testament, the Greek text; for the Old, the Hebrew" (Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine, p. 59). Gustavus Paine pointed out that another KJV translator John Rainolds (1549-1607) "urged study of the word of God in the Hebrew and Greek, 'not out of the books of translation'" (Men Behind the KJV, p. 84). Mordechai Feingold cited where KJV translator John Rainolds asked: “Are not they blind, who prefer a translation, and such a translation before the original?” (Labourers, p. 121). John Rainolds was asking his question of those who advocated a Latin Vulgate-only theory but his question would also apply to those who advocate a KJV-only theory?
In a sermon on Roman 1:16, Miles Smith (?-1624) referred to “the fountain of the prophets and apostles, which are the only authentic pen-men, and registers of the Holy Ghost” (Sermons, p. 75). In the preface to the 1611 KJV entitled "The Translators to the Reader," Miles Smith favorably quoted Jerome as writing “that as the credit of the old books (he meaneth the Old Testament) is to be tried by the Hebrew volumes, so of the New by the Greek tongue, he meaneth the original Greek. Then Miles Smith presented the view of the KJV translators as follows: "If truth be to be tried by these tongues [Hebrew and Greek], then whence should a translation be made, but out of them? These tongues therefore, we should say the Scriptures, in those tongues, we set before us to translate, being the tongues in which God was pleased to speak to his church by his prophets and apostles." In this preface, Miles Smith wrote: “If you ask what they had before them, truly it was the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek of the New.” Earlier on the third page of this preface, Miles Smith referred to “the original” as “being from heaven, not from earth.” Writing for all the translators, Miles Smith noted: “If anything be halting, or superfluous, or no so agreeable to the original, the same may be corrected, and the truth set in place.” Miles Smith observed: “No cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it. For whatever was perfect under the sun, where apostles or apostolike men, that is, men indured with an extraordinary measure of God’s Spirit, and privileged with the privilege of infallibility, had not their hand? The Romanists therefore in refusing to hear, and daring to burn the word translated, did no less then despite the Spirit of grace, from whom originally it proceeded, and whose sense and meaning, as well as man’s weakness would enable, it did express.”
Laurence Vance cited the report of the British delegates (including KJV translator Samuel Ward) to the 1618 Synod of Dort that included a reference to “the truth of the original text” (King James, His Bible, p. 47). In the dedication to King James in the 1611, Thomas Bilson (1546-1616) also acknowledged that the KJV was a translation made “out of the original sacred tongues.“ John Eadie noted that the account of the Hampton Court conference written by Patrick Galloway, the king’s Scottish chaplain, [“an account revised by the king himself”] stated “that a translation be made of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek” (English Bible, II, p. 179).
Daniel Featley (1582-1645), who was a chaplain of KJV translator George Abbot, who was appointed to the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and who may have been a KJV translator according to the British Museum list of KJV translators, asserted what could be soundly regarded as the typical Church of England and Protestant view of that day. In 1624, Daniel Featley wrote: “We believe the Originals of the two Testaments, in Hebrew and Greek, to be authentical, and of undoubted authority“ (The Roman Fisher, p. 98). Daniel Featley wrote: “No translation can equal the authority of the original, much less be preferred before it” (Appendix to the Fishers Net, pp. 69-70). In a later book published in 1646, Daniel Featley wrote: “For no translation is simply authentical, or the undoubted word of God. In the undoubted word of God there can be no error. But in translations there may be, and are errors. The Bible translated therefore is not the undoubted word of God, but so far only as it agreeth with the original” (Dippers Dipt, p. 1). Concerning translations, Daniel Featley asserted: “For there is none in which there are not some mistakes, more or less” (p. 74). Daniel Featley added: “Other slips must be born with in translations, or else we must read none at all till we have a translation given by divine inspiration, as the originals are” (Ibid.).
