Featured Is the King James Version Nearest to the Original Autographs?

I have some, rather limited, credentials in this field; as an unconverted teenager, I studied a certain amount of textual criticism at University as part of a B.A. degree in Classical Studies. I recall that there were three particular rules which secular scholars used to try and establish the true text when the surviving manuscripts disagreed, and which modern Bible critics have taken on. I will look at these in turn

1. The oldest manuscript is likely to be the most accurate. It needs to be understood that all ancient writings other than the Bible have a very small number of surviving manuscripts. One of my ‘Set Texts’ at University was the Poems of Catullus. As I recall, there are only three surviving manuscripts of Catullus, all dated 600 years or more after his time. One of these is believed to be older than the others, and so, when they differed, the older one was preferred. This might seem to be reasonable, but there is no assurance in the matter. The older manuscript might well have been copied more times than the more recent ones; or the older one might have been copied badly one or more times while the more recent ones may have been copied faithfully dozens of times. We have no way of knowing.

However, when we come to the New Testament, there are literally thousands of extant manuscripts. So let us consider the last nine verses of Mark 16. The NIV states, “The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20.” The ESV is a little more circumspect: “Some of the earliest manuscripts so not include 16:9-20.” What are the facts? Well, our old friends Sinaiticus and Vaticanus do not contain the verses, although the latter has the space for them left blank, showing that the scribe was at least aware of them. There is also one other Greek manuscript in which the verses are missing. They are contained in more than 600 other Greek manuscripts and in the old Latin and Peshitta Syrian versions as well as being quoted by 2nd Century writers such as Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian who wrote almost 200 years before the estimated dates of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. I ask, is it sensible to prefer two, admittedly older manuscripts over literally hundreds of others?

2. Where manuscripts differ, the shorter reading is to be preferred over the longer.

The reasoning here is that scribes may have added comments to the text in the margin which later copyists have incorporated into it. Obviously it is impossible to prove that this is not so, but is it not more likely that an inattentive copyist has accidentally left something out? Frankly, when it comes to the word of God, I expect the fuller, theologically richer reading to be correct. Let us look at two verses:

Luke 11:2b-4, NKJV. ‘Our Father in heaven , hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

Luke 11:2b-4, ESV. ‘Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.’

The wretchedly ugly and abbreviated reading of the ESV and most other modern versions is found in no more than five or six Greek manuscripts, whereas the Traditional Text is found in at least 600. The argument put forward by the supporters of the C.T. is that the Traditional reading has been harmonized with the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13, but this is really not very persuasive. There are at least two other differences between the Traditional readings of the Prayer in Matthew and Luke. Surely, if a scribe was going to harmonize Luke with Matthew, he would have done the job properly? It is far more probable that the reading of the C.T. is the result of an inattentive scribe missing out two sections of the prayer.

Here is another example of the same principle.

Romans 3:22, NKJV. ‘….Even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.’

Romans 3:22, ESV. ‘…..The righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe.’

The C.T. version, exemplified by the ESV, is a tautology. It is through faith for all who believe. Well, who else would it be for if it’s through faith? The Traditional reading of the NKJV is much more profound. The righteousness of God by faith comes ‘to all’ as it is preached, but it is ‘upon all’ who receive it. The C.T. reading is found in about 20 manuscripts, the Traditional reading in several hundred. There is no reason why a scribe would have inserted extra words. Without doubt the shorter reading is the result of words being missed out.

[Continued]

 

3. The most unusual or ridiculous reading- the one that makes least sense- is most likely to be the original.

This is the theory that I find most offensive of all. The idea is that a reading that appears to make no sense, or contains a factual error, is likely to have been ‘corrected’ by a scribe at some stage. Even in secular writings, I wonder how helpful this rule is. If an ancient writer was accustomed to write nonsense, why ever is anyone studying him? But when we come to the word of God, surely no believer could possibly support such an idea. Either the Bible is the word of God or it isn’t! If it is, then God did not inspire the Apostles and evangelists to write stuff that is wrong or which makes no sense. Let’s see how this works out is practice.

Eph. 3:14-15, NKJV. ‘For this reason I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family (or ‘people’ or ‘nation’) in heaven and earth is named.’

Eph. 3:14-15, NIV. ‘For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom the whole family in heaven and earth derives its name.’

The C.T. reading is supported by 19 Greek manuscripts; the Traditional reading is found is over 500, as well as the majority of the ancient writers who cite the verses.

By what name is the family of God known? Why, as Christians of course. We are not ‘Fatherians’ or ‘Godians.’ The NIV reading makes no real sense. Unfortunately this may be the very reason why many textual critics prefer it. The ESV tries to make some sense of its reading in a footnote where it suggests that the Greek word Patria might actually mean ‘fatherhood’ rather than ‘family.’ But this is not the word’s primary meaning as a glance at a Greek dictionary will confirm. As indicated above, patria means ‘family,’ ‘people’ or ‘nation.’ The English words ‘Patriarch,’ meaning head of the family, and ‘Patriotic’ come from it.

Luke 4:44- 5:1, NKJV. ‘And He was preaching in the synagogues of Galilee. So it was, as the multitudes pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret.’

Luke 4:44- 5:1, ESV. ‘And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea. On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.’

Once again, the vast majority of ancient manuscripts, along with the Church Fathers, support the Traditional Text. The point here is that the Lake of Gennesaret is in Galilee, not Judea, but for that very reason, the majority of textual critics uphold the Critical Text and make Luke into a geographical nincompoop.

John 7:8-10, NKJV. ‘” You go up to this feast. I am not yet going up to this feast, for My time has not yet fully come.” When He had said these things to them, He remained in Galilee. But when His brothers had gone up, He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.’

John 7:8-10, ESV. ‘”You go up to the feast. I am not going to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly, but in private.’

The question is over the little word ‘yet’ in verse 8. Its omission makes out the Lord Jesus to be either indecisive or a liar. The word is missing in only a tiny number of the hundreds of extant ancient manuscripts; even Codex Vaticanus contains it. Yet the ESV and also, to its shame, the NASB, omit the word, though the NIV (1984 edition) includes it. The ESV writes in its margin, ‘Some manuscripts add yet.’ Some manuscripts? Would it not be more honest to say, ‘98% of the manuscripts add yet’? The only possible reason to omit the word is that just because the C.T. reading is so ridiculous and objectionable, a scribe might possibly have added it. Such an explanation might be acceptable to a Richard Dawkins or a Bart Erhmann, but it surely cannot be acceptable to anyone who believes that the Bible is the true and complete word of God. The word from heaven declared, “This is My beloved Son; hear Him!” (Mark 9:7). Why would we listen to someone who was either a liar or couldn’t make up his mind? No, no! We should accept the witness of the vast majority of the ancient witnesses, dismiss the omission as the error of an inattentive copyist, and honour Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life.

To sum up, I believe that the Bible is the very word of God, and as such I believe that the most exalted, God-honouring reading of a text is likely to be the correct one. I do not believe that God would have hidden His word in a tiny number of Greek manuscripts, and to have locked away the correct readings from His people for hundreds of years. Nor do I believe that textual critics who are not evangelical Christians should be given any authority to say what the text of the Bible is. I am prepared to listen to people like Don Carson or James White, even though I don’t agree with them, but I am not prepared to accept the views of a Kurt Aland or a Bruce Metzger or anyone for whom the Bible is not the word of God in its entirety.

 

This is not so, and a wretched slur upon Tyndale who was a first-rate Greek scholar and theologian who translated from Erasmus' Greek New Testament. I refer you to William Tyndale, a Biography by David Daniell (Yale University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-300-06132-3) and to Tyndale's own writings. You may be confusing Tyndale's N.T. with John Wycliffe's 14th Century English Bible, which was a translation of the Vulgate..

 

Indeed. Daniell estimates that over 90% of the KJV New Testament comes from Tyndale's N.T. That is not at all to criticize the KJV. No doubt the translators were right to use Tyndale.
James I hated the Geneva Bible because of its notes, and I believe that he instructed the KJV translators not to use it. To what extent they obeyed him I don't know.

 

It is a verifiable fact that the Church of England makers of the KJV borrowed several or even many renderings from the Roman Catholic 1582 Rheims New Testament, which is on the KJV-only view’s corrupt tree of Bibles.

First-hand testimony and evidence from one of the KJV translators would acknowledge or affirm the use of the 1582 Rheims NT in the making of the KJV. Ward Allen observed: "At Col. 2:18, he [KJV translator John Bois] explains that the [KJV] translators were relying up on the example of the Rheims Bible" (Translating for King James, pp. 10, 62-63). The note of John Bois cited a rendering from the 1582 Rheims [“willing in humility”] and then cited the margin of the Rheims [“willfull, or selfwilled in voluntary religion”] ( p. 63). Was the KJV’s rendering “voluntary” borrowed from the margin of the 1582 Rheims? W. F. Moulton stated: "The Rhemish Testament was not even named in the instructions furnished to the translators, but it has left its mark on every page of their work" (History of the English Bible, p. 207). Ward Allen maintained that "the Rheims New Testament furnished to the Synoptic Gospels and Epistles in the A. V. as many revised readings as any other version" (Translating the N. T. Epistles, p. xxv). Ward Allen and Edward Jacobs claimed that the KJV translators "in revising the text of the synoptic Gospels in the Bishops' Bible, owe about one-fourth of their revisions, each, to the Genevan and Rheims New Testaments" (Coming of the King James Gospels, p. 29). About 1 Peter 1:20, Ward Allen noted: “The A. V. shows most markedly here the influence of the Rheims Bible, from which it adopts the verb in composition, the reference of the adverbial modifier to the predicate, the verb manifest, and the prepositional phrase for you” (Translating for King James, p. 18). Concerning 1 Peter 4:9, Allen suggested that “this translation in the A. V. joins the first part of the sentence from the Rheims Bible to the final phrase of the Protestant translations” (p. 30). KJV defender Laurence Vance admitted that the 1582 “Rheims supplies the first half of the reading” in the KJV at Galatians 3:1 and that the “Rheims supplies the last half of the reading” at Galatians 3:16 (Making of the KJV NT, p. 263).

J. R. Dore wrote: "A very considerable number of the Rhemish renderings, which they introduced for the first time, were adopted by the revisers of King James's Bible of 1611" (Old Bibles, p. 303). Charles Butterworth observed that the Rheims version "recalled the thought of the [KJV] translators to the Latin structure of the sentences, which they sometimes preferred to the Greek for clarity's sake, thus reverting to the pattern of Wycliffe or the Coverdale Latin-English Testaments, and forsaking the foundation laid by Tyndale" (Literary Lineage of the KJV, p. 237). James Carleton noted: "One cannot but be struck by the large number of words which have come into the Authorized Version from the Vulgate through the medium of the Rhemish New Testament" (Part of Rheims in the Making of the English Bible, p. 32). Glenn Conjurske wrote: “At the end of Revelation 18:13, the King James Version follows the Rheims New Testament in saying ‘slaves’ instead of the correct translation ‘bodies’ (relegating ‘bodies’ to the margin). The Rheims version was translated from the Latin Vulgate, and the reading ‘slaves’ comes from mancipiorum of the Vulgate” (Olde Paths, April, 1993, p. 87).

Do many KJV-only authors avoid discussing the role of the 1582 Rheims in the “unmatched” heritage of the KJV?

 

What did the Geneva Bible marginal notes actually state that upset King James I? In his account of the Hamption Court conference, Bishop William Barlow maintained that King James claimed some notes in the Geneva Bible were “very partial, untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous concepts” (Rhodes, English Renaissance Translation Theory, p. 175).

William Barlow reported that King James objected to the notes at Exodus 1:19 and 2 Chronicles 15:16. At Exodus 1:19, the 1560 Geneva Bible and the 1599 Tomson edition of the Geneva Bible have this note: "Their disobedience herein was lawful, but their dissembling evil." Katharine Sakenfeld suggested that to King James the “statement that ‘their disobedience herein was lawful’ must have sounded like a challenge to royal authority” (Burke, KJV at 400, p. 90). W. F. Moulton noted that the king is said to have asserted that the note at Exodus 1:19 “alloweth disobedience unto kings” (History of the English Bible, p. 191). In his article in a modern-spelling edition of the 1599 Geneva Bible, Marshall Foster observed: “The marginal note in the Geneva Bible at Exodus 1:19 indicated that the Hebrew midwives were correct to disobey the Egyptian rulers. King James called such interpretations ‘seditious.‘ The tyrant knew that if the people could hold him accountable to God’s Word, his days as a king ruling by ‘Divine Right’ were numbered” (p. xxv). The nearby note at Exodus 1:22 in the Geneva Bible stated the following: “When tyrants can not prevail by craft, they burst forth into open rage.” Concerning 2 Chronicles 15:16, Moulton reported that King James is said to declare that the “note taxeth Asa for deposing his mother only, and not killing her” (History, p. 192). The 1560 Geneva Bible has the following note at 2 Chronicles 15:16: “Here he shewed that he lacked zeal: for she ought to have died both by covenant, and by the Law of God; but he gave place to foolish pity, and would also seem after a sort to satisify the Law.”

There were also other notes that could be considered to challenge the divine-right-of-kings view held by King James. At Daniel 6:22, the 1560 and 1599 editions of the Geneva Bible have this marginal note: "For he did disobey the king's wicked commandment to obey God, and so did no injury to the king, who ought to command nothing whereby God should be dishonoured." The 1560 and 1599 editions of the Geneva Bible have the following note for 2 Kings 9:33: “This he did by the motion of the Spirit of God, that her blood should be shed, that had shed the blood of the innocents, to be a spectacle and example of God’s judgments to all tyrants.” At Matthew 2:19, the marginal note in the 1599 Tomson edition has the word tyrant [“Christ is brought up in Nazareth, after the death of the tyrant, by God’s providence”]. The 1599 edition’s note at Matthew 10:28 stated: “Though tyrants be never so raging and cruel, yet we may not fear them.” At Acts 12:2, its note again referred to tyrants [“It is an old fashion of tyrants to procure the favour of the wicked with the blood of the godly”]. Alister McGrath claimed that "the Geneva notes regularly use the word 'tyrant' to refer to kings; the King James Bible never uses this word" (In the Beginning, p. 143). Allison Jack maintained that “’kings’ were sometimes referred to as ‘tyrants’ in the notes of the Geneva Bible” and suggested that “such anti-monarchy leanings were to be avoided” in the KJV (Bible and Literature, p. 3). At the top of the page that has Isaiah 14, the 1560 edition of the Geneva Bible has this heading: “The fall of the tyrant.” At the top of the page that has Ezekiel 32, the 1560 Geneva Bible has this heading: “The end of tyrants.”

A number of years after King James’ death and beginning around 1642, the Geneva Bible notes would be printed in a few editions of the KJV. The 1611 KJV did have the word “tyrant” in the Apocrypha [Wisdom of Solomon 12:14, 2 Maccabees 4:25, 7:27].

Perhaps it was not only the marginal notes that caused King James to dislike the Geneva Bible. If it was only the notes that bothered the king, why didn’t he have the text printed without those notes? Many people may be unaware of the fact that the pre-1611 English Bibles sometimes had the strong word "tyrant" or the word “tyranny” in the text. At Isaiah 13:11b, the 1560 and 1599 Geneva Bible read: "I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease and will cast down the pride of tyrants." The Geneva Bible at Job 6:23 stated: "And deliver me from the enemies' hand, or ransom me out of the hand of tyrants?" Again at Isaiah 49:25, it noted: "the prey of the tyrant shall be delivered." At Job 27:13, the Geneva Bible read: "This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of tyrants, which they shall receive of the Almighty." Its rendering at the beginning of Job 3:17 stated: "The wicked have there ceased from their tyranny." The Geneva Bible also has the word "tyrant" or "tyrants" in other verses such as Job 15:20 and Psalm 54:3. The 1535 Coverdale's Bible and the 1540 edition of the Great Bible also used these same renderings in several verses. The Bishops’ Bible has “tyrants“ at Job 6:23, Job 15:20, Job 27:13, and Psalm 54:3 and “tyrant” at Isaiah 13:11 and 16:4. At 1 Timothy 1:13, Tyndale's, Coverdale's, Matthew's, and Great Bibles all had the word "tyrant." At James 2:6, Whittingham’s, the Geneva, and Bishops’ Bibles had “oppress you by tyranny” while the Great Bible has “execute tyranny upon you.”

John N. King asserted that King James I used Psalm 105:15 “as a proof text for the divine right of kings in his personal motto, ‘Touch not mine Anointed’” (Fischlin, Royal Subjects, p. 424). Alister McGrath noted: “One of the biblical texts seized upon by the supporters of the ‘divine right of kings’ was Psalm 105:15,“ which they argued meant “the people are forbidden to take any form of violent action against God’s anointed one--in other words, the king” (Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, p. 135). Allison Jack suggested that in the KJV “Psalm 105:15 could indeed stand as a justification of the divine right of kings, which the Geneva Bible had rejected” (Bible and Literature, p. 3). For its rendering “anointed” in its text in the 1560 edition, the Geneva Bible’s marginal note stated: “Those whom I have sanctified to be my people.” Alister McGrath pointed out that “the Geneva Bible interpreted this verse in a rather different way: kings are forbidden to oppress or take any violent action against God’s anointed people” (Christianity’s, pp. 135-136). McGrath again affirmed that “the Genevan notes argued that the term ’anointed’ was to be understood to refer to God’s people as a whole” (In the Beginning, p. 147). McGrath asserted: “According to the Geneva Bible the text was actually, if anything, a criticism of kings, in that their right to harm the people of God was being absolutely denied” (p. 148).

 

You may believe your opinion, but that does not prove your claim to be true and scriptural.

Does your assertion suggest that you believe the KJV to be nearer to the original autographs than the preserved Scriptures in the original languages are?

 

Where did you get that notion?

 

Your unproven assertion suggests that you have been misinformed by unreliable KJV-only sources.