OK, this is going to be a huge post but I have to correct you here.
TLDR: The KJV is a biased translation with plenty of errors.
Long version...
The KJV was the Church of England's second attempt at an anti-Protestant Bible, following the lacklustre performance of the Bishops' Bible. Almost 40 years later, the heavily biased Calvinist/Puritan Geneva Bible still reigned as the most popular and influential translation. This was a constant thorn in the side of the Anglican Church.
In 1603 King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England and Ireland, following the union of the Scottish and English crowns and the death of Elizabeth I. His mother—the infamous Mary I, also known as Bloody Mary—was Catholic. James himself had been raised in Scotland, where the Church of Scotland was slowly developing under the influence of Reformed theology.
James had no love for Catholicism, but the Scottish Church presented significant challenges. Instead of bishops ruling over individual administrative territories via the authority invested in them by the monarch, it was run by ministers and elders who required no higher authority than their own. James’ attempts to reform this system were strongly resisted.
When James ascended to the throne of England he automatically became head of the Anglican Church. Now he was in charge of a theological system in which all authority flowed directly from him. The bishops supported this model (not least because they benefited from it themselves) and James correctly perceived that they would be useful allies in his ongoing campaign against the Protestants and Catholics.
In 1604 James convened the Hampton Court Conference, at which a new English translation was proposed. Although it is commonly referred to as 'the Authorised Version', there is no evidence that he ever issued an official 'authorisation' for the KJV.
James' involvement with a new Bible translation had always been motivated more by politics than theology, and the KJV would serve his purpose very well:
(Alister McGrath,
In the Beginning (2001), 171).
Work began immediately. The primary goal was to publish a Bible sympathetic to Anglican theology that would topple the supremacy of the Calvinist/Puritan Geneva Bible.
54 scholars were suggested, and 47 chosen. They were all Anglicans, and all except one—Sir Henry Savile—were members of the Anglican clergy. Several of them were more comfortable writing in Latin than English, a fact that inevitably influenced the quality of their translation.
Six committees were formed, with two each in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster.
James explicitly instructed the translators that Puritan influence should be excluded. To ensure this Bishop of London added an extra rule: the translators were forbidden to include any footnotes that strayed into interpretation or theological commentary; they were restricted to cross-references and translation notes only.
The translators were also instructed to translate certain Greek and Hebrew words in a way that reflected Anglican usage. Examples of Anglican bias include:
- 'Easter' instead of 'Passover'
- 'bishop' instead of 'overseer'
- 'deacon' instead of 'minister' or 'servant'
This gave the KJV a robust Anglican vocabulary that reflected its hierarchical ecclesiology and reinforced James' authority as head of the Anglican Church. The translators' Introduction to the KJV proudly states:
The Old Testament was translated from the Hebrew Rabbinic Bible of Yaakov ben Hayyim, which is considered a good example of the Ben Asher (a Masoretic text). However, the KJV translators did not accept the text without question, but instead adjusted Christological passages to match the Septuagint and Vulgate. This theological bias undermined the accuracy of the translation.
Although absent from later editions, the Apocrypha was included in the original King James Bible. Its text was translated from the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, and the Latin translation of Junius.
The New Testament was translated primarily from the Greek critical texts of Theodore Beza, and Robert Estienne's edition of the Latin Vulgate. These texts were based on Erasmus' Textus Receptus, a critical text based on six manuscripts from the corrupt Byzantine text type, none of which were any older than the 10th century.
The translation team also made use of the Syriac New Testament, but did not consult any ancient Greek manuscripts. Their reliance on the work of Beza, Estienne, and Erasmus led them to accept interpolations from the Vulgate that were carried over into the KJV. They also carried over all the errors from Erasmus.
Many people believe the KJV is a 'word-for-word' translation. This is absolutely untrue. In their Introduction the translators themselves confirm that their Bible is a
dynamic translation, guided by context rather than direct equivalence:
The quality of the KJV's translation was not universally accepted. A number of highly regarded critical scholars were appalled by what they considered a very sloppy job.
Hugh Broughton, the most highly respected Hebraist of the 17th century (excluded from the KJV translation committee because he was maddeningly impossible to work with) attacked the KJV because it
wasn't a word-for-word translation, saying:
Nevertheless, such critics were in a minority.
When considering the best way to render a verse into English, the translation team cut corners wherever they could. They copied from the Bishops' Bible, the Geneva Bible, and William Tyndale's translation (~30% of the KJV is lifted directly from Tyndale). Many of the alternative readings in the marginal notes were taken from the Douay-Rheims Bible.
The style of English in the KJV is deliberately archaic; it does
not reflect contemporary King James English, but instead borrows the older style of the Geneva Bible. For example:
- 'verily' and 'it came to pass': these two expressions were already out of date by 1604.
- 'thou/thee' are used as singular pronouns and 'ye/you' are used as plural pronouns: this usage was also outdated, having been replaced by the forms we know today
- 'his' is used as the third person possessive pronoun instead of 'its': yet 'its' was already considered the proper form by 1598
- '-eth' for the third person singular form of the verb instead of '-es' (e.g. 'appeareth' instead of 'appears'): yet '-es' was already established as the preferred ending, and predominates in the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe
This use of outdated English was a deliberate decision for marketing reasons: the Geneva was still dominant and the KJV translators decided their Bible would need to emulate it in order to gain wide acceptance. William Shakespeare himself had used the Geneva Bible, which was another good reason for making the KJV sound similar to its rival.
The first edition of the King James Bible was published in 1611, but several revisions followed due to thousands of misprints and variations in spelling, etc. amongst publishers. (The KJV we know today is actually the updated Oxford edition of 1769, with standardised English).
When compared to a superior, modern translation like the NET Bible, the KJV's shortcomings are quickly apparent:
Disclaimer: I am a pastor with a tertiary qualification in Christian history and theology. This post quotes two posts originally written for my Facebook page, Christian History (see here and here).
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