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BEFORE YOU
PURCHASE A NEW BIBLE
What
Others
are
saying about
the King James Version
Here's what
some other translations have said about
the Authorized King James Version of 1611.
“...
the style of the (1611) English Version has been creative as
well as a creation. It has entered into the literature and
language of the English-speaking race ... To them this
version brought what they understood to be the direct words
of God”
--Preface, James Moffatt translation, 1950
"The King
James Version has with good reason been termed 'the noblest
monument of English prose.' ... It entered, as no other book
has, into the making of the personal character and the
public institutions of the English-speaking peoples.
We owe to it an incalculable debt. "
--Preface, Revised Standard Version, 1952
"The
most important document in the history of the English
language
is the King James Version of the Bible. To
measure its spiritual impact on the English speaking world
would be more impossible than counting the grains of sand
along the ocean shores."
--Preface, Contemporary English Version, 1995
"We are,
it is hardly needful to say, deeply grateful for the works
of our non-Jewish predecessors, such as the Authorized
Version with its admirable diction,
which can never be surpassed”
--Preface, Jewish Publication Society Translation, 1917
But is it
accurate to ancient manuscripts?
"The King
James (1611) translators were committed to producing an
English Bible that would be a precise translation,
and by no means a paraphrase or a broadly approximate
rendering ... the scholars were fully familiar with the
original languages of the Bible ... their reverence for the
divine Author and His Word assured a translation of the
Scriptures in which only a
principle of utmost accuracy could be accepted. "
--Preface, NEW King James Version, 1990
In
1786 the Catholic Scholar, Alexander Geddes, said of the
King James Bible: "If accuracy and strictest attention to
the letter of the text be supposed to constitute an
excellent version, this is of all versions
the most excellent.”
(Ibid)
George
Bernard Shaw said of the King James scholars: "The
translation was extraordinarily well done because to the
translators what they were translating was not merely a
curious collection of ancient books written by different
authors in different stages of culture, but the Word of God
divinely revealed through his chosen and expressly inspired
scribes. In this conviction they carried out their work with
boundless reverence and care and achieved a beautifully
artistic result."
(Ibid)
What about
things like the Dead Sea scrolls?
'Altogether, the remains of more than 500 different
manuscripts, or large portions of manuscripts, and
multiplied thousands of fragments were found in these eleven
(Dead Sea) caves ... The scroll of Isaiah, known as St.
Mark's Isaiah scroll, which was written on seventeen sheets
of parchment sewn together end-to-end, making a scroll 24
feet long and 10.2 inches high .. .is the largest and best
preserved of all the scrolls, and was written in an early
form of the "square letter," which ... places it in the
second century B.C. This makes it
the oldest known complete
Hebrew manuscript
of my Biblical book, and it agrees in almost
every respect with our traditional Hebrew texts, as used in
the translation to the King James Version of our Bible."
--Thompson-Chain Reference Bible, pg. 4356
Isn't the old English hard to understand?
Sometimes, the newer translations are even worse.
Genesis 6:4
King
James Bible "There were giants in
the earth"
Modern
Versions "The Nephilim were there"
(?)
Numbers 21: 14
King
James Bible "What he did in the
Red Sea ...”
Modern
Versions "Waheb in Suphah ...” (?)
They
say
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
"The
Revised Standard Version Bible seeks to preserve all that is
best in the English Bible as it has been known and ... to
stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition."
--Preface,
Revised Standard Version. 1952
"We have
... tried to put the message of the Scriptures in simple,
enduring words and expressions that are worthy to stand in
the great tradition of the King James Bible."
--Preface,
NEW Revised Standard Version, 1989
“As for
other proper nouns, the familiar spellings of the King James
Version are generally retained."
--Preface,
NEW
International Version, 1978
"The
translators ... have sought to maintain that lyrical quality
which is so highly regarded in the King James Version ... A
special feature of the New King James is its conformity to
the thought flow of the 1611 Bible. "
--Preface,
NEW
King James Version, 1990
If other
translations and their editors still praise the King James
Bible of 1611 after four centuries, shouldn't you be reading
it too?
"Where the word of a king is, there is power"
Ecclesiastes 8:4
Authorized King James Version 1611
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