WHERE DID THE KING JAMES VERSION OF THE BIBLE ORIGINATE?
A Look at the Basis of the KJV
There has been considerable discussion over the past few years as to
the validity of the newer versions of the Bible, notably the New Inter-
national Version. It is so unfortunate that most of the discussions and
"proofs" have been centered on the "translations" instead of the texts that
the translations come from, but this is probably due to the fact that few
christians really know very much at all about Greek texts. It is most
important to realize that when the church says that the scriptures were
inspired by God, those "scriptures" are not the King James Version (KJV) or
the New International Version (NIV) or the New American Standard, but the
original text, in the original language written down by the original author.
Thus the validity of a "Translation" must stand on much more than its
faithfulness to the original intent and meaning of the author, it must also
stand on the accuracy of the text chosen to be translated.
It appears very much to be true that manuscripts of the New Testament
scriptures have been passed down from believing generation to believing
generation, copies wear out and must be recopied. In the 7th and 8th
centuries this was no easy task. This was not only done by hand, it must be
remembered that just because people didn't wear glasses then doesn't mean
that they didn't need them. There were more than just a few copyist that
were near sighted, hard of hearing (a big problem when one reader dictated
manuscripts to many copyist) not to mention those who felt the compulsion to
correct what they thought was poor grammar on their own initiative. As a
result, not all Greek manuscripts of the New Testament were of the same
value and it was some of those erroneous manuscripts that served as the
"master" copy for others.
The job of critical analysis is not to disparage the New Testament but
to examine the texts in order to discover which are the most reliable based
on comparison and antiquity. The purpose of this short paper is to briefly
describe the origin and dominance of the "Textus Receptus" (TR) which was
the text upon which the King James Version is based, including the "New"
KJV.
The invention of printing by using movable type by Johannes Gutenberg
had huge consequences for Western culture and civilization as a whole.
Books could now be made more cheaply and with a higher degree of accuracy
than ever before and, quite fittingly, the first major project for the new
press was Jerome's Latin Vulgate which was published between 1450 and 1456.
At least one hundred editions of the Latin Bible were issued by different
printing houses over the next fifty years. The first edition of the Hebrew
Old Testament came for the Soncino press in Lombardy in 1488. Bibles were
also produced in some of the principal vernacular languages of Western
Europe before 1500.
The Greek New Testament, however, had to wait until 1514 for two
reasons. First of all, the production of fonts of Greek type required for a
book of any considerable size was both difficult and expensive. The attempt
was made to print the appearance of miniscule Greek handwriting (a cursive
style of Greek writing, the earliest known miniscule manuscript is dated at
835 A.D.), with its numerous alternative forms of the same letter, as well
as its many combinations of two or more letters (ligatures). The result was
that type had to be prepared for 200 different characters instead of only
twenty-four as in our alphabet.
The second reason was the high prestige carried by the Latin Vulgate.
Translations into the vernacular languages were not derogatory to the
supremacy of the Latin text from which they stemmed. The problem was that
the publication of the Greek New Testament offered to any scholar acquainted
with both languages a tool with which it criticize and correct the official
Latin Bible of the Church. This Latin Bible was the KJV of the day, and
just as jealously defended. History does repeat itself in many forms.
Before long, however, in 1514 the first printed Greek New Testament was
printed as part of a Polyglot Bible. This magnificent edition of the
Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin texts came to be known as the Complutesian
Polyglot. What Greek manuscripts lie behind the text of the Complutesian
New Testament have never been satisfactorily explained except much of it
seems to have come from the library of Pope Leo X and his Apostolic Library.
While the Complutensan text was the first GNT to be printed, the first
to be published (meaning to put on the open market) was the edition prepared
by the famous Dutch scholar and humanist, Desiderious Erasmus of Rotterdam
(1469-1536). Know one knows exactly when Erasmus first decided to prepare
an edition of the GNT, however, on a visit to Basle in August 1514 he did
discuss the matter (probably for the first time) with the well-known
publisher Johann Froben. Froben had certainly heard of the soon to be
published Spanish Polyglot Bible and, as any good business man, sensed that
the market was more than ready for an edition of the GNT, wanted to
capitalize upon that demand before Ximenes' work would be finished and
authorized for publication. Froben made his proposal and offered to pay
Erasmus as much as anyone else might offer for a job like this and it
appears to have come at an opportune time for him. Erasmus went to Basle
again in July of 1515 hoping to find Greek manuscripts sufficiently good to
be sent to the printer as copy to be set up in type along with his own Latin
translation, on which he had been working intermittently for a number of
years. To his exasperation the only manuscripts available on the spur of
the moment demanded correction before they could be used as printer's copy.
The printing began on 2 October 1515, and in a extremely short period
of time (1 March 1516) the whole edition was completed, a huge folio volume
of about 1,000 pages which, as Erasmus himself declared later, was
precipitated rather then edited'. Because he could not find a manuscript
which contained the entire GNT, he used several for various parts of the NT.
For the most part he trusted in two rather inferior manuscripts from the
monastic library at Basle, on the Gospels and one of the Acts and Epistles,
both dating from about the twelfth century. Erasmus compared them with two
or three others of the same books and entered occasional corrections for the
printer in the margins or between the lines of the Greek script. For the
book of Revelation he had but one manuscript, dating from the twelfth
century, which he had borrowed from his friend Reuchlin. Haplessly, the
manuscript lacked the final leaf, which had contained the last six verses of
the book. To cover this, as well as a couple other passages throughout the
book where Greek text of the Apocalypse and the adjoining Greek commentary
with which the manuscript was supplied are so mixed up as to be almost
indistinguishable, Erasmus depended upon the Latin Vulgate, translating this
text into Greek. As you might expect from this type of "translation work"
there are a number of reading in Erasmus' self made text that have never
been found in any known Greek manuscript, but which are still perpetuated
today in printings of the so-called Textus Receptus of the GNT.
It must be mentioned that even in other areas of the NT that Erasmus
occasionally introduced into his Greek text material taken from the Latin
Vulgate. An example is in Acts 9:6, where the question which Paul asks at
the time of his conversion on the road to Damascus, "And he trembling and
astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?", was frankly
interpolated by Erasmus from the Latin Vulgate. This addition, which is
found in NO Greek manuscript at this passage (though it appears in a
parallel account of Acts 22:10), became part of the TR and it is the TR that
the KJV was made from in 1611.
The reception accorded Erasmus' edition, which was the first published
edition, was mixed to say the least. On the one hand, it found many
purchasers throughout Europe. Within three years a second edition was
called for, the total number of copies of the 1516 and the 1519 editions
amounted to 3,300. The second edition became the basis of Luther's German
translation. On the other hand, in certain circles Erasmus' work was
received with distrust and outright animosity. His elegant Latin
Translation, differing in many respects from the wording of the Vulgate, was
regarded a presumptuous and innovative.
In this way the text of Erasmus' GNT rests upon a half dozen minuscule
manuscripts, the oldest and best of these (codex I, a 10th century
minuscule which agrees often with the earlier uncial text) he used the
least, because he was afraid of its supposedly erratic text! Erasmus' text
is inferior in critical value to the Complutensian, but by virtue of its
being the first on the market and available in a cheaper and more convenient
form ( like a paper back edition) it had a larger circulation and exercised
a far greater influence than the rival which took from 1502 to 1514 to
prepare.
In 1624 the brother Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir, two enterprising
printers at Leiden, published a small and convenient edition of the GNT, the
text of which was taken mainly from [Theodore de] Besa's smaller 1516
edition of the TR. The preface to the second edition, which appeared in
1633, makes this boast, "[the reader has] the text which is now received by
all, in which we give nothing changed or corrupted". It was more or less a
casual phrase advertising the edition (modern publishers call it a 'blurb'),
there arose the designation 'Textus Receptus', or commonly received,
standard text. Partly because of this catchword the form of the Greek text
incorporated in the editions that Stephanus, Beza and the Elzevirs had
published succeeded in establishing itself as the 'only true text' of the
New Testament, and was slavishly reprinted in hundreds of subsequent
editions. It is this text that lies as the basis of the King James Version
and of all principle Protestant translations in the languages of Europe
prior to 1881. So superstitious has been the reverence accorded the TR that
in some cases attempts to criticize or amend it have been regarded as akin
to sacrilege. Its textual basis, however, is essentially a handful of late
and haphazardly collected minuscule manuscripts, and in a dozen passages its
reading is supported by no known Greek witness.
The NIV's strength is in the fact that it broke the bonds of
superstition and dared to rely on the oldest and most reliable texts known.
If what the apostles wrote was the Word of God, then it is important to
discover, as close as possible, what it was they really wrote. The
abundance of manuscripts and millions of hours of dedicated textual analysis
have given us tremendous evidence as to what the original authors actually
wrote and for this reason, if you don't know Greek, before you by a 'new'
translation, check the jacket and see what the basis of it is. If it says
"Textus Receptus", it is less than the best. When it comes to the Word of
God, I want only the Word of God.
Suggested reading for further study are: "THE TEXT OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration" by Bruce Manning
Metzger, Oxford Univ. Press, 1968. Much of the above was taken from his
book. Also see the United Bible Societies, "THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT" which
IS a Greek New Testament done in cooperation with the Institute for New
Testament Textual Research, Munster/Westphalia. This Testament includes
textual analysis in the footnotes of every verse of which there is a
question of variant readings and lists all the manuscripts and dates,
including the text of the variant readings. For a larger explanation of
each of these questionable verses you may want the companion book, "A
TEXTUAL COMMENTARY ON THE NEW TESTAMENT" also by Bruce Metzger. Frankly,
anyone who tries to defend the TR without a basis of sound Greek textual
analysis or knowledge of the above mentioned historical background simply
does not know what he is talking about and is without adequate tools to make
a sound decision. There is comfort, though, in that nothing in the KJV or
any translation made from the TR is of any doctrinal variance to the best
versions of texts. Either one will soundly guide you on the path that leads
to life through the blood of Jesus Christ the Lord. ../