Protestants (i.e. non-Catholic Christians): a question about the KJV?

Question

Why does the KJV have more statements/words than other Protestant Bibles?

Compare 1 John 5:7 in the NIV and the KJV and you will see that they don't match.

Here is the online comparison:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20john%205:7;&version=31;9;

Compare the KJV with the Greek text and you will see that the KJV has more words than the Greek text.
http://greekbible.com/


So why does the KJV have additional words??

Answer 1

The KJV comes from the Textus Receptus but it isn't out of Antioch as mentioned above.

Most people don't realize how or why it came about.

In, forgive me on dates I am operating from memory, the fourteenth century two groups of people were trying to publish Greek texts of the bible. Erasmus and I forget the others. It was kind of a race, first to publish won. Erasmus published first with the text he received from the local library (textus receptus). He didn't have a complete copy and the text he had was highly corrupted. In fact, in some areas, he translated back into Greek from Latin because he lacked text for the segment.

What Erasmus did not know was two things. First, his text contained 20,000 major errors and he was holding one of the most corrupted texts we have on hand. Second, his work would be used to start entire denominations and that when James commission a new bible because so many variant ones were suddenly popping up during the Reformation, that his text would become the basis for the KJV. Erasmus just wanted to be first past the post in publication. He did what most people who are in a hurry do, he cut corners.

The translators of the KJV could not know this, all they knew was that there was a book with the Greek text in it and they took it and ran with it.

In 1890, the KJV was retranslated into English and somewhat improved. By 1700 it was known that there were 30,000 variant passages. Currently we have between 200,000 and 400,000 variant passages in the textual record. It partly depends upon how you count them (remember the hanging chads from the 2000 election). Some of these variations are minor, but some have profound denominational effects. Whole justifications for existence can wink out of existence if you select one old text over another.

The KJV has additional words because the translators chose passages differently from the NIV or chose to translate passages of similar meaning in different ways. We have certain passages for which English has no equivalent and so you try and get the gist across without losing anything.

In the early 1700's there was a crisis in Protestantism. Belief in the bible alone is meaningless if you cannot determine with certainty which passages are in the bible and which ones are not. Eventually, Protestantism just chose to ignore it and pretend we have a good copy. The earliest documents we have are from the fourth century, if you exclude the writings of the fathers from earlier periods. The fathers often quote scripture from their copies and these do not necessarily conform to our copies now. The implication was that scripture looked different to Polycarp who was trained by John the apostle or Clement who was trained by Peter, than it did to the scribe who copied Codex Vaticanus or Codex Sinaticus three hundred and fifty years later.

The bible has been translated into English since at least the eighth century. Those are the oldest vernacular bibles we have available to us. It is a fascinating lesson to see how translators chose different passages at different times. The first to translate it into English only translated particular books. It takes a long time to hand write a single book of the bible. The earliest were probably Bede, Caedmon and Adhelm, but there were likely others who were simply lost to history because no one felt a need to record their name.

An interesting academic exercise I had to do once was go to the local academic library and pull every version of the RSV printed and read certain passages to discuss how church politics influenced the translation of certain controversial passages, such as ones on homosexuality. I recommend it, you will get a better appreciation of how hard it is to translate, how important selling to the expected audience is, and how many shades of gray are present in what are often central texts.

That is only disturbing under "sola scriptura." If you relax your belief system to include apostolic tradition then the problem, while not gone, goes away substantially. Sola scriptura places all the weight of belief on a book instead of including the history of the book, other commentaries by people who knew the apostles, the beliefs of the early communities and so forth. It is still disturbing that we lack anything close to an exact text, but if you are using it for prayer instead of making doctrine, then it isn't such a big deal.

Answer 2

The primary difference is the Greek text that was used as the source of the translation. The translators of the KJV used what is known as the Textus Receptus, or Received Text. This text came out of Antioch. It has more information in it than the other text used by many modern translations.

The translators of the NIV used the other widely used text that came out of Alexandria, which is an older manuscript. Some have criticized this text because there is information that is missing, which is included in the Textus Receptus.

The Textus Receptus is considered more reliable, as it does contain more. The Alexandrian Text is believed to have been edited by Origen, who was an early church father.

The disputed differences between the two texts is about 10% of the total, and mostly occur in the New Testament.

Answer 3

The King James may be more "poetic" or more descriptive but its like reading Shakespeare. The NIV is a lot easier to understand. I heard these KJV vs. modern translation debates before and I understand your point. I need a version where I can understand every word. What good is reading the Bible if you can't understand it. The KJV has many words that are obsolete.
I use the NIV Full Life Study Bible as my preference. I also like the Amplified Bible.

Answer 4

Good question. I love both translations and I believe that we can get a better understanding of what God means in His Word by studying and comparing different versions. I, myself, have read seven different translations and paraphrases. The New International Version was based on texts that were older than the King James.

1 John 5:7 was just a foot note added to the original text. I believe that both texts are inspired of the Holy Spirit. Let me make my point. We have four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each one is slightly different because each writer focuses on something different and is based on his own personal experience. We can read one writer and that is good, but if we read all four, then we can better understand what God is really comunicating to us. I hope that this helps you.

Sincerely Yours, Pastor Jeff Ludin

Answer 5

I believe the KJV is the most accurate translation of the Bible available. I own other versions as well, but I prefer the KJV.
I don't believe in a 100% accurate English version of the Bible, as there are not 100% similar Hebrew and Greek words.

Please explain why the Vatican suppressed the publication of the Bible for hundreds of years, as they did not believe the average believer possessed enough intelligence to comprehend what they were reading, and needed a priest to interpret the meaning.

Also, please explain why the Catholic Church had the original English publisher of the Bible, Wycliffe, burned at the stake as a heretic.

Answer 6

That's why I use the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance Of The Bible with the KJV. It has every word in the Bible and tells you the meaning from Hebrew and Greek. It also tells you what words were added. I hope this helps.

Answer 7

Basically because the KJV was written at a time when scholarship was limited and there were far fewer manuscripts of the various books of the bible and little could be known about which were older. Also, a whole science has been created since then on how to determine, through textual analysis, which writing is more likely correct.

Answer 8

The Church has always been extremely careful to preserve the actuality of the scriptures in its translations. ( and when i say Church i mean the Catholic Church, before anyone split off of it, it was the only church) Then along came martin luther who decided he wanted to do sola fide and sola scriptura (faith alone and sripture alone)

Then when he found some scriptura that went against his fide, he altered it or took it out. Therefore his version of the bible is not true because he has changed it to fit his own ideas. Then along came other copy cats and so the various other Bible translations which also slaughter the text came along, including the KJV.

Yeah i no alot of people are going to despise this answer, but its true.

Answer 9

Each translation is a persons way of making the original easier for the masses without taking away from the original meaning.
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Comparing numbers with different languages is like comparing apples and oranges.

Answer 10

Look King James did the best he could translating the bible as he possibly could and for the lack of resources he did a good job.