Tuesday, June 12, 2012

King James Bible Editions

Note: All Scripture quotations found in this article are from the text of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible.

A common attack on the King James Only position is the so called "revisions" in the King James Bible. These "revisions" of the King James text were not like the changes that the new versions make in the Bible. The corrupt new versions make changes that omit words, phrases and complete verses. They also corrupt the deity of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth and many other important doctrines. The changes in the King James Bible were merely to correct things such as standardized spelling and typographical errors. The context of the King James Bible has never once been changed.

Since 1611, there have been standardized spelling changes in the King James Bible. In the early editions of the KJB, words like "bear," "dark" and "fear" had the letter "e" on end of them. Words like "mooued," "bee" and "mee" were changed into "moved," "be" and "me." These changes made no change in the context or in any doctrine.

There were also changes because of typographical errors. These errors were hardly avoidable because the printing press in the 1600's were set manually, not like the technological printers of the present day. The work of printing books in the 1400's to 1600's was done by a very slow process. Each individual letter of a certain word was to be placed in the printing press by hand, each letter being upside down and backwards, so printing errors were expected. It was an extreme and weary task to complete the hundreds of thousands of letters in the KJB in a specified time limit. If we today, having things such as Microsoft Word and Spell Check (which are still prone to make errors in writing articles and books), then imagine how hard it was back then.

The King James Bible was first printed in Gothic type, but later changed to Roman type. In the Gothic type text, the letter "s" looked like the letter "f", the letter "u" looked like the letter "v" and the letter "j" looked like the letter "i". Again this did not change the context any at all.

Whenever a Bible Corrector brings up the "revisions" of the King James Bible, they are just trying to make you think that the King James Bible contained errors that corrupted doctrines, but nothing is farther from the truth. There were no "revisions" in the KJB, only editions that corrected simple things that had no effect on the context. The underlying Hebrew and Greek texts of the KJB have never changed in over 400 years. Even the American Bible Society (certainly no friend of the KJB) said this about the "revisions" of the KJB, "The English Bible, as left by the translators (of 1611), has come down to us unaltered in respect to its text. With the exception of typographical errors and changes required by the progress of orthography in the English language, the text of our present Bibles remains unchanged, and without variation from the original copy as left by the translators".

The "revision" argument is quite silly because even Greek texts such as the Textus Receptus (TR) went through many editions. There are several editions of the Erasmus TR, Stephanus TR, Beza TR, Colinaeus TR, Scrivener TR and Elzevirs TR (Keep in mind that the King James translators did not only use one Textus Receptus for the New Testament. They used various manuscripts in line with the Byzantine texts. God led the translators in their translating and also led them in using the correct manuscripts). All published books go through numerous revisions. The "revision" issue is a non-issue. It is just another pitiful attempt to attack God's Holy words.

Psalms 12:6 "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever."

The above passage tells us that God put His words through a purification process. This was done with languages, manuscripts, bibles and you guessed it, editions of the King James Bible.

Imagine if someone had a piece of silver that had elements in it such as copper, zinc, iron, tin, antimony and arsenic in it. The piece of silver was then purified by using hot water, soda and aluminum. Does this mean the piece of silver is not pure? Of course not, because it has been purified. The same goes for the King James Bible that we hold in our hands today. There were simple printing errors in it, but it went through a purification process and was purified.

Today we have the pure words of God in the King James Bible and we can trust every word inside. The Bible Correctors only raise up such ignorant arguments because they do not want anyone to have a final authority. What they want is to be like the early day Roman Catholic Church and hide the words of God, so they can interpret the Bible for themselves and tell the "common man" what God actually means. Bible Believers should always ignore such evil and proud people and never waver in their faith in the word of God.