By Gary Harvey
November 1, 2011
“No other book of any kind ever written in English, perhaps no other book ever written in any other tongue, has ever so affected the whole life of a people as this authorized version of the Scriptures has affected the life of the English-speaking peoples.”
Theodore Roosevelt, Realizable Ideals.
November 1, 2011
“No other book of any kind ever written in English, perhaps no other book ever written in any other tongue, has ever so affected the whole life of a people as this authorized version of the Scriptures has affected the life of the English-speaking peoples.”
Theodore Roosevelt, Realizable Ideals.
“The King James Version was produced at the peak of a great age of literary creativity, of colossal learning, of abounding piety, and at a ripely formative period in the development of the English language. It has been hard to find another such grouping of important factors--religious, educational, literary, philological--such as helped to make the great version unique. The absence of one or more of these factors goes far to account for the comparative weakness of a certain of the efforts of those who attack the problem of a better rendering.”
Margaret Crook, The Bible and Its Literary Associations.
“The noblest monument of English prose.”
John Livingston Lowes.
“The closer the Bible is brought to the…writing the American masses are now accustomed to, the farther it must depart from the language of Shakespeare and Milton. This is an age of prose, not of poetry, and [a modern translation] is a prose Bible, while the KJV is poetic one.”
Dwight MacDonald, The Bible in Modern Undress.
_________________________
These are the opinions of four people on the might and majesty of the King James Version of the Bible. Note that these folks were not preachers. And yet the only objective conclusion any well-informed and open-minded person can come to is that they are all correct. There never has been--and I submit that there never will be--a book to equal, much less surpass, the glory and the grandeur and the accuracy of the KJV. I would almost be willing to assert that it is one of the two greatest blessings that the God of heaven ever bestowed on his born-again earthbound people, and I would say the only one that surpasses it would be the existence of the church itself. It seems to me that it has been a tree of life for four hundred years now, a source of spiritual sustenance and strength and correction and joy. And when I stop and think about everything that the KJV has saved God’s people from and what it has saved them to, I must agree with Charles Hodge that the only way to logically account for its untold influence over the past four centuries is to acknowledge that it is what it claims to be: the Word of God.
I would not worship the ark, but the God of the ark. Even so with the KJV. And so this essay is an effort to show how through God’s providence it came into being over a period of centuries, and how the many versions that have come along since pale by comparison.
Three giant things happened to make it possible for the KJV to come into existence, and this paper is an effort to trace the three. The first is the development of the English language itself. By 1600, English had developed into the most versatile, utilitarian language on earth. It was then a language capable of expressing all the subtleties and nuances, as well as the concrete detail, that are contained in the original languages. The second thing that happened was the advancement of a broader base of learning and scholarship in England itself. During the Middle Ages, no one in England studied Greek or Hebrew and they were practically unknown. But this changed by 1550 or so. Up until that time, the Greek and Hebrew scholarship needed to accurately translate the Bible into English simply did not exist. And the third thing was a great change in the political and religious atmosphere in England. For centuries the state church in England frowned on and even forbade the translation of scripture into the native tongue. That is almost impossible for us to believe, but true nevertheless. But by the time James I took the throne in England, this ungodly attitude had been overcome too, and the door of opportunity was opened for the king to sanction a group of about fifty of the world’s greatest scholars to translate the Bible in painstaking and minute detail into English, which was then at the height of its power and beauty. It was to say the least a propitious convergence.
1.
Our story begins in 1066 A.D. The Norman Conquest took place that year in England, and from then on for roughly three hundred years, French was the language spoken among the learned in England. In schools, in parliament, in the courts and in the palace, French was the chic language. Strangely enough, during this entire period of three centuries, serious scholarship was written in Latin. English, such as it was, was only spoken among the commoners and the illiterate. So, the English spoke French and wrote in Latin. Weird, isn’t it? During this entire period, the only translations of the Bible were in French.
Finally, in about 1350 or so, English once again won out over French to become the spoken language, but it was Middle English, the language of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This meant that Old English versions of scripture would be unintelligible to these speakers of English. Of course, the old French versions would be useless too.
It was at this time, however, that God put it into the heart of John Wycliffe to render the scriptures into his native English, again Middle English at this time. It is almost impossible for us to conceive how radical an idea this was. Wycliffe was also a radical because he believed that the Bible, not the Church or Catholic tradition, was man’s supreme spiritual authority. He tried to make the Bible available to the English in their native tongue, but he was hampered. He was not a scholar of Greek or Hebrew and he worked alone or nearly alone. He translated from the Latin version of the Bible, so his version of scripture is just a translation of a translation. Wycliffe never finished the whole Bible, and what he did produce was often stiff and awkward, sometimes unintelligible and even nonsensical from his sticking too close to the Latin syntax. But he gave us some jewels which made it into the KJV over two hundred years later: first fruits, strait gate, peradventure, son of perdition, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord, and the deep things of God. These come from Wycliffe’s incomplete version of the Bible, around 1380. But don’t forget that this is before the invention of the printing press, and thus only the rich could afford the hand-written manuscripts.
Now, let me point out something very interesting about this particular period. Preachers and writers during these times would usually give their own English version of any text they quoted. They did the best they could at the time, because there was not as yet a commonly received translation in English. In the sermons that have come down to us from this period, no two renderings of any Biblical text are ever alike. Not even Wycliffe himself made use of his own versions all the time. I would point out that since there was not any one standard English Bible then, there were too many versions then! Each man had his own version, so to speak. And I would also point out that the situation has almost gone back to that today, in 2011. In other words, we’ve almost gone back to the dark ages! There were too many versions then (because each man made up his own) and there are too many versions now because we have discarded the one standard English Bible!
Wycliffe barely made it under the wire, because in 1409 the Constitutions of Oxford were passed under Archbishop Arundal. They made it illegal to translate or even read any part of the Bible in the English vernacular. Because of this, the next man in our story had to do his work outside of England, and it eventually cost him his life. This is William Tyndale, born in 1494, died 1536. Tyndale translated into Modern English. This is in the 1530’s. (Remember, the KJV is in Modern English, and this proves that once again.)
Tyndale was first and foremost a linguist (He was an expert in seven languages!), and he was the first to translate from the Hebrew and Greek originals. He was also superior to Wycliffe in that he maintained a strict fidelity to the actual words of the original. He even coined new English words to exactly translate the original--words like intercession, atonement, and passover. But Tyndale also had to work largely alone, and under extreme pressure: what he was doing was treason and heresy! He never finished the entire Bible, only about half. His New Testament was smuggled into England in spite of the fact that it was illegal. The people of England were getting a taste of the word of God in English and they were liking it! Also, Tyndale’s fidelity to literal translation, and his linguistic expertise, gave us many more gems that also made their way into the KJV: be not weary in well doing; my brother’s keeper; the salt of the earth; the signs of the times; a law unto themselves; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak; fight the good fight; with God all things are possible; the patience of Job; O ye of little faith; give us this day our daily bread; in him we live and move and have our being.
Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. You may ask what motivated this man to do what he did at such a cost. I will answer out of his own mouth. One day he told a Catholic priest that his desire was “to cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” That was Tyndale’s heart and soul and to that lofty and godly goal he gave his life.
Tyndale really laid the groundwork for the men who would produce the KJV. But other versions came along first.
In 1535, Miles Coverdale produced the first complete English Bible. He had served as an assistant under Tyndale, but he knew very little Greek or Hebrew. His version of the Bible is somewhat smoother than Tyndale’s, but nowhere near the KJV. However, Coverdale passed along the following to the KJV itself: the valley of the shadow of death, thou anointest my head with oil, baptized into his death, tender mercies, lovingkindness, and respect of persons. Two years later, in 1537, Thomas Matthew produced a complete Bible, called the Matthew’s Bible. It is in the same general category as Coverdale’s Bible, but they are a significant step in the right political direction. Both of these Bibles received the king’s licensure, a pretty tremendous thing at the time.
The next two Bibles in our story are kin because they were produced by clerics within the Church of England in its effort to produce a Bible to be read in their churches. These are the Great Bible (1539) and the Bishops’ Bible (1568). The Bishops’ Bible, as its name declares, was the work of eight bishops, plus some others, translating sections and with little or no communication between them during translation. Here is what the Encyclopedia Brittanica has to say about the Bishops’ Bible:
“The detached and piecemeal way in which the revision had been carried out naturally caused certain inequalities in the execution of the work. The different parts of the Bible vary considerably in merit…most of the changes made in the Old Testament have been condemned as arbitrary and at variance with the exact sense of the Hebrew text.”
And this of course shows why the KJV is superior to these Bibles as well.
The last Bible in our survey is the Geneva Bible and it came along in 1560, eight years before the Bishops’ Bible. It was produced in Calvin’s Geneva, and thus its name. This was probably the most successful Bible prior to the KJV. Its popularity is part of what the editors of the Bishops’ Bible were reacting against in 1568. But the official endorsement of the Bishops’ Bible did not make it more influential than the Geneva Bible, which is more excellent in form and content. It was the first to divide the text into numbered verses and most scholars agree that the Geneva Bible is superior to all other sixteenth century Bibles in accuracy and smoothness. It gave the KJV translators the following: smite them hip and thigh, vanity of vanities, my cup runneth over, except a man be born again, and comfort ye, comfort ye my people. However, this Bible was the work of three men in the congregation at Geneva, whereas the KJV is the work of around fifty. In the multitude of counselors there is safety.
2.
The circumstances surrounding the authorization and translation of the KJV prove that it was an act of benevolence of Almighty God that it ever came into existence at all.
For years and years there had been bitter tension in the Church of England between the high church faction and the Puritans who wished to purify it of its Catholic trappings. The high church Anglicans wouldn’t have it. So when James I took the throne, the Puritans sent him a petition of their requests and the king met them at Hampton Court in January of 1604. He summarily rejected all of their requests and in a desperate last ditch effort they requested a new translation of the Bible. Amazingly the king granted their request. This may be because he didn’t like the popular Geneva Bible and maybe he thought he was insulting their favorite Bible. I don’t know. But I do know that God can move the heart of an English king to get His word into the final form He wants it in.
The next miraculous thing is the choice of translators. The sheer number of them is unprecedented and their linguistic and theological expertise is unparalleled. I seriously doubt that any group of fifty men alive now could compete with them in knowledge of languages. It is also strange that the King and his Bishop chose men from both sides of the Anglican Church, both high church men and Puritans and everything in between. Who would have ever expected such a spirit of fair-mindedness in an English Sovereign?
At this point, I quote Leland Ryken, author of The Legacy of the King James Bible. He lists four surprises in the choice of the translators. I quote only the first three.
1. Even though the project was born in a spirit of religious and political contentiousness, the translators were not chosen on the basis of their religious leanings (other than that all were members of the Church of England). All factions of the English religious scene were well represented.
2. The translators were chosen solely on the basis of their scholarly ability, and the list is a roll call of the best scholars in Hebrew, Greek, and biblical knowledge. Given the religious contentiousness of the times, it is surprising that the translators were chosen for scholarly ability rather than known religious viewpoint.
3. Even though the translators were chosen because of their scholarly and academic stature, all but one were also ordained members of the Church of England. In other words, the translators were not only scholars but also clerics.
Finally, the process these men used to do their work places them far above anything that had come before them. Like Tyndale, they were totally dedicated to an exact reproduction of the original, including concrete language and figurative language. Thus they reproduced the imagery and poetry and symbolism contained in the original languages. Their principles of translation were unimpeachable.
The forty-seven scholars were divided into six committees, and here’s how Leland Ryken describes their methods:
1. Individual members of the six committees worked by themselves on a block of assigned biblical material.
2. These scholars met regularly with other team members; variations were negotiated, and eventually an agreed-upon version was codified.
3. When completed, books of the Bible were passed on to all the other committees for review. This means the entire Bible was perused by every translator.
4. Committees could send recommendations for change to the original committee, and if no agreement resulted, the disputed details would be saved for meetings of the leaders of the six committees.
5. There was always the option of submitting difficult questions to experts beyond the translation team.
6. Eventually the entire proposed Bible was sent to the three translation heads, and this General Committee of Review, with members drawn from each committee, determined the final version.
So we see that the KJV was the combined effort of forty-seven of the best scholarly and biblical minds on earth at the time, something that cannot be said of any previous translation, nor of any subsequent translation. The whole thing is just unheard of. Most literary scholars consider the literary excellence of the KJV to be little short of miraculous. In fact it is often called the only literary masterpiece ever to have been produced by a committee. It amazes scholars and it amazes me. I think the people who are not amazed by it are those who have never read it and are unfamiliar with it.
Now, I would plainly ask if I should ever expect such learning and spirituality to be brought to bear upon Biblical translation in modern times. Should I? It is practically preposterous. Here were these fifty scholars with no particular ax to grind, just doing what they in their learning did best. Education in the intervening four hundred years has so watered scholarship and language down that modern folks can’t even stand to read Milton or Shakespeare, and most academic writing consists not in literary or poetic scholarship, but in the most absurd propaganda aimed at desensitizing the reader. (You may just have to trust me on that one.)
I would also point out, with love and kindness, the ridiculousness of telling laymen that they need to learn Greek and Hebrew in order to properly interpret the Bible. It is so illogical as to be almost laughable. Look what I have just told you. That great work has been done for us by the translators in 1611! This is how God got us the Bible in perfect English. Also, how long would it take an average guy to master the Greek and Hebrew and Latin and English as well as those men? How long? It is vanity and foolishness to consider such a thing. God has done that work for us through the KJV translators, and again I say it may be one of the greatest gifts God ever gave us!
3.
The King James Bible reigned supreme for over three hundred years. However, by the middle of the nineteenth century the so-called Higher Criticism was busy eating away at the very heart of proper Biblical interpretation. Westcott and Hort, assisted by Lucifer himself, tried to destroy the very Greek and Hebrew text that resulted in the KJV: the text with which 90% of the extant manuscripts agree. Darwinian evolution was overthrowing the faith of multiplied millions and psychology and psychiatry were making a mockery and a bawdy tale of the inner workings of the human soul and mind. By this time philosophy had almost completely detached itself from any sure moorings of actual observable reality and was casting its fruitless nets further and further into the fog and murk of pure speculation. The ideals that resulted from this anti-philosophical philosophy led the modern world straight as an arrow to humanism, communism, pragmatism, and the Third Reich. And within the realm of ethics, any and all adherence to an absolute morality was cast to the winds of relativity and the whims of depraved human thoughts and feelings. To such a degree that almost all freshmen in college now believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth. They are, of course, too blinded and benumbed to understand that the statement There is no such thing as absolute truth is itself a statement of absolute truth.
This is the spiritual and intellectual quagmire from which the modern translations of the Bible have sprung. I ask you in all sincerity: Are they to be compared with the KJV? Can they be trusted? I once heard Brother Ted Huneycutt say, “If you start with a mess, you’ll end up with a mess.” He was talking about farming. I submit that the same is true in scholarly and biblical studies. And all I have said so far is describing the situation in the late 1800’s. Things have gotten far worse since then, wouldn’t you agree? Men are now producing Bibles who do not believe in the deity of Christ, or in the virgin birth, or in the substitutionary death of Christ, nor the human depravity that Christ’s death conquered. Almost none of them believe that the death of Christ actually in reality accomplished anything; they believe only in a potential atonement. That Christ could have died and no men be saved. And for over a hundred years now, men have been producing Bibles who do not even believe in the Trinity.
Is it even to be considered that their Bibles would compare to the KJV? I ask again, Can they be trusted? There are at present over 200 English versions of the Bible, and I say again that the Lord cannot be the author of such widely disseminated confusion.
As I have said, the KJV is an essentially literal translation, in which the words of the original were translated literally into the English, along with all the poetic and rhetorical devices included in the original. Thus we have the richness and depth, what I often call the layers of meaning, of the KJV. But now there are two distinct modes of translation that are very common. The first of these is called dynamic equivalent translation and the second is called colloquial translation. Most of the present day bible translations fit into one of these two categories. And the few which do not usually start with corrupt manuscripts.
According to Dr. Ryken, dynamic equivalence translations “change details of the original biblical text into something equivalent in modern life.” He later describes three practices of such translators:
-Omitting words found in the original text (for example, dropping metaphors and other figurative language).
-Substituting words or phrases for what is in the original text, usually accompanied by claims that the substitute formulations express the same meaning as theoriginal words.
-Adding commentary to what is found in the original text.
Such faulty practices would obviously produce an inferior text, a text that would lack the concrete detail and the full meaning of the original, and would probably include the editor’s own opinions on what the text means. None of this was allowed or tolerated by the KJV translators.
And the second translation mode is even worse. Modern colloquial translations seek to remove from the bible all literary language. They want the bible in the informal language we speak every day. They want it to sound like the newspaper or the conversation you might hear at the bus stop. They think this a great improvement.
Incredible, isn’t it? It reminds me of the students at Ouachita Baptist University when I went there in the early 80’s. They would bow their head at the table and address their prayer to daddy. I shuddered then and I shudder now. The bible in its original form is a very literary work. The Greek dramatist Aristophanes once said, “High thoughts must have high language.” It is contrary to all the principles of rhetoric to express lofty ideas in informal language, and that is what the KJV translators knew. As Dr. Ryken says, “A Bible translation that sounds like the daily newspaper is given the same level of attention and credence as the daily newspaper.” And he’s right.
But we might as well admit that the popularity of the KJV is on the wane. It is no longer the best selling bible; it is third on the list. And with the loss of the KJV we will also lose our reverence for the word of God. How can anyone believe in the authority of the Bible anymore, when they don’t even know what a bible is? If there are three or four hundred different bibles, how can I have true respect for any of them? I am afraid that Satan has pulled off his ultimate deception. And with this deception, he has accomplished another great feat, and that is to keep the average person in America almost as ignorant of bible teaching as if he had no bible at all. Almost all English teachers, in college or high school, know that the average student nowadays doesn’t have any biblical knowledge at all and thus cannot grasp the biblical allusions and references in the world’s great literature.
It’s bad, brethren. I called Brother Harold Stumbaugh a few weeks ago and talked to him about this presentation. He told me then that he was fairly sure that he would be the only preacher in Russellville, Arkansas reading from the KJV the next Sunday. I am afraid he might have been right. It’s to the point now where anything, and I mean anything, passes for a Bible. As evidence to support that statement I tell you the following story.
Three or four years ago, I was teaching away to my sophomores. As I was walking along the aisle, I saw a magazine on Breanna Evan’s desk. I walked by her desk and picked it up. I said, “Breanna, you know you can’t read a magazine during my class.” Then I walked back, threw it on my desk, and went on about my business.
I’ll say this for Breanna. She didn’t say anything to me until after class. She waited patiently until class was over and then came up to my desk and stood politely.
“Yes, Breanna, may I help you?” I said.
“Mr. Harvey,” she said, “that’s not a magazine. It’s a bible.”
And lo and behold it was! At least by modern standards. It was called Revolve and it was the complete New Testament in the New Century Version, published by Thomas Nelson. I have a copy here today for you to see, because I didn’t think you would believe it if you didn’t see it.
And that’s not the worst of it. I also have here a bible that is actually in the form of a graphic novel. In other words, it’s a comic book. Here it is.
I close with Romans 10:17. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” The faith spoken of in this verse is not the gift of faith we read of in Galatians 5. That faith comes through immediate Holy Spirit regeneration. The faith spoken of in Romans 10:17 is gospel faith, the faith of Jesus Christ, the entire body of doctrinal and practical truths contained in scripture. So gospel faith comes through hearing the gospel and hearing by the word of God! Now, I submit that if you are reading a watered down, colloquial version of the Bible, with all the heart and soul of God’s truth removed from it, you will wind up with a faith that is equally watered down!!! If faith cometh by hearing and what you are hearing is a magazine, you will have the faith equivalent to a magazine. If faith cometh by hearing and you are hearing a comic book, you will have the faith equivalent to a comic book.
We may be the only folks in America standing up for the KJV, but stand we must! We must not allow the congregations under our care to get their faith from a magazine or a comic book, or even a lesser version of the Bible. We must insist on the King James Version so that their faith will not be insipid and weak, but be hearty, strong and vibrant. Because I am afraid that only that kind of rock-solid faith will preserve us in the post-Christian culture we live in--the post Christian culture we have ourselves produced by discarding the greatest book in the history of the world.
Margaret Crook, The Bible and Its Literary Associations.
“The noblest monument of English prose.”
John Livingston Lowes.
“The closer the Bible is brought to the…writing the American masses are now accustomed to, the farther it must depart from the language of Shakespeare and Milton. This is an age of prose, not of poetry, and [a modern translation] is a prose Bible, while the KJV is poetic one.”
Dwight MacDonald, The Bible in Modern Undress.
_________________________
These are the opinions of four people on the might and majesty of the King James Version of the Bible. Note that these folks were not preachers. And yet the only objective conclusion any well-informed and open-minded person can come to is that they are all correct. There never has been--and I submit that there never will be--a book to equal, much less surpass, the glory and the grandeur and the accuracy of the KJV. I would almost be willing to assert that it is one of the two greatest blessings that the God of heaven ever bestowed on his born-again earthbound people, and I would say the only one that surpasses it would be the existence of the church itself. It seems to me that it has been a tree of life for four hundred years now, a source of spiritual sustenance and strength and correction and joy. And when I stop and think about everything that the KJV has saved God’s people from and what it has saved them to, I must agree with Charles Hodge that the only way to logically account for its untold influence over the past four centuries is to acknowledge that it is what it claims to be: the Word of God.
I would not worship the ark, but the God of the ark. Even so with the KJV. And so this essay is an effort to show how through God’s providence it came into being over a period of centuries, and how the many versions that have come along since pale by comparison.
Three giant things happened to make it possible for the KJV to come into existence, and this paper is an effort to trace the three. The first is the development of the English language itself. By 1600, English had developed into the most versatile, utilitarian language on earth. It was then a language capable of expressing all the subtleties and nuances, as well as the concrete detail, that are contained in the original languages. The second thing that happened was the advancement of a broader base of learning and scholarship in England itself. During the Middle Ages, no one in England studied Greek or Hebrew and they were practically unknown. But this changed by 1550 or so. Up until that time, the Greek and Hebrew scholarship needed to accurately translate the Bible into English simply did not exist. And the third thing was a great change in the political and religious atmosphere in England. For centuries the state church in England frowned on and even forbade the translation of scripture into the native tongue. That is almost impossible for us to believe, but true nevertheless. But by the time James I took the throne in England, this ungodly attitude had been overcome too, and the door of opportunity was opened for the king to sanction a group of about fifty of the world’s greatest scholars to translate the Bible in painstaking and minute detail into English, which was then at the height of its power and beauty. It was to say the least a propitious convergence.
1.
Our story begins in 1066 A.D. The Norman Conquest took place that year in England, and from then on for roughly three hundred years, French was the language spoken among the learned in England. In schools, in parliament, in the courts and in the palace, French was the chic language. Strangely enough, during this entire period of three centuries, serious scholarship was written in Latin. English, such as it was, was only spoken among the commoners and the illiterate. So, the English spoke French and wrote in Latin. Weird, isn’t it? During this entire period, the only translations of the Bible were in French.
Finally, in about 1350 or so, English once again won out over French to become the spoken language, but it was Middle English, the language of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This meant that Old English versions of scripture would be unintelligible to these speakers of English. Of course, the old French versions would be useless too.
It was at this time, however, that God put it into the heart of John Wycliffe to render the scriptures into his native English, again Middle English at this time. It is almost impossible for us to conceive how radical an idea this was. Wycliffe was also a radical because he believed that the Bible, not the Church or Catholic tradition, was man’s supreme spiritual authority. He tried to make the Bible available to the English in their native tongue, but he was hampered. He was not a scholar of Greek or Hebrew and he worked alone or nearly alone. He translated from the Latin version of the Bible, so his version of scripture is just a translation of a translation. Wycliffe never finished the whole Bible, and what he did produce was often stiff and awkward, sometimes unintelligible and even nonsensical from his sticking too close to the Latin syntax. But he gave us some jewels which made it into the KJV over two hundred years later: first fruits, strait gate, peradventure, son of perdition, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord, and the deep things of God. These come from Wycliffe’s incomplete version of the Bible, around 1380. But don’t forget that this is before the invention of the printing press, and thus only the rich could afford the hand-written manuscripts.
Now, let me point out something very interesting about this particular period. Preachers and writers during these times would usually give their own English version of any text they quoted. They did the best they could at the time, because there was not as yet a commonly received translation in English. In the sermons that have come down to us from this period, no two renderings of any Biblical text are ever alike. Not even Wycliffe himself made use of his own versions all the time. I would point out that since there was not any one standard English Bible then, there were too many versions then! Each man had his own version, so to speak. And I would also point out that the situation has almost gone back to that today, in 2011. In other words, we’ve almost gone back to the dark ages! There were too many versions then (because each man made up his own) and there are too many versions now because we have discarded the one standard English Bible!
Wycliffe barely made it under the wire, because in 1409 the Constitutions of Oxford were passed under Archbishop Arundal. They made it illegal to translate or even read any part of the Bible in the English vernacular. Because of this, the next man in our story had to do his work outside of England, and it eventually cost him his life. This is William Tyndale, born in 1494, died 1536. Tyndale translated into Modern English. This is in the 1530’s. (Remember, the KJV is in Modern English, and this proves that once again.)
Tyndale was first and foremost a linguist (He was an expert in seven languages!), and he was the first to translate from the Hebrew and Greek originals. He was also superior to Wycliffe in that he maintained a strict fidelity to the actual words of the original. He even coined new English words to exactly translate the original--words like intercession, atonement, and passover. But Tyndale also had to work largely alone, and under extreme pressure: what he was doing was treason and heresy! He never finished the entire Bible, only about half. His New Testament was smuggled into England in spite of the fact that it was illegal. The people of England were getting a taste of the word of God in English and they were liking it! Also, Tyndale’s fidelity to literal translation, and his linguistic expertise, gave us many more gems that also made their way into the KJV: be not weary in well doing; my brother’s keeper; the salt of the earth; the signs of the times; a law unto themselves; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak; fight the good fight; with God all things are possible; the patience of Job; O ye of little faith; give us this day our daily bread; in him we live and move and have our being.
Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. You may ask what motivated this man to do what he did at such a cost. I will answer out of his own mouth. One day he told a Catholic priest that his desire was “to cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” That was Tyndale’s heart and soul and to that lofty and godly goal he gave his life.
Tyndale really laid the groundwork for the men who would produce the KJV. But other versions came along first.
In 1535, Miles Coverdale produced the first complete English Bible. He had served as an assistant under Tyndale, but he knew very little Greek or Hebrew. His version of the Bible is somewhat smoother than Tyndale’s, but nowhere near the KJV. However, Coverdale passed along the following to the KJV itself: the valley of the shadow of death, thou anointest my head with oil, baptized into his death, tender mercies, lovingkindness, and respect of persons. Two years later, in 1537, Thomas Matthew produced a complete Bible, called the Matthew’s Bible. It is in the same general category as Coverdale’s Bible, but they are a significant step in the right political direction. Both of these Bibles received the king’s licensure, a pretty tremendous thing at the time.
The next two Bibles in our story are kin because they were produced by clerics within the Church of England in its effort to produce a Bible to be read in their churches. These are the Great Bible (1539) and the Bishops’ Bible (1568). The Bishops’ Bible, as its name declares, was the work of eight bishops, plus some others, translating sections and with little or no communication between them during translation. Here is what the Encyclopedia Brittanica has to say about the Bishops’ Bible:
“The detached and piecemeal way in which the revision had been carried out naturally caused certain inequalities in the execution of the work. The different parts of the Bible vary considerably in merit…most of the changes made in the Old Testament have been condemned as arbitrary and at variance with the exact sense of the Hebrew text.”
And this of course shows why the KJV is superior to these Bibles as well.
The last Bible in our survey is the Geneva Bible and it came along in 1560, eight years before the Bishops’ Bible. It was produced in Calvin’s Geneva, and thus its name. This was probably the most successful Bible prior to the KJV. Its popularity is part of what the editors of the Bishops’ Bible were reacting against in 1568. But the official endorsement of the Bishops’ Bible did not make it more influential than the Geneva Bible, which is more excellent in form and content. It was the first to divide the text into numbered verses and most scholars agree that the Geneva Bible is superior to all other sixteenth century Bibles in accuracy and smoothness. It gave the KJV translators the following: smite them hip and thigh, vanity of vanities, my cup runneth over, except a man be born again, and comfort ye, comfort ye my people. However, this Bible was the work of three men in the congregation at Geneva, whereas the KJV is the work of around fifty. In the multitude of counselors there is safety.
2.
The circumstances surrounding the authorization and translation of the KJV prove that it was an act of benevolence of Almighty God that it ever came into existence at all.
For years and years there had been bitter tension in the Church of England between the high church faction and the Puritans who wished to purify it of its Catholic trappings. The high church Anglicans wouldn’t have it. So when James I took the throne, the Puritans sent him a petition of their requests and the king met them at Hampton Court in January of 1604. He summarily rejected all of their requests and in a desperate last ditch effort they requested a new translation of the Bible. Amazingly the king granted their request. This may be because he didn’t like the popular Geneva Bible and maybe he thought he was insulting their favorite Bible. I don’t know. But I do know that God can move the heart of an English king to get His word into the final form He wants it in.
The next miraculous thing is the choice of translators. The sheer number of them is unprecedented and their linguistic and theological expertise is unparalleled. I seriously doubt that any group of fifty men alive now could compete with them in knowledge of languages. It is also strange that the King and his Bishop chose men from both sides of the Anglican Church, both high church men and Puritans and everything in between. Who would have ever expected such a spirit of fair-mindedness in an English Sovereign?
At this point, I quote Leland Ryken, author of The Legacy of the King James Bible. He lists four surprises in the choice of the translators. I quote only the first three.
1. Even though the project was born in a spirit of religious and political contentiousness, the translators were not chosen on the basis of their religious leanings (other than that all were members of the Church of England). All factions of the English religious scene were well represented.
2. The translators were chosen solely on the basis of their scholarly ability, and the list is a roll call of the best scholars in Hebrew, Greek, and biblical knowledge. Given the religious contentiousness of the times, it is surprising that the translators were chosen for scholarly ability rather than known religious viewpoint.
3. Even though the translators were chosen because of their scholarly and academic stature, all but one were also ordained members of the Church of England. In other words, the translators were not only scholars but also clerics.
Finally, the process these men used to do their work places them far above anything that had come before them. Like Tyndale, they were totally dedicated to an exact reproduction of the original, including concrete language and figurative language. Thus they reproduced the imagery and poetry and symbolism contained in the original languages. Their principles of translation were unimpeachable.
The forty-seven scholars were divided into six committees, and here’s how Leland Ryken describes their methods:
1. Individual members of the six committees worked by themselves on a block of assigned biblical material.
2. These scholars met regularly with other team members; variations were negotiated, and eventually an agreed-upon version was codified.
3. When completed, books of the Bible were passed on to all the other committees for review. This means the entire Bible was perused by every translator.
4. Committees could send recommendations for change to the original committee, and if no agreement resulted, the disputed details would be saved for meetings of the leaders of the six committees.
5. There was always the option of submitting difficult questions to experts beyond the translation team.
6. Eventually the entire proposed Bible was sent to the three translation heads, and this General Committee of Review, with members drawn from each committee, determined the final version.
So we see that the KJV was the combined effort of forty-seven of the best scholarly and biblical minds on earth at the time, something that cannot be said of any previous translation, nor of any subsequent translation. The whole thing is just unheard of. Most literary scholars consider the literary excellence of the KJV to be little short of miraculous. In fact it is often called the only literary masterpiece ever to have been produced by a committee. It amazes scholars and it amazes me. I think the people who are not amazed by it are those who have never read it and are unfamiliar with it.
Now, I would plainly ask if I should ever expect such learning and spirituality to be brought to bear upon Biblical translation in modern times. Should I? It is practically preposterous. Here were these fifty scholars with no particular ax to grind, just doing what they in their learning did best. Education in the intervening four hundred years has so watered scholarship and language down that modern folks can’t even stand to read Milton or Shakespeare, and most academic writing consists not in literary or poetic scholarship, but in the most absurd propaganda aimed at desensitizing the reader. (You may just have to trust me on that one.)
I would also point out, with love and kindness, the ridiculousness of telling laymen that they need to learn Greek and Hebrew in order to properly interpret the Bible. It is so illogical as to be almost laughable. Look what I have just told you. That great work has been done for us by the translators in 1611! This is how God got us the Bible in perfect English. Also, how long would it take an average guy to master the Greek and Hebrew and Latin and English as well as those men? How long? It is vanity and foolishness to consider such a thing. God has done that work for us through the KJV translators, and again I say it may be one of the greatest gifts God ever gave us!
3.
The King James Bible reigned supreme for over three hundred years. However, by the middle of the nineteenth century the so-called Higher Criticism was busy eating away at the very heart of proper Biblical interpretation. Westcott and Hort, assisted by Lucifer himself, tried to destroy the very Greek and Hebrew text that resulted in the KJV: the text with which 90% of the extant manuscripts agree. Darwinian evolution was overthrowing the faith of multiplied millions and psychology and psychiatry were making a mockery and a bawdy tale of the inner workings of the human soul and mind. By this time philosophy had almost completely detached itself from any sure moorings of actual observable reality and was casting its fruitless nets further and further into the fog and murk of pure speculation. The ideals that resulted from this anti-philosophical philosophy led the modern world straight as an arrow to humanism, communism, pragmatism, and the Third Reich. And within the realm of ethics, any and all adherence to an absolute morality was cast to the winds of relativity and the whims of depraved human thoughts and feelings. To such a degree that almost all freshmen in college now believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth. They are, of course, too blinded and benumbed to understand that the statement There is no such thing as absolute truth is itself a statement of absolute truth.
This is the spiritual and intellectual quagmire from which the modern translations of the Bible have sprung. I ask you in all sincerity: Are they to be compared with the KJV? Can they be trusted? I once heard Brother Ted Huneycutt say, “If you start with a mess, you’ll end up with a mess.” He was talking about farming. I submit that the same is true in scholarly and biblical studies. And all I have said so far is describing the situation in the late 1800’s. Things have gotten far worse since then, wouldn’t you agree? Men are now producing Bibles who do not believe in the deity of Christ, or in the virgin birth, or in the substitutionary death of Christ, nor the human depravity that Christ’s death conquered. Almost none of them believe that the death of Christ actually in reality accomplished anything; they believe only in a potential atonement. That Christ could have died and no men be saved. And for over a hundred years now, men have been producing Bibles who do not even believe in the Trinity.
Is it even to be considered that their Bibles would compare to the KJV? I ask again, Can they be trusted? There are at present over 200 English versions of the Bible, and I say again that the Lord cannot be the author of such widely disseminated confusion.
As I have said, the KJV is an essentially literal translation, in which the words of the original were translated literally into the English, along with all the poetic and rhetorical devices included in the original. Thus we have the richness and depth, what I often call the layers of meaning, of the KJV. But now there are two distinct modes of translation that are very common. The first of these is called dynamic equivalent translation and the second is called colloquial translation. Most of the present day bible translations fit into one of these two categories. And the few which do not usually start with corrupt manuscripts.
According to Dr. Ryken, dynamic equivalence translations “change details of the original biblical text into something equivalent in modern life.” He later describes three practices of such translators:
-Omitting words found in the original text (for example, dropping metaphors and other figurative language).
-Substituting words or phrases for what is in the original text, usually accompanied by claims that the substitute formulations express the same meaning as theoriginal words.
-Adding commentary to what is found in the original text.
Such faulty practices would obviously produce an inferior text, a text that would lack the concrete detail and the full meaning of the original, and would probably include the editor’s own opinions on what the text means. None of this was allowed or tolerated by the KJV translators.
And the second translation mode is even worse. Modern colloquial translations seek to remove from the bible all literary language. They want the bible in the informal language we speak every day. They want it to sound like the newspaper or the conversation you might hear at the bus stop. They think this a great improvement.
Incredible, isn’t it? It reminds me of the students at Ouachita Baptist University when I went there in the early 80’s. They would bow their head at the table and address their prayer to daddy. I shuddered then and I shudder now. The bible in its original form is a very literary work. The Greek dramatist Aristophanes once said, “High thoughts must have high language.” It is contrary to all the principles of rhetoric to express lofty ideas in informal language, and that is what the KJV translators knew. As Dr. Ryken says, “A Bible translation that sounds like the daily newspaper is given the same level of attention and credence as the daily newspaper.” And he’s right.
But we might as well admit that the popularity of the KJV is on the wane. It is no longer the best selling bible; it is third on the list. And with the loss of the KJV we will also lose our reverence for the word of God. How can anyone believe in the authority of the Bible anymore, when they don’t even know what a bible is? If there are three or four hundred different bibles, how can I have true respect for any of them? I am afraid that Satan has pulled off his ultimate deception. And with this deception, he has accomplished another great feat, and that is to keep the average person in America almost as ignorant of bible teaching as if he had no bible at all. Almost all English teachers, in college or high school, know that the average student nowadays doesn’t have any biblical knowledge at all and thus cannot grasp the biblical allusions and references in the world’s great literature.
It’s bad, brethren. I called Brother Harold Stumbaugh a few weeks ago and talked to him about this presentation. He told me then that he was fairly sure that he would be the only preacher in Russellville, Arkansas reading from the KJV the next Sunday. I am afraid he might have been right. It’s to the point now where anything, and I mean anything, passes for a Bible. As evidence to support that statement I tell you the following story.
Three or four years ago, I was teaching away to my sophomores. As I was walking along the aisle, I saw a magazine on Breanna Evan’s desk. I walked by her desk and picked it up. I said, “Breanna, you know you can’t read a magazine during my class.” Then I walked back, threw it on my desk, and went on about my business.
I’ll say this for Breanna. She didn’t say anything to me until after class. She waited patiently until class was over and then came up to my desk and stood politely.
“Yes, Breanna, may I help you?” I said.
“Mr. Harvey,” she said, “that’s not a magazine. It’s a bible.”
And lo and behold it was! At least by modern standards. It was called Revolve and it was the complete New Testament in the New Century Version, published by Thomas Nelson. I have a copy here today for you to see, because I didn’t think you would believe it if you didn’t see it.
And that’s not the worst of it. I also have here a bible that is actually in the form of a graphic novel. In other words, it’s a comic book. Here it is.
I close with Romans 10:17. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” The faith spoken of in this verse is not the gift of faith we read of in Galatians 5. That faith comes through immediate Holy Spirit regeneration. The faith spoken of in Romans 10:17 is gospel faith, the faith of Jesus Christ, the entire body of doctrinal and practical truths contained in scripture. So gospel faith comes through hearing the gospel and hearing by the word of God! Now, I submit that if you are reading a watered down, colloquial version of the Bible, with all the heart and soul of God’s truth removed from it, you will wind up with a faith that is equally watered down!!! If faith cometh by hearing and what you are hearing is a magazine, you will have the faith equivalent to a magazine. If faith cometh by hearing and you are hearing a comic book, you will have the faith equivalent to a comic book.
We may be the only folks in America standing up for the KJV, but stand we must! We must not allow the congregations under our care to get their faith from a magazine or a comic book, or even a lesser version of the Bible. We must insist on the King James Version so that their faith will not be insipid and weak, but be hearty, strong and vibrant. Because I am afraid that only that kind of rock-solid faith will preserve us in the post-Christian culture we live in--the post Christian culture we have ourselves produced by discarding the greatest book in the history of the world.