1 Timothy 3:16

Incessant Thread Generation Alert !!!!

Come Back GRANT SWANK !!!!!!!

QUESTION: Which is correct in 1 Timothy 3:16 "God was manifest in the flesh" (KJV) or "He appeared in a body" (NIV)?

NIV - 1 Timothy 3:16 Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.

KJV - 1 Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

Both are correct.

Question: Is anything missing from the New American Bible or the Rheims-Douay?

Answer: Actually, there are many words both added to and missing from these Roman Catholic Bibles.

Adding to Scripture

The New American, Douay/Rheims and other Roman Catholic Bibles add to Scripture.

Old Testament Apocrypha -
The Roman Catholic Old Testament adds uninspired books, which we call Apocrypha, to the Bible, as if it were scripture.

The additions to Esther
Song of the Three Young Children
Bel and the Dragon
Judith
Tobit
Wisdom of Solomon
Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach
I & II Maccabees

Roman Catholic Bibles, from the 300s AD to the present, include these uninspired Alexandrian Egyptian additions to Scripture. It wasn't until 1548 at the Roman Catholic Council of Trent that the Apocrypha was declared to be actual Scripture, in reaction to the Protestant Bibles. Translators of the King James Bible, God’s preserved words in English, were told to include the Apocrypha. But they wrote seven excellent reasons why not to include it in Scripture. Alexander McClure, in his book Translators Revived wrote down these reasons:

Not one of them is in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians and poets of the Old Testament.
Not one of the writers lays any claim to inspiration.
These books were never acknowledged as sacred Scriptures by the Jewish Church, and therefore were never sanctioned by our Lord.
They were not allowed a place among the sacred books, during the first four centuries of the Christian Church.
They contain fabulous statements, and statements which contradict not only the canonical Scriptures, but themselves; as when, in the two Books of Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes is made to die three different deaths in as many different places.
It inculcates doctrines at variance with the Bible, such as prayers for the dead and sinless perfection.
It teaches immoral practices, such as lying, suicide, assassination and magical incantation.

So the translators were careful to separate the Apocrypha from the Bible, putting it in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments, with each page clearly labeled, “Apocrypha.” The last page of II Maccabees, in the 1611 King James reads, “End of Apocrypha.” Then it returns to God’s inspired words in Matthew.

Taking away from Scripture

New Testament -
But the Roman Catholic Bible is a perverted Alexandrian Egyptian Bible, not a preserved Antiochian Bible, like the King James. It is a combination of the heretical Egyptian Bible, including the Alexandrian Apocrypha, and blended to look like the preserved Vaudois Latin scriptures. It omits thousands of words and a number of entire verses.

The Roman Catholic New American Bible (also called the “St. Joseph’s Bible” is very similar, almost identical in New Testament text to many Protestant Bibles

NIV (1973, 1978) and TNIV (the 2002 “Gender-Neutral” revision of the NIV)
English Revised Version (1881,1885) and its USA revision, American Standard (1901)
Revised Standard (1946, 1952) and NRSV (its 1989 “Gender-Neutral” revision of the RSV)
Revisions of the American Standard, such as the New American Standard (1962) and the Living Bible (1971)
Today's English Version
New English and Revised English Bibles
Moffatt, Goodspeed, Wuest, J.B. Phillips and many other Protestant Bibles.

What’s the Difference?

There is a lot added to (the Apocrypha) and taken away from (Alexandrian perversion) the Catholic Bibles. Most modern Protestant Bibles do not contain the Apocrypha, though some do. But there is almost no difference at all between the Roman Catholic New Testament and the modern Protestant perversions. Whichever you choose, ultimately you’re being led down the primrose path of perversion. The only way to completely avoid this “broad way” is to take the narrow path and read the King James Bible.

May God bless you as you read His preserved words in English, the King James Bible.

Question: Do all publishing companies publish "the same" identical King James Bible?

Answer: No. All KJVs are not the same. The best text is the Cambridge KJV. Here's why.

Two Kinds of Changes
As I mentioned before, there have been only two changes in the actual KJV text from 1611 to today: 1) spelling errors corrected and 2) spelling changes made to match changes in the English language itself. Other editions of the KJV, printed by different publishers, have slight differences that are not what the pure King James text says.
Slight Differences

Many publishers, large and small, such as those that made family Bibles between the 1800s and 1900s, did not use the Cambridge text as the standard. These people sometimes spelled a few words differently, or substituted one word for another, such as "always" where the KJV says "alway." (See Numbers 9:16; Deuteronomy 11:1; 2 Kings 8:19, etc.). Of course, the most obvious change in text is the Oxford error: wrongly putting "sins" for "sin" (2 Chronicles 33:19) and "he" for "ye" (Jeremiah 34:16). But even these slight differences in the worst copies of the KJV are far better than the "best" readings in the Alexandrian perversions!

The Best Kind of KJV

The only KJV I completely trust is the Cambridge-type. Those Bibles that use that exact Cambridge text, such as all Cambridge KJV Bibles and the Prophecy Study Bible, are what you want. This is the only way to be sure you have an absolutely correct King James Bible. That's what I use and that's what I recommend.

May God bless you as you read His preserved words in English, the King James Bible.

Question: Has the King James Bible been changed, between 1611 and the present day?

Answer: There have only been two modifications of the King James Bible: correction of printing errors and changes in the English Language itself.

Printing Corrections

Typesetting in the 1600s was a very laborious task. Each letter on each page had to be put into place. Since there are 3,566,480 letters in the Bible, that leaves a lot of room for mistakes. But in 1628, only 27 years after the first editions of the Bible were printed, 72% of the around 400 printing corrections were already accomplished. By 1850 all corrections of printing errors were made (with the exception of two which shall be detailed below).

Changes in the English Language

The King James Bible was originally printed in Gothic type. That means "v" looked like "u," "J" looked like "I," and there was an "s" that appeared in certain words that looked a little like our "f." So "Iefvs" in Gothic type was the same as "Jesus" in Roman type. The Bibles we read now are in Roman type. Changing the type from Gothic to Roman has been labeled by some as a "change," but it really is not. The words themselves were not changed, only the way the letters were written.

But the spelling of words also changed. By the 1800s, "wee" was "we, "fheepe" was "sheep," "sayth" was "saith," and "euill" was "evil." But those spellings are not difficult. You can figure out what the words said, even from a 1611 copy.

Textual Changes

This is a very important point —there was not a single textual change in the King James Bible. But the New King James (NJKV) is a different story. The NKJV is not a true King James Bible. The NKJV publishers used different manuscripts and introduced completely different meanings into their texts. They did not stay with the accurate, preserved meanings of Hebrew and Greek words you find in your King James Bible. They switched words to be what you find in a NIV, NAS or RSV. I will say it again: the King James Bible has no textual changes in any edition, whatsoever.

Two Current Mistakes in Some KJVs

There are actually two single mistakes that were introduced by printers at Oxford University Press over 60 years after the KJV was first printed. They are in 2 Chronicles 33:19, where it says "sins" instead of "sin," and Jeremiah 34:16, where they mistakenly printed "whom he" instead of the correct "whom ye." Both of these were originally translated correctly. But Oxford printers made these two mistakes. Cambridge University Press did not make the printing error. And all Cambridge-type texts have the correct readings. But some publishers misprint one or the other verse in their Bibles. Amazingly, the New King James also has the same Oxford mistake in Jeremiah 34:16!

Put to the Test

In the 1850s, after the typographical corrections and spelling changes were completed in the King James, the American Bible Society wrote *two reports on the present condition of the English Bible. In the second report was this statement:

"[The] English Bible as left by the translators has come down to us unaltered in respect to its text."

The simple fact is that the King James Bible you can purchase in almost any bookstore, allowing for changes in spelling (and possibly the two printing errors), is the same Book of God's preserved words that was printed in 1611. We can thank God for that.

Question: In I Peter 1:24-25, the apostle Peter is quoting Isaiah 40:6-8. But why does it look like he is quoting the Greek Septuagint, and not the Masoretic (Hebrew) verse?

Answer: Peter referenced Isaiah 40. But the so-called "Septuagint" Old Testament, really written after Peter, was actually changed to quote Peter!

The "Greek Septuagint," as you will see in our article, "What is the Septuagint?" really is not what it is claimed to be. It is actually compiled from the "Alexandrian Manuscripts," mainly the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Alexandrinus. These big books, or "codices," were written 100-300 years after the New Testament was written. These so-called "scholars" in Alexandria, Egypt included three things in their codices: The Old Testament, translated into Greek; the Apocrypha (non- inspired books that don't belong in a Bible); and at least parts of the New Testament. Their books, with all three parts, looked like a big Roman Catholic Bible. (This is not a coincidence.)

Since people like Origen were putting the Old Testament into Greek 200 years after the New Testament was written, they already knew what Peter, Paul and other New Testament writers said: They had the New Testament right in front of them!

Origen liked the way Peter referenced Isaiah 40:6-8. So when he came to Isaiah 40, he copied Peter's New Testament words right into the Septuagint Old Testament! So it is not that the Septuagint Old Testament was copied by Peter. The truth is that the Septuagint, written after Peter, copied Peter's style of referring to the Old Testament.

Remember: All the Alexandrian manuscripts, whether New or Old Testament, are a perversion of God's words. They cannot be trusted. But you can trust your King James Bible as God's preserved words in English.

Question: How did God preserve His words to this day?

Answer: God preserved copies of His words down through time, using four main languages He chose for that purpose. All through history, God made several choices as to the languages in which He would communicate His message.

Choice 1: Hebrew
From at least as far back as Abraham (around 2000 BC) to the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, God chose the Semitic languages, especially Hebrew, to communicate to His chosen people. God gave his law in Hebrew to teach men that they were sinners, and in need of a Saviour.

Choice 2: Greek
But in the first century AD, God made a second choice. The main language of the world for three centuries had been Greek. God used that language to give the New Testament for the world to read. And it spread like wildfire.

The devil recognized the huge potential of God's Word in a "world" language, so he moved quickly to counter it. He prepared a fake "Bible" in Alexandria, Egypt. The Old Testament portion is called the "Septuagint" and the New Testament portion is called the "Alexandrian text." This corruption was a "Greek" Bible, but with the poison of the Apocrypha mixed in, made to look like real scripture. The Alexandrian "Bible" also perverted the New Testament, taking out many of God's words and substituting man's ideas. This laid the groundwork for the Satan's plan to spread religious lies, and subvert the true faith.

Choice 3: Old Latin
From about 120 AD until the 1500s, God used a third language to communicate His truths, in addition to Hebrew and Greek. While the first copies of the New Testament in Greek were being made and passed around, God directed other Christians to translate His preserved words into Old Latin. This language was being spoken more and more in Europe, and became an "international" language as Greek had been. The Old Latin Bible was known as the "Vulgate," which means "common Bible." Once again, God's words were spreading, and many Europeans began translating these Old Latin scriptures into their own languages.

The devil responded by preparing a counterfeit "Vulgate" in Rome. By the 300s, the Roman religion claimed to be true Christianity, and a new "Bible" was made from the perverted Alexandrian writings. It included the Apocryphal books that the early church had rejected. But to make it convincing, they also put in some scriptures that were like the preserved Old Latin Bible as well. There were now two Latin "Vulgates," dramatically different from one another. The true Christians knew the difference between the true and the false "Vulgates."

The devil knew what he had to do next. He had to destroy the true Latin Vulgate, and the people who held it so dearly. The Roman Catholic armies hunted down and martyred those who were caught possessing the true Latin Vulgate. But they were never able to completely replace the true Latin Vulgate with the corrupted Roman Catholic Latin Vulgate. God was preserving His words.

Choice 4: English
Around 700-800 AD English, a new "world" language began to develop. God began laying the groundwork to use this language to trigger a massive missionary movement. In the 1500s William Tyndale worked to translate the Bible from the accurate Greek and Hebrew manuscripts that God had so carefully preserved. English-speaking people after him continued the effort to translate and perfect a Bible that matched the ancient scriptures. One of the best of these is the Geneva Bible.

English was a language in the midst of change. But by 1604 God used King James I of England to commission a group of learned men to accumulate scriptures in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and English as well as other languages. Their assignment was to translate God's words into the most accurate English possible. In early 1611 they published the Authorized Version, also known as the King James Bible. From the day it was published, the King James Bible circulated around the world, and missionaries translated Bibles from this precious book.

The devil pulled out all the stops on this one. By the 1800s he had inspired a whole movement to discredit and destroy the King James Bible. Today, we have a multitude of translations that change, remove and add to God's preserved words. But God has always kept the true scriptures in the hands of his people.

In making the four choices of language as described above, God was not trying to indicate that any single language was more expressive or better than another. Rather, He chose these languages because they suited his purpose at a particular time in history to carry out his plan. The choices were God's. Outside of Israel, Hebrew was never a universal language. Ancient Greek is no longer a universal language, nor is Latin. But by guiding the production of a perfect Bible in English, God kept His promise. For our time, in a language read around the world, God preserved His words.

Question: How do I handle professors that don't like to hear "King James only" arguments? They are evaluating using a certain Bible version. They say they'll listen to evidence about other Bible versions, but they do not want the King James mentioned specifically. What do I do?

Answer: The key is to show them how the broad evidence of history tells us which Greek text is correct. It then becomes easy to know which Bible we can trust. First, please remember the simple fact that there are two streams of Bible history. The first is the line that comes straight from the Apostles and people of Antioch. That line has to date 5,321 manuscripts in support of it. It has the broad evidence of history in support of it.

The Broad Evidence of History

This evidence for this stream spans from some of our oldest manuscripts to some of the least ancient. These manuscripts are in agreement with those of the persecuted believers, such as the Vaudois in the French Alps. They received the Scriptures from apostolic groups from Antioch of Syria about AD 120 and finished their translation by AD 157, according to Calvin's successor, Theodore Beza. These manuscripts influenced one of the greatest events in Christian history: the Protestant Reformation.

The Polluted Stream

The other stream comes from questionable sources. About the time of Christ, a Jewish man named Philo decided to blend pagan Greek philosophy with Judaism. The so-called "Christians" who came after him in Alexandria were not much better. Though they talked about "Jesus" and "Christianity," they did not believe that Jesus was God. They also did not believe that the Old Testament detailed literal events. It was a school in this pagan city that decided to write their own copies of the Bible.

The problem is that they changed the Scriptures, while saying they were copying them. They used the heretic Marcion's Lord's Prayer in Luke, for example (see "Is the Lord's Prayer in Your Bible?" From there it goes downhill.

In truth there are only a handful of semi-complete "Bibles" from Alexandria, Egypt. The only other texts from there are literally pieces of paper. The grand total of manuscripts is only 45. Of those 45, only 3 are taken very seriously: the Sinaiticus (Aleph), the Alexandrinus (A) and Vaticanus (B).

But there is a very big problem. It is rare that these three ever agree. Between Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, for example, it is extremely difficult to find just two successive verses that agree.

Look at the Lord's Prayer in Luke again. Between codices Aleph, A [Alexandrinus], B [Vaticanus], C [Ephraemi Rescriptus] and D [Bezae Cantabrigiensis] there is no agreement in 32 out of 45 words. That means these major books only agree in 13 out of 45 words!

A Visual Image
Here's one way to explain the difference between the manuscripts. Imagine a stadium with 5,366 people. 5,321 of them are in harmony, agreeing with one another and enjoying themselves. But there are also 45 other people. These are not like the first. They dislike the crowd around them and slander their words when they can. But they have another problem: they also disagree with each other.

Which group would you rather listen to? The one with people in one accord, or the one that is filled with discord? The one that knows what it is saying, or the one that cannot agree on what they want to say? The answer is obvious.

Where Do the Two Streams Lead?

A tree is known by its fruit. Where, then, do these two streams of Bibles lead?

The Alexandrian manuscripts fell into disuse, and many were relegated to a desert trashcan. A number tried to make the expensive codices better by changing the words to be more like the other stream, but they finally gave up. Those are the many correctors we see in the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

But where do the Alexandrian manuscripts lead? Straight to the Roman Catholic institution. They were used by Constantine with the help of Eusebius. They became the basis of the Apocrypha and many incorrect readings in the Roman Catholic Bible. They were used to dominate and subject true believers under a false religion. This was the Bible of the persecutors.

Alexandrian Bibles are legion. Such are the NIV, NASV, ASV, RV, TEV, GNB, Living, NCV, RSV, NRSV, etc., but also Catholic Bibles as the New American Bible, the Jerusalem and New Jerusalem Bibles.

The Antiochian manuscripts (from which we got the King James Bible) continued to be used and were passed down by faithful Christians from generation to generation. The Vaudois, for example, passed them down faithfully by even having their children memorize whole books of the Bible. These faithful hand-copied little Bibles they could fit in their heavy garments. They were ready to give an answer, literally "in season and out of season"!

And where do the Antiochian manuscripts lead? Straight to the Protestant Reformation. Wesley and writers of the Geneva Bible actually saw the Vaudois as a "pre- Reformation" group, even as the "two witnesses" who were protected by God in Revelation. That is how much they were indebted to these faithful.

Antiochian Bibles are easily recognizable. They are the Bibles of the Reformation. The Reina-Valera (Spanish), Diodati (Italian), and all the other Protestant Bibles published between the 1530s and 1600s. In English they are the Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthew's, Great Bible, Bishops Bible, Geneva and King James.

The fruit, for example, of the King James Bible in English is easily discernible. Look at many English-speaking Protestant denominations that were formed in an effort to get "back to the Bible." The King James Bible was the starting point. The pilgrim Puritans in the USA switched from the Geneva to the King James in their next generation, despite the fact that they had used the Geneva since the 1560s. And ironically, the churches and Christians called "extreme Fundamentalists" and "right-wing extremists" are simply the churches that did not leave the fundamentals.

There are two kinds of churches: those that left their founding doctrines and those that stuck to them. There are also two kinds of Bibles: those that follow corrupt and perverted Alexandrian texts and/or Roman Catholic doctrine, and those that follow the line of preservation through godly and persecuted Christian brethren.

The choice is obvious.

God bless you as you pray about your response to your professors.

Question: I have been reading lately about how the Bible contains quotes from extracanonical texts as in Acts 17:28. Even the Old Testament quotes from rabbinical texts, right? Do you feel that these texts should have been omitted from the canon? Why would Jude quote from "The Assumption of Moses" in Jude 9 and then "The Book of Enoch" in Jude 14 if they are now considered 'apocryphal'?

Answer: I have a fundamental faith regarding the scriptures: God 'superintended' the texts, so that what God wanted in there is in there, and what God didn't want in there isn't. That means that if God through Paul quotes Epimenides in Titus 1:12, and summarizes the writing of Aratus and Cleanthes in Acts 17:28, it's only there because the quote itself states what the Biblical author wanted to say. It does not validate the entire writings of non-inspired authors. The same is true with the apocryphal (kept out of the Canon by God) Assumption of Moses and 2 Enoch. Those words say what the Bible author wanted to say. It does not say that the entire writings are therefore God's words.

May God bless you as you read His preserved words in English, the King James Bible, exactly what God wanted to say.

Question: Why does Gen. 42:25 refer to corn, when corn is a new world crop? Europeans did not know of its existence until the 16th century. Surely that must be a mistranslation by the KJV translators, because the Jews would have not known about corn.

Answer: That is a question most USA citizens would also have. The fact is that the word "corn" comes from a word, meaning "grain" and related to "kernel." In the USA, the Native Americans helped the European settlers plant maiz (pronounced, "maze") that we later called "corn". Here's some of what Webster wrote on this in his 1828 dictionary:

A single seed of certain plants, as wheat, rye, barley and maiz; a grain. It is generally applied to edible seeds, which, when ripe, are hard.
The seeds of certain plants in general, in bulk or quantity. In this sense, the word comprehends all the kinds of grain which constitute the food of men and horses. In Great Britain, corn is generally applied to wheat, rye, oats and barley. In the United States, it has the same general sense, but by custom, it is appropriated to maiz.

Over the years, the residents of the New World used the term corn for maiz (or maize). All maiz is corn, but not all corn is maiz. Therefore, the King James Bible is not talking about our maiz or corn at all. It is talking of different kinds of grain, specifically wheat, rye or barley.

The King James translators made no mistake 102 times in their proper translation "corn." It is the New World citizens who have mistakenly applied our "maiz" to the Biblical "corn."

May God richly bless you as you read and study further into His preserved words in English, the King Jam

Question: Did dead people 'wake up' in the morning according to Isaiah 37:36 in the KJV?

Answer: The King James simply translated the Hebrew exactly. Here is the verse in its entirety:

"Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses."

It is obvious from the context of chapters 36 and 37 that it was Hezekiah's men that discovered the Assyrians dead in their camp. Isaiah did not feel the need to add extra words to state the obvious, and neither did the King James translators.

Question: Why is the doxology of the Lord's prayer ("For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen") found in Matthew, missing in Luke's account of the same in his Gospel?

Answer: One reason God preserved His words, not just His "word" in general is because every single word is very important — to God and to us. When we look at the context of each Scripture, the answer to the differences between Matthew's and Luke's recording of the Lord's prayer becomes clear. Remember as you read that the terms of location and direction (up, down, in to, out of) are very literally true.

The Context of Matthew

The time Matthew quotes Jesus' prayer is during the Sermon on the Mount (recorded in Matthew 5-7). Jesus was speaking to multitudes who came to hear Him. We find this proof in Matthew 5:1-2:

"And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,"

After Jesus spoke what we find in Matthew during this sermon, He, His disciples and a multitude of people descended from the mountain. We find this at the beginning of chapter 8:

"When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him." (Matthew 8:1).

Two chapters later, Jesus commissioned His twelve disciples and called them apostles (Matthew 10:1-42).

The Context of Luke

However it is a different time and place where Jesus said a similar prayer in Luke.

Jesus had already commissioned His twelve apostles in 6:13- 16. That means it is later in time than Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. After this commissioning, the Lord Jesus Christ came down from a mountain (Luke 6:12, 17), not up into a mountain, with His apostles and other followers to a plain to speak to them. In Luke 10:1-24 Jesus Christ commissioned 72 others to heal and preach as well. Then in Luke 11:1, we read these words:

"And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."

Note two differences: 1) Jesus was praying in a certain place, not preaching to a multitude; 2) When He was finished, one of His disciples asked Him directly to teach them how to pray.

The differences between the two occurrences of the "Lord's Prayer" (really the "Disciples' Prayer") are perfectly explained by the fact that they were said on two completely different occasions, with two different audiences, and for different reasons.

That is nothing like the issue of the Alexandrian perversions removing God's actual words from the pages of Scripture. It is simply the exact words the Lord Jesus Christ said on two different occasions.

May God bless you as you "study to shew thyself approved unto God" (2 Timothy 2:5).

Question: In Matt. 27:46 it quotes Jesus as saying "eli, eli, lama sabachthani?" Then it says "that is to say" with the translation behind it. Was it supposed to be written in 2 languages? If it wasn't, would the KJV translators also be guilty of "adding" to the scriptures?

Answer: The King James is the accurate text and translation in the English language of God's preserved words, both of Hebrew and Greek.

Here is the scripture in question:

Matthew 27:46
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

The Gospel of Matthew is written in Greek, but Jesus spoke these words in Hebrew. Matthew is giving us the translation of the Hebrew words. The King James Bible translators did not add them.

New Testament writers have done this also in these verses:

Matthew 27:33
And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull,
Mark 7:11
But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.
Mark 7:34
And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.
Acts 1:19
And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.
Luke 23:38
And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
John 19:13
When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha.
John 19:17
And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha:
Acts 9:36
Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did.
Revelation 9:11
And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.

When the Bible tells us the meaning of a Hebrew word, that explanation is actually found in the original text. But any time the King James translators felt compelled to add a word for clarity in English, they were honest enough to put it in italics, so we would know that it was not in the original text. The King James Bible added nothing and took nothing away from God's preserved words. You have no such promise with a perverted, Alexandrian Bible version.

May God bless you as you read and trust His preserved words in English, the King James Bible.

Question: Why is the King James Bible called the "Authorized Version"? How did King James Authorize it?

Answer: Despite stories to the contrary, King James, in no uncertain terms, clearly authorized the translation of the Bible that now bears his name.

[Note: This is a drastically shortened account of the birth of God's preserved words in English. Longer accounts are available, as in Final Authority: A Christian's Guide to the King James Bible, by William P. Grady.]

Sanctioning the Authorized Version

When Elizabeth died on April 1, 1603, she had seen 130 editions of the New Testament and the Bible published during her 45 years as Queen of England. James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, "Queen of Scots," became James I of England.

Four days later, on his way to London, a delegation of Puritan ministers met James, asking him to hear their grievances against the Church of England. James consented, and on January of 1604, four Puritans came to express their troubles at Hampton Court, in front of King James and over 50 Anglican (Church of England) officials. One by one each request was rejected, until the Puritan group's leader, John Rainolds said these famous words:

"May your Majesty be pleased to direct that the Bible be now translated, [since] such versions as are extant [are] not answering to the original."

At first, Bishop Bancroft of London was dead-set against it, saying, "If every man's humor might be followed, there would be no end to translating." But the King made it clear he liked the idea. Not too long later Bancroft wrote this to a friend:

I move you in his majesty's name that, … no time may be overstepped by you for the better furtherance of this holy work…. You will scarcely conceive how earnest his majesty is to have this work begun!

When this Bible was translated, the title page was printed basically as you find it today in Cambridge Bibles:

THE
HOLY BIBLE
CONTAINING THE
OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS

TRANSLATED OUT OF THE ORIGINAL TONGUES:

AND WITH THE FORMER TRANSLATIONS
DILIGENTLY COMPARED AND REVISED
BY HIS MAJESTY'S SPECIAL COMMAND

APPOINTED TO BE READ IN CHURCHES

The King James Bible was "Authorized" to be translated as
God's Word for the English-speaking people of the world. God bless you as you study His authorized and preserved words in English, the King James Bible.

Question: What was the method the King James translators used to translate the Bible?

Answer: King James had no part whatsoever in the translation of the Bible that now bears his name. But there were 47-54 scholars, however, whom God used to bring us His preserved words in English.

Translating the Authorized Version

54 scholars were appointed in 1604, and a few overseers were also present, who went from group to group. In time through death the number of translators diminished to 47. They were given three locations to work: Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster. And two groups worked at each location, making a total of six groups. The Bible was also divided up into six sections. Each group took one section, working on one book at a time.

First, each translator made his own translation of the book, which was reviewed by each other member of the group. Then the whole group reviewed the book. When they all agreed on the translation, they sent it to the other five groups for evaluation. Those groups then returned it to the original committee, marking anything they disagreed with. The original group would then go over the book again.

When all six committees finished with the book, it was sent, with any differences that were left, to a special committee made up of one leader from each of the six groups. They solved any remaining problems, and the book was sent to the printers.

But they did not work in secret, as did the "Revisers" in 1871 - 1881. At any time, the translators could ask an outside scholar for his understanding, and anyone could find out about the progress. The churches were kept informed at all times.

In all, every single verse of the Bible was carefully examined and decided upon a total of fourteen times, by as many as 50 or more people! This made it impossible for any one translator to impose his personal viewpoint on a passage. He had to have logical reasons for a translation that were good enough to persuade every other scholar before it could be written into the text. There was no "private interpretation" here!
(2 Peter 1:20-21)

God superintended the translation, so that what we need to know from the Bible has been accurately translated for us. We do have translated in English for the world, God's perfectly preserved words.

God bless you as you read and believe them.

Question: Who were the translators of the King James Bible?

Answer: God brought together over 54 of the finest Bible translators English has ever known, to translate the King James Bible.

Researching the Translators
For twenty years (the late 1830s to the late 1850s) researcher Alexander McClure pored over records to learn all he could about who translated the King James Bible. His resulting book, Translators Revived: Biographical Notes on the King James Version Translators, stands as a monument to these dedicated Christian men. It may be read online at http://www.wilderness-cry.net/bible_study/ translators/. I highly recommend it.

A Few Short Examples
Here are some of the qualified translators of the King James Bible.

John Harman, M.A., New College, Oxford.
In 1585 he had been appointed King's Professor of Greek. He had published Latin translations of Calvin's and Beza's sermons, and was also adept in Greek. He was a member of the New Testament group that met at Oxford.

John Spencer
At 19 years of age he had been elected Greek lecturer for Corpus Christi College in Oxford University. It was written of him, "Of his eminent scholarship there can be no question." He was a member of the New Testament group (Romans through Jude) that met at Westminster.

Thomas Bilson
McClure wrote that he was "so complete in divinity, so well skilled in languages, so read in the Fathers and Schoolmen, so judicious in making use of his readings, that at length he was found to be no longer a soldier, but commander in chief in the spiritual warfare" (Translators Revived, pp. 214- 416).

Dr. George Abbot, B.D., D.D.
Dr. Abbot started at Oxford in 1578, getting his B.D. in 1593 and at 35 years of age both received his doctorate and became first Master of University College, and later Vice Chancellor. He became Bishop of Lichfield in 1609 and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1611. He was regarded as "the head of the Puritans within the Church of England." He was in the Oxford New Testament group.

Sir Henry Saville
In 1565 Sir Saville was Fellow of Merton College and Warden in 1585. By 1596 he was Provost of Eton College and tutor to Queen Elizabeth I. He founded the Savillian professorships of Mathematics and Astronomy at Oxford. His many works include an 8-volume set of the writings of Chrysostom.(1) He also worked in the New Testament group at Oxford.

Lancelot Andrewes
From Terence H. Brown, (Secretary of the Trinitarian Bible Society, London, England) comes this description of Westminster committee member Lancelot Andrewes:

He "... had his early education at Coopers Free School and Merchant Taylors School, where his rapid progress in the study of the ancient languages was brought to the notice of Dr. Watts, the founder of some scholarships at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Andrewes was sent to that College, where he took his B.A. degree and soon afterward was elected Fellow. He then took his Master's degree and began to study divinity and achieved great distinction as a lecturer. He was raised to several positions of influence in the Church of England and distinguished himself as a diligent and excellent preacher, and became Chaplain to Queen Elizabeth I. King James I promoted him to be Bishop of Chester in 1605 and also gave him the influential position of Lord Almoner. He later became Bishop of Ely and Privy Counsellor. Toward the end of his life he was made Bishop of Winchester.

"It is recorded that Andrewes was a man of deep piety and that King James had such great respect for him that in his presence he refrained from the levity in which he indulged at other times. A sermon preached at Andrewes' funeral in 1626 paid tribute to his great scholarship:

'His knowledge in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee,

Syriac and Arabic, besides fifteen modern languages was so advanced that he may be ranked as one of the rarest linguists in Christendom. A great part of five hours every day he spent in prayer, and in his last illness he spent all his time in prayer -- and when both voice and eyes and hands failed in their office, his countenance showed that he still prayed and praised God in his heart, until it pleased God to receive his blessed soul to Himself.'"

Transcending Their Human Limits
Gustavus S. Paine, author of The Men Behind the King James Version, made this assessment about the work of the combined translators:

"Though we may challenge the idea of word-by-word inspiration, we surely must conclude that these were men able, in their profound moods, to transcend their human limits. In their own words, they spake as no other men spake because they were filled with the Holy Ghost. Or, in the clumsier language of our time, they so adjusted themselves to each other and to the work as to achieve a unique coordination and balance, functioning thereafter as an organic entity--no mere mechanism equal to the sum of its parts, but a whole greater than all of them." (2)

While these scholars were perfectly suited for the task of translation individually, they still had to agree on every single word of the Bible. That meant man's mere opinion could not be allowed to stand in the text.

The One Who Started It All
But these translators were standing on the shoulders of great men and Christians who went before them. And one man did more for the English Bible than any single person before or since: William Tyndale. He was ordained a priest around his late teens, in 1502. By 1515 he had earned his M.A. at Oxford and later transferred to Cambridge. It was there that he came upon the preserved Greek New Testament of Erasmus, and at the same time as Martin Luther, he came to understand the truth of the gospel. Tyndale began preaching and teaching the gospel message, which made the Roman Catholics angry with him, branding him a heretic. One day, while proving a "learned" Roman Catholic scholar wrong, the papist cried out, "It were better for us to be without God's laws, than without the Pope's!" To which Tyndale prophetically replied,

"I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than you do!"

This changed Tyndale forever. He wrote about this incident,

"Which thing only moved me to translate the New Testament. Because I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scriptures were plainly laid before their eyes in the mother tongue" (Translators Revived, p. 23).

Tyndale was well suited to his task. Spalatin, a friend of Martin Luther, wrote this in his diary of what professor Herman Buschius told him about Tyndale and his New Testament:

"The work was translated by an Englishman staying there with two others,--a man so skilled in the seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, and French, that which-ever he spake, you would suppose it his native tongue" (Translators Revived, pp. 27-28)

By the time Tyndale was betrayed by his friend, imprisoned and nearly frozen during a cold winter in his cell, he had translated the New Testament into English, along with some Old Testament books, and had trained at least two others to carry on his work. But he wasn't finished, even when burnt at the stake on October 6, 1536, he cried out prophetically:

"Lord! Open the King of England's eyes" (Dr. William Grady, Final Authority, p. 137)

That very day a copy of Tyndale's New Testament was being printed by the King's own printer!

Conclusion
Tyndale's work of translation was so excellent, that easily 70% of the words of the Bible are Tyndale's. God had set the standard. Over the next century, God's preserved words were translated and revised by many scholars, a great many "good translations." These, along with God's preserved words in Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch and other languages were all "good translations." But the goal of the king's translators of 1604-1611 was not to write a new Bible from scratch, nor was it to make a translation from the Roman Catholic perversions:

"Truly, good Christian Reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one; … but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath been our endeavor, that our mark" (The Translators to the Reader, 1611 KJV, ninth page).

And that is exactly what God did. Throughout history God preserved His words. And, culminating with over 54 dedicated, learned Christian men, God put His words in English in its perfection in one final translation: The King James Bible.

May God bless you as you read His preserved words in English, the King James Bible.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...................

A couple of questions for the KJV Onlyists.

Since KJV Onlyists claim the 1611 KJV Bible is the inspired translation and considering the fact that there have been 10 revisions, which revision would you say was "verbally inerrant" in 1611... or 1613, 1629, 1638, 1644, 1664, 1701, 1744, 1762, 1769, or 1850?

In what language did Jesus Christ teach that the Old Testament would be preserved forever according to Matthew 5:18? Would that be Hebrew or English?

What should be the basis of any foreign language translation?

Original texts, or KJV?