"Hail, thou that art highly favoured" (Luke 1:28) is sorely tendentious. "Kecharitomene" is a unique to Luke word formation from "charis", grace, and KJV elsewhere correctly uses "grace" to translate "charis". There are a few exceptions, but none in the Epistles of St. Paul where the theology of grace is defined. To translate "kecharitomene" as "highly favoured" tortured both the language and the meaning. St. Jerome's "gratia plena", "full of grace" is the only reasonable translation.
"that disciple took [Blessed Virgin Mary] unto his own home" extrapolates "home" without warrant. There is no "home" anywhere in the original, which says "eis ta idia", "to/with his own". Again, St. Jerome has it "in sua". It is possible that the King James translator wished to "correct" what seemed to him an incomplete sentence, but the result is that millions of Protestants are now misinformed of the last words of Christ. It is of course important, because adding "home" puts the adoption of St. John in a flat economic context, when the real meaning is adoption by Mary of the entire college of Christian disciples.
King James routinely translates "presbyteroi" as "elders". This purposely ignores "priests", which etymologically means the same thing, but came to be quite distinct from "seniors" or "ancients". St. Jerome, again, uses common sense translating "presbyteros" as either "seniorus", or "presbyteros", depending on context. Occasionally, King James's anticlericalism goes too far, as in "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord" (James 5:14). Now, what do you call a man who comes to the sick, prays, annoints and calls on the Lord? Answer: an old man.
These three errors have crept into every English Protestant translation of the Bible, so all of them should be avoided. Those of Protestant persuasion should instead read Douay-Rheims and when their eyes wander over the books Luther banned, piously avert their eyes.
Thanks annalex. Three more KJV errors added to the list. Most appreciated.
This thread has given me a lot of detailed information, I think I'm going to put it on my list of re-read