The King James Bible is the complete and inerrant words of God.
The King James Bible is the complete and inerrant words of God.
Originally Posted by Desert Reign
"So, Will Kinney, if you are listening, you say that the printed KJB which we can buy in any bookshop is inerrant and yet might contain printing errors. Can you tell us where and in what medium the absolute inerrant version is to be found? Is it the handwritten words of the 1611 translators or is it somewhere else?"
what was their source?
what influence did king james have on the translators?
Hi guys. First, for Desert Reign. I have already clearly stated the The Cambridge printing you can buy in any bookstore today is the inerrant words of God with no printing errors.
You can also get them at either one of these two printing companies here in the USA.
Buy a quality King James Bible at cost
A great place to buy quality made King James Holy Bibles
Bearing Precious Seed
http://www.bpsmilford.org
And here is another one
http://www.localchurchbiblepublishers.com/
what was their source?
what influence did king james have on the translators?
You can see a list of the KING JAMES’ INSTRUCTIONS TO THE TRANSLATORS here
http://www.kjvonly.org/other/kj_instructs.htm
There are 14 of them. The most important perhaps are the first 6
“1. The ordinary Bible, read in the church, commonly called the Bishop’s Bible, to be followed, and as little altered as the original will permit.
“2. The names of the prophets and the holy writers, with the other names in the text, to be retained, as near as may be, according as they are vulgarly used.
“3. The old ecclesiastical words to be kept; as the word church, not to be translated congregation, &c.
“4. When any word hath divers significations, that to be kept which has been most commonly used by the most eminent fathers, being agreeable to the propriety of the place, and the analogy of the faith.
“5. The division of the chapters to be altered, either not at all, or as little as may be, if necessity so require.
“6. No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words, which cannot, without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text.
King James himself had nothing at all to do with making the translation and when it was finished it was simply titled The Holy Bible. People did not begin to call it The King James Version until the other “bibles” began to appear on the scene. This was to distinguish it from the others. If they had merely said The Holy Bible, then people would not know for sure what you were referring to.
The translators themselves were overwhelmingly Calvinistic in their theology, being made up primarily of pastors and professors who belonged either the Anglican Church (before it went totally apostate as it is today) or Puritans.
What textual sources did the King James Bible translators use?
From Pastor Terence McLean:
http://www.discerningthetimespublishing.com/contactus.html
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"You may recall mention of the Complutension Polyglot of 1517 and the Antwerp Polyglot of 1572, the writings of Chrysostom (347-407) and a half dozen more familiar translations which were all at the King James translators' disposal: Martin Luther’s German, John Wycliff’s Bible of 1384, William Tyndale’s translation of 1525, Myles Coverdale’s of 1535, John Roger’s Matthew’s translation of 1537, The Great Bible of 1539, Richard Tavener’s of 1539, the Calvinistic Geneva of 1560, and it is critical to point out that they had the Roman Catholic readings found in Vaticanus, Siniaticus, NIV, NASV, TLB, AMP, etc. in that they had the Rheims-Douai of 1582.
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Well, if that is too heavy and too technical, you'll just have to get over it: here comes some more *
* * * In their production of the King James Bible the translators also used the Soncino Hebrew text of 1488, Bomberg's of 1516, the Rabbinic Bibles of Pratensis of 1517 the ben Chayim of 1525, and the Stephanus of 1539.
** * Additional Greek texts on their desks were Erasmus of 1516, 1519, 1522, 1527 and 1535, Colineaus 1534; Stephanus 1546, 1549, 1550 and 1535; the Beza of 1565, 1582, 1588 and 1598; the Nurnberg Polyglot 1599; the Syriac of Widmanstadt of 1555 and Tremellius of 1559; the Spanish de Reina 1569 and de Velara of 1602; the French of d'Etaples 1530; Olivetan 1535; the Louvain faculty 1550; the Geneva pastors of 1588; the Italian of Brucioli 1530 and the Diodate 1607.* In addition to Luther's German Bible they also had the Zurich 1529, Latin versions of Paginus 1528; Juda 1543; Castalio 1551; Montanus 1572; Tremellius 1579 and of course the Vulgate.
** Now: the next time someone says to you that the King James is an English translation of the Textus Receptus Greek you know you are dealing with an argumentative ignoramus who wants you to leave your King James Bible... and end up with no Bible at all… just like James White, Dan Wallace, James Price, Doug Kutilek, Rick Norris, John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul and an host of others. **
Portions taken from David Cloud’s “History of the English Bible - The King James Bible”
http://www.wayoflife.org/database/history_of_the_english_bible_kjv.html
The King James Bible translators as a whole were masters not only of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin but also of all of the cognate or associate languages that are necessary for research into ancient documents relative to the Bible. These include Persian, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Chaldee.*
They further had the ability to read ancient unprinted manuscript versions of Greek, Latin, German, Italian, and Spanish. It is one thing to read modern German or modern Latin; it is far more difficult to read ancient versions of these languages and to be able to read these in the handwritten manuscripts. These men were accustomed to such research inasmuch as in their day most scholarly resources had not yet been printed and it was common to have to use handwritten manuscripts in the pursuit of ordinary study. The common scholar of that day had a level of expertise in such things that is found only in the most rare of cases today.
Following are some examples of the quality of their scholarship:
Lancelot Andrews had mastered 15 languages.
Miles Smith was expert in Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Latin, Greek, and Arabic. These were as familiar to him as his own mother tongue.
Henry Saville was a weighty Greek scholar. He was the first to edit the complete works of Chrysostom. Translators Revived says, “Sir Henry Savile was one of the most profound, exact, and critical scholars of his age.”
John Bois could read the whole Bible in Hebrew at age five.
William Bedwell was the best Arabic scholar of his time.
Edward Livlie, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, was one of the eminent scholars of Hebrew of that day.
Of John Rainolds it was said, “The memory and reading of that man were near to a miracle; and all Europe at the time could not have produced three men superior to Rainolds, Jewell, and Ussher.”
Richard Brett was eminent as a linguist in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, and Ethiopic.
Consider some testimonies to the capability of the KJV translators:
Alexander McClure, author of Translators Revived, 1855: “As to the capability of those men, we may say against that by the good Providence of God, their work was undertaken in a fortunate time. Not only had the English language, that singular compound, then ripened to its full perfection, but the study of Greek, and of the oriental tongues ... had then been carried to a greater extent in England than ever before or since. ... it is confidently expected that the reader of these pages will yield to the conviction, that all the colleges of Great Britain and America, even in this proud day of boastings, could not bring together the same number of divines equally qualified by learning and piety for the great undertaking. Few indeed are the living names worthy to be enrolled with these mighty men. It would be impossible to convent out of any one Christian denomination, or out of all, a body of translators, on whom the whole Christian community would bestow such confidence as is reposed upon that illustrious company, or who would prove themselves as deserving of such confidence.”
Dean John Burgon, one of the greatest textual scholars of the 19th century: “... the plain fact being that the men of 1611 produced a work of real genius: seizing with generous warmth the meaning and intention of the sacred Writers. ... Verily, those men understood their craft! ‘There were giants in those days.’ ... the Spirit of their God was mightily upon them” (The Revision Revised, 1883, pp. 167, 196).
Edward F. Hills, who had a doctorate in textual criticism from Harvard: “Judged even by modern standards, their knowledge of the biblical languages was second to none” (The King James Version Defended, p. 114).
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