Something for Onlyists to consider:
By
critically translating the Scriptures into common English, the KJV scholars were acknowledging that the Word of God existed free from all error
in the original documents only (autographs).
Quotes from their original preface:
"[There is no] cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it.
"For whatever was perfect under the sun, where Apostles or apostolick men, that is, men endued with an extraordinary measure of God’s Spirit, and privileged with the privilege of infallibility, had not their hand?...
"...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...
"These tongues therefore [Hebrew and Greek] (the Scriptures, we say, in those tongues) we set before us to translate, being the tongues wherein God was pleased to speak to his Church by his Prophets and Apostles.
"There be many words in the Scriptures which be never found there but once... so that we cannot be holpen by conference of places... Now in such a case doth not a margin do well to admonish the Reader to seek further, and not to conclude or dogmatize upon this or that peremptorily? ...so diversity of signification and sense in the margin, where the text is not so clear, must needs do good; yea, is necessary, as we are persuaded."
The 1611 KJV translators are here saying that:
- a translation cannot be perfect, that only the original in Hebrew and Greek was infallible (by God's Spirit),
- that their principal translation had made former translations better,
- and that such were the demands of translating from Hebrew and Greek that the reader would benefit from marginal notes where the main translation was unclear.
