- Nov 29, 2011
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The King James Version of the New Testament was based upon a Greek text (the Textus Receptus) that was marred by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript copying. It was essentially the Greek text of the New Testament as edited by Beza, 1589, who closely followed that published by Erasmus, 1516-1535, which was based upon a few medieval manuscripts. The earliest and best of the eight manuscripts which Erasmus consulted was from the tenth century, and yet he made the least use of it because it differed most from the commonly received text; Beza had access to two manuscripts of great value, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, but he made very little use of them because they differed from the text published by Erasmus. We now possess many more ancient manuscripts (about 10,000 compared to just 10) of the New Testament, and thanks to another 400 years of biblical scholarship, are far better equipped to seek to recover the original wording of the Greek text. Much as we might love the KJV and the majesty of it’s Jacobean English, modern translations are more accurate.
Thank you so much for posting this! It is very informative and should silence the KJO crowd. One of the great tragedies is that Judaism is based on the written word, whereas Christianity is based on the living Son of God. It is sad that people who should know better still try to find all meaning in a book rather than the living Christ.
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