All languages undergo constant change. The period of time between 1500 and 1600 was no exception. It was a time of transition between Middle English and Modern English. Many words were lost to the language and new ones found their way into the language; others changed their meaning altogether, and basic sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation was altered. By 1609, much of what was commonly understood 100 years earlier no longer had any valid meaning for the average person on the street.

One of the consequences of this change in the language was that the reading of scripture was losing its appeal for most people. To help correct this situation, King James I commissioned a new translation of the Bible - one that the man on the street would be more able to deal with. The stated objective of the King James Version (KJV) translators, as set forth in their preface to the final product, mirrored the wish of their king. They would not write a new Bible, but they would update the English text so as to make it readable and understandable. To accomplish this, they relied primarily on earlier English translations: The Geneva Bible of 1560, The Great Bible of 1539, the Matthew Bible of 1537, the Coverdale Bible of 1535, and the especially the Tyndale English translation of 1525, which itself was a translation of the Wycliffe English translation of 1380.

From its original publication until the middle of the 20th century, the KJV remained the most widely used English translation of the Holy Bible, despite the appearance in 1881 of the Revised Version and later the American Standard Version. These translations reflected the text of an increasing number of scripture fragments found by archeologists. In some cases, they called into question some of the KJV scripture, and the controversy over which translation was correct was born. It started modestly enough when a Seventh-day Adventist missionary by the name of Benjamin G. Wilkinson wrote a largely unused and unknown book in 1930 called Our Authorized Bible Vindicated in which he objected to the new translations because they robbed Adventism of two of its favorite proof-texts, one allegedly teaching Gentile Sabbath-keeping (Acts 13:42 ), and the other, Hebrews 9:27, misused by the Adventists to teach soul sleep. The torch was carried forward in 1955 by J. J. Ray, and in 1970 by David Otis Fuller and Peter S. Ruckman.

These men, building upon each other's work, together spawned a movement which has since become known as "King James Onlyism". A complete history of this movement and the men behind it is outside the scope of this paper, but the essence of the movement is an assertion that all modern translations of the bible are flawed and only the Authorized King James version of the bible is correct. Some have even gone so far as to assert that new translations are the work of Satan. Others have, of course, stated an opposite point of view. This paper tries to look at some of the objections presented by those who advocate the King James only point of view and present them along with the opposing points of view. These are not presented in any particular order of importance, and for the sake of brevity, I will keep my comments to a minimum.

Objection: Most modern translations don’t use "the reverent ‘thee’ and ‘thou’" when addressing God.

Response: "Thee" and "thou" aren’t used as terms of respect in the KJV. They are used to distinguish the second person singular from the second person plural. As such, "thee" and "thou" are used whenever the second person singular is used no matter who is being addressed. For example, Jesus would never show reverence to Satan (the very idea is blasphemous) and yet He addressed Satan as "thee" (Mt 16:23; Job 1:7,8). Greek doesn’t have special pronouns for God; Hebrew doesn’t have special pronouns for God; not even the KJV has special pronouns for God. If no one in the Bible (including the Lord Jesus) used special pronouns for God, why should we?

Objection: Newer translations don’t have the majesty of the KJV.

Response: This is not a legitimate criticism. It does not challenge the accuracy of the translations. Nevertheless, I will point out that the original scriptures didn’t have the majesty of the KJV either. The New Testament was not written in majestic Greek. It was written in everyday Greek. If anything, this lack of “majesty” makes newer translations more accurate.

Objection: Modern translations are paraphrases - they aren’t literal like the KJV.

Response: Some paraphrases can be found among the modern translations, but all new translations are not paraphrases. In fact, the ASV and the NASB are more literal than the KJV.

Objection: The NIV had people from several denominations on the translating committee. This distorts the translation.

Response: It is difficult to see where this is worse than having all of the translators from one denomination, the Church of England. Indeed, a single denominational view tends to project its own bias, whereas a multi-denominational view has more potential for presenting an unbiased translation.

Objection: Modern translators leave out many words, phrases and verses that are in the KJV. The Bible tells us not to take away from God’s Word (Dt 4:2; Rev 22:18,19).

Response: Those verses also tell us not to add to God’s Word. Why then did the original translators of the King James Bible include the Apocrypha in their work? And why are there about a dozen readings in the KJV that are not supported by ANY Greek text anywhere (e.g. the words "And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" in Acts 9:6 don’t appear in ANY Greek text).

It is true that some words and phrases found in the KJV do not appear in the newer translations, but we cannot automatically infer from this that the new translation is flawed. If the words, phrases and verses that are left out were not in the original scripture, then modern translations are faithful and it is the KJV that is unfaithful. The fact is that most of the missing verses can be traced to the Latin Vulgate, which was the standard Catholic translation until about 1610 when the Roman Church translated the Latin into the English Douay Bible. A few can be traced to earlier English translations. None of the verses in question can be found in any of the early manuscripts or the ancient scrolls.

What does that mean? Modern scholars agree that the earlier the text, i.e., the closer a text is in time to the original writing, the more accurate it is likely to be because it has been subjected to less coping. And when numerous copies of the early manuscripts all exclude the same verses, modern scholars insist that it is a pretty good bet that the verses in question were added at a later date and are, therefore, not divinely inspired no matter how nice they may sound.

I should point out here that the KJV itself has left out some very important text. For example, all of the ancient manuscripts available to us indicate that Jude 25 should include the words, "through Jesus Christ our Lord." These words are included in the modern translations, but do not appear in the KJV.

Unlike the KJV, the modern translations are not translations of other translations. They are all derived from the most ancient manuscripts available. The Hebrew manuscripts used to make the translations go back as far as 200-300 years BC, and some of the New Testament Greek texts can be dated to between 40-100 AD. Translators also referenced early copies of New Testament documents that date as far back as 350 AD and the original Greek translation of the Hebrew (called the Septuagint) which dates to 250 BC. Thus, the translators relied on manuscripts that in some cases predate the earliest KJV sources by as much as 1800 years (1527 AD vis-a-vis 300 BC).

No translation can be 100% perfect – not the NIV, not the NASB, and not the KJV -- but modern translations are every bit as accurate as the KJV and frequently more so, with the added benefit of readability without fatigue by the average person living in the 21st century.

Objection: You’re putting your faith in scholars, not in God.

Response: The fact is that a reader of the NIV or NASB is no more putting their faith in scholars than a reader of the KJV. The various Greek texts behind the KJV were compiled by "scholars" and the KJV was translated by "scholars." Why is it okay for the KJV to be assembled and translated by scholars, and for its supporters to have libraries of KJV-only books written by scholars, yet it is not acceptable for the NIV and NASB to be assembled and translated by "scholars?" Are their two sets of rules?

Objection: The KJV is the easiest translation to memorize.

Response: First, this is an irrelevant statement. It has nothing to do with the accuracy or inaccuracy of the new translations. Second, it is a relative statement, because while it may be easier for one person to memorize, it might just as well be harder for another to memorize.

Objection: The new versions mistranslate some statements found in the original scripture and this can lead to confusion and misunderstanding over what the intent of the author really was.

Response: Even if an occassional translation is confusing, the KJV also contains translations that are confusing and not consistent with the intent of the original text. Here are a few examples.

1. Read carefully Matthew 14:8 and Luke 7:20 in the KJV and you will see that the KJV does not refer to John as "the Baptist," but as "John Baptist." Did the translators intend to suggest that John's last name was Baptist. Is that what the translators really meant to say?

2. In John 3:16, the KJV says that those who believe in Christ "should not" perish. There have been people who have been seriously worried by this rendering since the word "should" conveys a lack of certainly. The NIV says "shall not", thus properly conveying absolute certainly.

3. 1 Peter 3:21, the KJV says that Noah was saved by the water. Actually, Noah was saved by the Lord, in the ark, through the water.

4. In Acts 12:4, the KJV translates the Greek word "pascha" as "Easter" instead of "Passover" as it is translated in the other 28 occurrences of that word in the NT. Sorry, but Easter is a concept which had no bearing on Christianity at the time of the writing of the book of Acts. The NIV and the NASB correctly translate the word as "Passover," and do so consistently.

5. In John 10:16, the KJV translates the Greek word "poimnee" as "fold" when it should be "flock" as it is translated everywhere else it occurs in the NT. This is particularly misleading when the real Greek word for "fold" (ow-lay, meaning a yard or an open court) is already used (and translated as "fold") in the same verse, leaving people with the idea that it means the same thing. The NIV and NASB correctly translate it as "flock." The whole point of the verse is that instead of being held together in a fold (the walls or the yard being the laws and regulations of Judaism), believers are now one flock and held together by the Shepherd. People who use the KJV only would likely miss this. This is one of many examples of the KJV being somewhat less literal that the newer translations.

6. The Greek text gives no hint that the word “unknown” should be inserted in 1 Cor 14:4, yet the KJV inserts the word before "tongue" and does so without parenthesis, leading many to the conclusion that the tongues in 1 Corinthians are some kind on heavenly babbling, when Acts 2 clearly indicates that tongues refers to recognizable earthly languages.

7. In Ex 20:13, the KJV gives the sixth commandment as "Thou shalt not kill!" This has been the source of a great deal of ridicule and damage by liberals who use it to assert that God and the Israelites were hypocrites, since they killed thousands of their enemies. Others use it to assert that capital punishment is wrong. The NIV and NASB translate it as "You shall not murder." This removes all basis for these criticisms. It is also consistent with the original since Hebrew (like English) has different words for "kill" and "murder" and it is the word for "murder" that is used in Ex 20:13.
   
   Taking this one step further, we could say that all translations, including the KJV, are less than literal in their presentation of this verse, because in the ancient Hebrew text, the subject and the verb are not actually written. A completely literal translation of the text would simply be, "No murder." One might object saying we can not possibly leave the text that literal. If we did, no one would understand it, which is precicely the point of translations, isn't it!

Objection: "Modern translations refer to Joseph as being Christ’s ‘father’ (Luke 2:33) and Mary and Joseph as being Christ’s ‘parents’ (Luke 2:43)."

Response: So does the KJV. Luke 2:27 and 2:41 refer to Joseph and Mary as "His parents," and Luke 2:48 has Mary saying, "... behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing."

Objection: "The KJV exalts Christ more than the modern versions."

Response: John 1:18 in both the NIV and the NASB call Christ God, but the KJV doesn’t. In Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1, the NIV and the NASB call Christ God but the KJV speaks of Christ and God as being two different people. In Romans 1:3, the KJV says that Christ was “made” (created?). In Luke 1:35, the KJV calls Christ a “thing”. I believe that He was a person before birth, not a “thing”. Also see Romans 8:26 where the KJV calls the Holy Spirit “it”. I believe that the Holy Spirit is also a person - not just an “it”.

As these few examples have shown, there are many legitimate questions that can be raised about the King James Bible. In fact, these few examples can be expanded to fill a book. But do not misunderstand me. I have no problem with teaching from the KJV. It is very poetic -- sometimes even lyrical. Many pastors feel comfortable with it, because it is the version they learned with. It’s like an old friend, dog-eared and filled with notes.

The Authorized Version of the King James Bible is a good translation, considering what the translators had to work with. It has served well for many years and is still useful for serious students of the bible. My only point here is that it is far from being “the one and only” translation that we should be using. It is not perfect. In this, the KJV Translators were in full agreement when they wrote, "the very meanest [poorest] translation" is still "the word of God"? They also said that a "variety of Translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures."

(By the way, did you catch my own translation in the last paragraph? I inserted "[poorest]" into the quotation from the KJV translators because I was not sure that all readers would understand what was meant by the phrase "meanest translation" without the clarification. Think about it. This is the same thing that translators of scripture are faced with.)

Difficulties of Translation

The translators of the King James Bible did the best they could with what they had to work with, but they did not have access to the ancient manuscripts, many of which weren’t unearthed until the 19th and 20th centuries. What manuscripts they did use came from a backward translation out of the Latin Vulgate into Greek. It was commissioned by the Roman Church around 1200 AD – more than a thousand years after the original Greek New Testament was completed by its authors. It was done because Roman itself did not have a copy of the original scriptures, and it was felt that it would be nice to have a copy of the scriptures in their original language.

In fact, several different Greek New Testaments were used to make the KJV. All of these editions went through revisions before and after being used for the KJV. Are we actually supposed to believe that all the revisions made before they were used for the KJV were good and all the revisions made after were bad? On what grounds? And are we also supposed to believe that when the translators had to choose between contradictory passages in the various editions (and there were hundreds of them), they always made the correct choice?!

Not only did the translators have difficulty with their source material, but they also found it difficult to stay completely within the bounds they had set for themselves, and they began to “take some unnecessary liberties” with the language. For example, the use of words like thee, thou, wilt, wilst, ye, hath, nay etc. were carried over from Tyndale even though they had already fallen out of general use by 1611. In short, the translators intentionally made their rendition harder than necessary to read for no reason other than that they thought some of these words sounded pretty. To the man on the street, they were unknown. Neither they nor their equivalents appear anywhere in the ancient texts.

One might say, "Well, God providentially allowed them to make all the correct choices." Did He? How do you know? Do you have a Bible verse to support that belief, or are you going by your feelings or the opinions of men?

The situation is no different today than it was when King James commissioned his translation except that instead of it being 85 years, it has been 390 years since the last English translation, and now it is the KJV that is difficult to read and difficult to understand. Sentence structure has changed, as has the use of punctuation, and words like "wot", "wist", "scall", "glede", "cotes", "ciedled", "blains", "implead", "neesing", "wen", "tabret", etc. (all found in the KJV) have no meaning whatever for today’s 21st century reader. Hardly a sermon is preached where pastors don’t have to explain to congregations what certain words and phrases mean. They will typically say something like, “A better translation would be ….,” or “That word is better understood as ….” And what does the explanation come down to? Modern English! And usually the very same word or words used in the new translations.

Why is it that all revisions are fine and good and necessary up to 1611, but all subsequent revisions are evil? What people don’t seem to realise is that 95% of the arguments KJV’ers use could be used for any translation. We could claim, for example, that the NASB is the perfect Bible and that all the decisions its translators made concerning Greek texts and translations were "providentially guided" by the Lord because God has promised to preserve His Word. And if anyone differed with us we could accuse them of denying the preservation of God’s Word or the providential working of God. And we would have just as much to base this on as someone who said it about the KJV.

What About the Preservation of God’s Word?

People who maintain that there is only one acceptable translation (the KJV) do so by referring to the fact that God promises to preserve His Word. I have not the slightest doubt that this is a trustworthy promise. But I cannot see how that promise relates to the present topic. Indeed, I have serious doubts about the interpretive skills of anyone who maintains that "Forever, O LORD, Your Word is settled in heaven" (Ps 119:89) means "Forever, O LORD, Your Word is settled on earth, in English," more specifically in King James English.

However, even if this verse (and verses like it) did mean that we would be given a flawless English translation, on what grounds are we to accept that the KJV is that translation? There is certainly no verse in the Bible that tells us to use the KJV. So we have Christians who are dividing the people of God not because the Bible teaches that we should use the KJV, but because their favorite scholars teach that.

As I have already shown, and as the KJV preface itself states, the King James was largely based on previous translations. Now I ask the reader, how is it that a “perfect” translation can be derived from all those prior, imperfect translations? If Psalm 119:89 ensures that we will have a perfect English translation, why did God leave His English-speaking people without one until 1611? On what basis are we to believe that all the English Bibles before the KJV were wrong, and all the English Bibles after the KJV are wrong, and yet the KJV is right? Again, even if one could prove that a perfect English translation exists, how do we prove that it is the KJV? Moreover, what is the perfect French Bible? German? Russian? Do those people get one, or does God favor English people only?

And finally, for those who claim that inerrancy applies down to the smallest jot and tittle in the KJV (based on Mt 5:18), let me point out that the KJV of today differs from the KJV of 1611 in words, spelling and typesetting ("jot and tittle"). In fact the KJV has been revised on numerous occasions since its original production. More than 400 errors in the first edition of the King James Bible were corrected just two years later in 1613. And between 1613 and 1850 hundreds more changes were made in words, word order, possessives, singulars for plurals, articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, entire phrases, and the addition and deletion of words. So which KJV is right? Is it the original 1611 version? Or is it the 1613 version? No? Well what about the 1629 edition, or the 1638 revision, or 1644?, 1664?, 1701?, 1744?, 1762?, 1769?, or the more current 1850 edition?

I think I can say with a high degree of confidence that there aren't very many 1611 Authorized Editions of the King James Bible floating around today. Guess what that means! It means that the people who insist that only the Authorized version is the work of God had better run out and buy the original 1611 version (if they can find one) because they too are guilty of using a "modern perversion" of the Bible.

Pointing to differences between the KJV and modern translations does not prove that modern translations are imperfect. It only proves they are not the same as the KJV. Differences in a verse only prove that at least one of the translations of that verse is wrong. The KJV might be wrong; the modern translation might be wrong; or they both might be wrong.

To criticize a modern translation because it differs from the KJV is begging the question. We already know they differ - that is why we use them. The question is, do they differ from the Word of God? Having read most of these translations myself, I can assure the reader that s/he will not be led down the wrong road. No doctrinal flaw will be found in them. Indeed, no one has been able to find anything that is taught in the KJV which is not also taught in the NIV or the NASB and vice versa. It seems odd does it not that if Satan is behind the NIV and NASB (as some people claim), he has neglected to change any of their teachings.

King James was prompted to commission his translation because the available Bibles of his time had become confusing and difficult to read. For the causal reader, the situation is the same today with the KJV. And perhaps that is the best reason for today's reader to use one of the newer translations. Where the language of the KJV often discourages the modern reader from completing a course of bible study, a translation like the New Living Translation, with whatever flaws it may have, actually encourages the reader to keep at it until the goal is reached. I can not see a pastor objecting to that.

In view of what has preceded, it is a mystery to me how men of good conscious can seriously insist that the KJV is “The Bible” and none other will do. Nevertheless, some honest and well-intentioned men do so. I must conclude that these people simply don’t have all the facts or are being intellectually dishonest by deliberately ignoring them.

Don’t allow yourself to be deceived -- not by me; not by radio and television evangelists; not by your friends; and not by your own pastor. Look critically at the things you are being told. We should be careful about some of the paraphrase versions of the bible. That is true. But translations like The New International Version (NIV), the New American Standard Bible, and the New Living Translation are as good as any translation you can find and better than most.

Max McLean has said, "The Bible meets us where we are. As long as it conforms to the Holy Spirit's guidance and inspiration, it is the word of God [wherther presented] in first century Hebrew, or spoken English, or twentieth century Chinese. The Word of God penetrates different cultures, languages, classes, and personalities for the purpose of bringing us into a saving relationship with the God of the universe."

To say that God acts providentially is Biblical (it is completely supported by Bible verses). To say that God acted providentially to ensure that the KJV is perfect is an arbitrary, unbiblical, unproven, unwarranted application of a Biblical truth.