I just finished second year Greek with Bill Mounce, who is a premier scholar of Greek, having been on 3 translation committees and written numerous commentaries on the Greek NT, and the standard book for first year Greek. (His cousin, Daniel Wallace having written the best second year and Greek grammar text.)
I wish some of you could hear him rail against the KJV, picking apart all the mistakes. The more you know the original languages, you know what a fail KJV is.
Now, I don’t have anything against people who use KJV because it is familar, poetic, or they have always used it. But, when KJV Onlyist start spouting their misinformation and lies, then I have to step in.
In fact, it is the modern versions getting called names like “new age Bibles!” As if a Bible could literally EVER be new age. I was in the New Age movement. And they did use they Bible to prove their nonsense. But guess which version?
That’s right, every person I knew in the New Age movement used the KJV. Like I said, people don’t understand it, and these people used it in one place to prove that Jesus was an “ascended master.” So, it is the KJV we need to call out as being a new age bible.
And seriously, the KJV is NOT a good translation. Too much stuff added, too many places the grammar gets twisted and too much archaic and obsolete language.
It honestly makes no sense to me why anyone wouldn’t want to read the bible in their own language, instead of trying to struggle through a Bible written in 400 years ago in a very different language.
You did ask!
Hi Angela!
I don't doubt the qualifications of Bill Mounce at all, he seems like a really humble guy from what I can gather from his courses on biblicaltraining.org.
But I find it quite appalling, actually, that we might actually go up to a pulpit on Sunday and tell people there are mistakes in the Bible or mistakes in the KJV. Granted, KJV is a translation ... that means a translation can eventually become outdated and might need updates. But this begs the question - do we trust any English translation when we're constantly telling our people "Well, the English doesn't really say such and such ... the Greek actually says thus and thus ..." as if we have language qualifications akin to Bill Mounce or others to be able to make these kind of statements.
But people love Shakespeare, and I don't see them crying for more modern translations (though they exist).
In answer to your question as to why anyone would want to use the KJV, it stems from using the text underneath it - the received text ... which I understand is nothing more than a synthetic collection of manuscripts from the Byzantine tradition. I know it is not a real text originally compiled, but a synthetic compilation.
My logic goes like this: since these manuscripts came out from the area that the apostles themselves preached and taught, why would I want to rely on manuscripts that first traveled to Egypt and then came to us (all beit, discovered 1500 years later?) Were the early Christians, before this time lapse, somehow deficient?
Having said that, I think a good balance must be struck. The balance is this: we have a number of manuscripts and copies of manuscripts. The reason? Because in some climates, manuscripts are trying to survive arid temperatures, in others too much moisture. So many copies were made in an attempt to preserve the text [among other reasons].
Therefore, it behooves us to look at the multitude of manuscripts in front of us and determine through textual criticism what is God's word. This was an attempt by the 50+ language experts of the King James Tradition, and continues to be what many modern scholars do today.
I don't think something nefarious happened in the other translations. Careful criticism work is being done to show that the variants are probably 7% or less; I think we do a dis-service by telling each other our preferred translations (including KJV) somehow makes us more or less godly than others. Some scholars have actually shown that the Dead Sea Scrolls actually vindicate the long accepted Masoretic text in Hebrew (which isn't really under dispute; it's more the Greek text everyone likes to argue about.)
But if I had to put my money on it, I'd trust the accuracy of the Majority/Byzantine texts more than the others and I would judge other people's translations by simply asking do they live a holy, Christian life. To date, I have not heard of anyone using a conservative Bible translation who has, thereby, suddenly fallen into gross heresies and sin by using them. - Peter James
