Things to Consider Before Attempting to Correct the King James Bible

Further to my earlier response to Fredoheaven...

"Goyim" is a place name in the current NIV. It appears as "Goiim" (capitalized) in the earlier version. As a biblical place name, it remains current.

"Maxims" was misspelled as "maxiums". Maxims are precepts, tenets, or proverbs. The word is current, not archaic.

"Nubians" is rendered as "Cushites" in the newer NIV. If you know your geography this would present no difficulty. It's the people of the upper Nile region.

"Offal" is waste, garbage, sewage, or intestines, depending on the context. It certainly isn't archaic.

"Pinions" appears in the older NIV as well... and as "wings" in the newer. It is the only word listed that might be considered archaic.

That's rather presumptuous of you.

I am not part of a "side"; I think for myself, and happen to agree with some points that you make, and disagree with others. I studied these passages a few months back, and concluded that both passages refer to the same person, but contradict one another regarding his age. I don't have an issue with that, because I don't hold the KJV as inerrant.

Exactly my point! You are obsessed with a version, rather than what is actually written in it.

I rest my case.

The other threads go round and round over the same stuff because nobody believes their bibles. If they did believe their bibles there wouldn't be any arguments because the bible is very clear about works, grace and salvation.

The problem "out there" wont be fixed until this problem here gets dealt with. So don't tell me I don't care about what's actually written. What's actually written can't be discussed because nobody on this forum can even agree on what's written.... and that's on you and anybody else who encourages people to NOT BELIEVE THE BIBLE!

I rest my case!

Well I've had people tell me that all the gospel accounts contradict each other at the tomb when Jesus resurrected and they were wrong. I've had people tell me many other things in the bible that were supposed to be wrong and they were wrong.

I don't have an issue with Ahaziah's age either, it's irrelevant as far as I can see but there are people like you out there that claim the KJV has errors because of that verse and that's the only reason I have any interest in it at all.

Just a joke. I respect you even when I disagree with you.

There are creeds that state what a person must believe to be a Christian. They were created by the early elders from 212 to 500. Anything contrary to the creeds is heresy. The early elders said any Biblical issue outside of the creeds is to agree to disagree. This is why there are many gospel preaching denominations. There are many issues where people disagree like Calvinism vs Arminianism. All Biblical!

The creeds were used to evangalise along with selected verses memorized. Bibles were very expensive and rare since scribes copied them by hand. It took months to copy one. Some people fail to understand how the printing press changed things.

I agree with that. All I was saying in that post was that people CHANGE the bible to fit their view instead of letting the bible CHANGE their view. I've been on this forum for several years and it's the same old thing over and over. When the scripture goes against a persons view then that person either goes to the Greek or another translation to get a definition or verse that supports their view... and people think that's rightly dividing the word of truth.

God IS NOT the author of confusion. God would not author 15 bibles that say different things and leave it up to our pea brains to figure out which bible got which part right.... that's insane and certainly is not the character of God.

oops,,,you should know by now that we all have our own interpretations and dictionaries to back them up, how else could we choose which college to go to unless they agree with our doctrine?

Read Greek?

I'm not an expert in textual criticism, but if I am not mistaken the King James Version has had several updates from the original, and that at least 90% of it was taken word for word from an earlier translation known as the Geneva Bible (which was also the first bible translation with annotations and study notes).

Plus, isn't the text taken from the Texus Receptus, which takes the majority readings over all others? That's a problem for a defensive argument, because we don't know whether someone mass produced an alternative rendering and left the others less copied. If I'm mistaken, we may have mass copies of some odd renderings that don't make sense in the flow of the Greek. You will find passages, even one whole chapter, found in different places within books of the the manuscripts, or scribal notes that made its way into the translation. Erasmus admitted in his early editions of the Greek New Testament that 1 John 5:7 isn't found in the original. It makes sense, since not even the Nicene fathers who defended the Trinity, or even Augustine in the West, has been found to quote this passage at all in their works. You would imagine that this would somehow be briefly mentioned for being so clear.

The last thing to consider is that some renderings don't make sense in context. One of those I've stumbled upon was Revelation 5:8-10 where the four living creatures are singing that they were taken from every tribe and tongue and nation, whereas the base text of other translations exclude themselves from the song. Was that a careless pick?

The King James is a good translation overall, it had played also an influential role among the Puritans and other great men's lives, as well as retain and encourage very high level English literacy in the English world for centuries. But let us not get caught up with the whole inerrant translation argument. God inspires his word to be true in all that he says and teaches, inerrant in doctrine. Inerrancy doesn't have to mean perfect manuscripts, they all are 99% the same, and the 1% difference is mainly punctuation or alternate readings that do not change the inerrant truths (like in Jude one says the Lord led the people out of Egypt and another says Jesus).

sounds like a clean up story to me.

No one rejects you, just your narrow dogmatic, contradictory, ideas.

The only reason I bring up those verses is in response to people who claim the KJV is without flaw or error, and in the same breath point fingers at similar anomalies in other versions. You haven't done so in this thread, but John146 has.

While that sounds valid, it is an implicit claim in favour of the KJV. The KJV simply isn't perfect, so the claim is not valid.

There are many arguments that can be leveled against the claim... why did God wait 1600 years before producing the Bible; why is there no manuscript evidence for certain passages; why are there clearly contradictory statements; why should we have to learn archaic words in order to understand God's word... etc.

Plus, Scripture doesn't state that it would only have one valid translation into a given language.

It's fine to make the claim that such is not consistent with God's character, but that is ultimately your opinion.

That is a small fragment. A large fragment might be a manuscript missing a piece like that. One of the problems with the word fragment. There was an instance where they found a pile of fragments like that and were trying to piece them together to recreate the original document. They got to a point where they could not go any farther. They had taken pictures of the fragments and had them loaded into a computer. They had a program that could solve a jigsaw puzzle and turned the fragments over to that. It completed the manuscript and they found that they had placed a piece in the wrong place that caused the blockage.

The original language Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic and koine Judeo Greek is inerrant. The problem is getting the correct ones to translate into English. The second problem is language changes over time. Also scientific information about nature has grown rapidly in the last 2 centuries. These 2 issues have caused the KJV to be flawed today. Words no longer in the English language and names of animals that never existed. These issues disappear when using a modern translation. For instance if memory serves me the KJV satyr in the NIV is a bull.

What contradictory ideas did I put forth?

What we are discussing is not God authoring 15 Bibles but man's flawed attempts to translate the Hebrew, Aramaic, and koine Judeo Greek into English. Then the added fact that languages change over time. What was a word 400 years ago no longer exists and morphed into a different word. Ouches for example morphed into brooches.

If you want to see the problem look up ancient Greek verb forms.