by Scott Christmas

Created on: May 31, 2008

The King James Version of the Bible (dubbed the Authorized Version by the Church of England) has without question been the most read, quoted, and recognized English-language version of the Bible since its creation in the first decade of the 17th century.

The KJV was first commissioned by James I of the England in order to create a universal English-language text of the Bible that would conform to the doctrines and theologies of the Church of England. James intended to create a translation that would not only "compete" with the Latin versions used by the Roman Catholic Church, but which would also pay homage, theologically, to the concerns of new Protestants in England, most notably the Puritans. James wanted a completely "de-catholicized" version of the Bible. The work was begun in 1604 and was completed in 1611.

Unfortunately, despite its popularity - particularly among conservative Christians - the King James Version is one of the most error-prone translations available in English. The texts used by the translators are known and have been known almost since the time of the translation to have been inferior and full of scribal mistakes.

The KJV translators relied solely on one Greek manuscript for the New Testament. This manuscript is known as the Textus Receptus. It was put together in the early 1500's by a Dutch scholar named Erasmus. In putting together the Textus Receptus, Erasmus used only a handful of sources, and all of these sources date from the 12th century or later. Furthermore, only one of his sources came outside what is called the "Byzantine" texts, which were a group of texts all copied in and around a specific geographic region (i.e., Byzantium). Scholars recognize that the Byzantine texts are full of scribal errors and do not conform to other earlier textual groupings, such as the Alexandrian texts.

Bart Ehrman, a textual scholar, who studied under the most pre-eminent textual scholar in the world Bruce Metzger has said that Erasmus' text was based on "one of the worstmanuscripts that we now have available to us."

So the Textus Receptus was the only source used by the KJV translators, and this source was itself based on only a few sources, all of which came from the Middle Ages or later, the majority of which came from only one geographic region, and all of which are known to be inconsistent with earlier texts and textual groupings.

What this means is that the New Testament in the KJV is based on very late manuscripts, which are known to be

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