The Authorized (AV) or King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, produced and widely circulated early in England’s King James’ reign, gave every literate English commoner access to its teachings. The decision to create a new English version of the Bible was a calculated political one. When James I came to the throne of England, he found the Church of England deeply divided. In April 1603, as he traveled to London to claim the English throne, activist members of the Puritan faction met him on route and furnished him with their Millenary Petition.
The Puritans wanted the Church of England completely de-Catholicized. Their petition consisted of a series of requests and complaints such as, but not limited to, protesting signing of the cross during baptism, administration of baptism by lay people, bowing at the name of Jesus, and that the canonical Scriptures only be read in the Church.
In response, James I called the Hampton Court Conference, a meeting postponed until January 1604 due to an outbreak of the plague, convened at Hampton Court Palace for discussion of the matter between the king and the representatives of the Church of England, including some moderate English Puritans. The participants in the conference were the king, his Privy Council of advisors, nine Anglican bishops and deans, and four token representatives of the Puritan faction.
Biblical historian Peter Nathan explains that the decision by James I to create an English language translation of the Bible was political, not a sincere effort to improve the biblical and theological understanding of his subjects. Nathan writes:
The decision to create the KJV translation was a response to the religious turmoil that surrounded James in his kingdom—turmoil that could ultimately affect his position of king. Seeking to preserve his position, James quickly accepted a suggestion by the Puritans to have a new English language translation of the Bible. The King with his closest adviser then set up the guiding parameters of the translation which invariably went against the Puritan sensitivities and interests but clearly supported the role of the monarchy. King James also hand chose the team of 50 translators who were to undertake the work from his leading bishops and academics as well as those from the Puritan community.
Nathan, 2011, p. 1
The Puritan representatives argued the necessity of a new translation. This they said was in the interest of accuracy and purity as there were significant translation errors in the earlier Bible translations needing correction. The king’s astute solution, to calm the Puritans and foster unity and conformity, was his swiftly commissioning a new translation of the Bible for the Church of England. However, considering himself a competent theologian and to retain total control and command, James I defined the scope and nature of the project. He issued a series of rules for the new translation. Later the king appointed only the translators he wanted to produce an Authorized Version consistent with traditional Anglican Church doctrine and his own political and theological views.
The intent of the instructions James I gave to his appointed translators was to guarantee that the new translation would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy (Daniell, 2003, p. 439). This was to ensure that the new version would preserve the central power, authority, and sovereignty of the monarch while agreeing with the established doctrines of the Church of England and limiting any Puritan influence on them. The rendition of specific Greek and Hebrew words was to reflect the traditional usage of the Church of England. For example, old ecclesiastical words such as the word “church” were to be retained and not to be translated as “congregation” (Daniell, 2003, p. 439).
The translators, all but one trusted Anglican clergy, proceeded accordingly. They rendered the texts in the Authorized Version to meet the king’s criteria and their own Anglican worldview. Their religious bias included, but was not limited to, the following:
- Providing the Holy Spirit (referred to as the Holy Ghost) a personality and referring to it as a male (John 14:16-17; 15:26; 16:7, 16:14);
- Substituting Easter for Passover (Acts 12:4);
- Advancing a Trinitarian formula (Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14; John 5:7 2);
- Substituting New “Testament” for New “Covenant” (Luke 22:20; Heb. 7:22; 9:15; see also: Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, 1 Corinthians 11:25; 2 Corinthians 3:6; 2 Corinthians 3:14; Hebrews 9:20);
- Embracing “a” falling away instead of “the” falling away (2 Thessalonians 2:3);
- Adopting “great tribulation” instead of “the great tribulation” (Revelation 7:14);
- Espousing “antichrist” instead of “the antichrist” (1 John 2:22);
- Using “in” the hand/forehead instead of “on” the hand/forehead (Revelation 13:16; 14:9; 20:4);
- Utilizing “the end of the world” instead of “end of the age” (Matthew 13:39, 49; 24:3; 28:20; Hebrews 9:26).
Translators further placed much of the punctuation of the Authorized Version to support Anglican doctrine. Roger L. Omanson (1946-2015), who largely spent his career in Bible translation with the United Bible Societies, wrote in the Bible Review, “literally thousands of decisions are made by translators” relating to the original meaning of words in context as well as grammatical constructions and the segmentation and punctuation of the text (Omanson, 1998, p. 43). For example, the Authorized Version translates 1 Corinthians 7:1-2 as:
Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
But it can also read:
Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”
In the first case the translators make the Apostle Paul teach, consistent with James I’s homosexual ideology, that it is good for a man not to touch (a euphemism for sexual intercourse) a woman. In the second case the translation renders the text as a quotation from a letter that the Corinthians wrote to Paul—a quotation with which Paul disagrees in the next verse (Omanson, 1998, p. 41).
Another example is the Authorized Version rendering of Luke 23:43 which we discussed in Part 1 of this two-part article:
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
But it can also read:
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee today, thou shalt be with me in paradise.
The former reflects 17th century Anglican dualism with believers’ souls going Heaven at death. The latter is consistent with a theology of a future general resurrection of the dead for a time of judgment (Revelation 20:12). The translators added the punctuation in the King James Version, and in other English translations, such as the comma in Luke 23:43, to reflect their 17th century Anglican dualism and orthodoxy.
For the Anglicans, the soul of the thief went to Heaven at death and that is the proposition they advanced. Absent an immortal soul, the only place Jesus and the thief experienced at death was the grave (Paroschi, 2013, pp. 6-7).
An outstanding exemplar of the Anglican translators deliberately translating a passage to meet the Conformist objectives of their own state religion is their convoluted rendering of Colossians 2:16-17. Their purpose was to undercut the observance of weekly biblical Sabbaths, holydays, and festivals as well as other Old Covenant conventions. In Jacobian England, both Seventh Day and Puritan Lords-Day Sabbatarianism was an issue dividing the state church and subverting His Majesty’s subjects. Their Anglican goal was to wholly suppress Sabbatarianism. Therefore, the translators of the Authorized Version intentionally and incorrectly rendered Colossians 2:16-17 as follows:
Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
In this case, they chose to translate the Greek text to declare that the Christian is not to let any human being judge him or her in regard to holydays or weekly Sabbaths as they were simply shadows made obsolete by Christ’s coming. The Anglican rendering of the verse was meant to not only free His Majesty’s subjects from the lingering effects of Judaism but to dispel any notion of Sabbatarianism (First-Day Puritanism and Seventh-Day Christianity) or to Judaize by refraining from the eating of swine flesh or black puddings (blood sausage) based on an uneducated misunderstanding of the Bible.
Notice also that the rendering “but the body is of Christ” disregards the context of the epistle. The matters addressed by the Apostle Paul were in reference to the realities of the issues at Colossae. Rather than the “body is of Christ,” the Apostle Paul consistently utilized the metaphor of the “body of Christ” being the Church of God in his epistles. See 1 Corinthians 12:12-28; Ephesians 1:22-23, 4:12; 5:30; Colossians 1:18; 1:24; 2:17-19; 3:14; cf. Acts 26:23. One cannot understand this phrase in any other way without violating the text. The Anglican translators were well aware of this fact and chose to ignore it to achieve their own goals.
In context, the metaphor “body of Christ” refers to the apostolic church under the leadership of the apostles themselves. A more literal rendering of the Greek text is:
Therefore, let no one judge you in regard to food, or drink, or in respect to a festival, or a new moon, or Sabbath days which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the body of Christ.
The Sabbath days which foretell God’s plan are the seven biblical holydays (high days or annual Sabbaths) and their associated festivals. Note that in context, the troublemakers at Colossae observed new moons for religious reasons and were vegetarian and never touched flesh foods nor fermented liquids. Abstinence from flesh foods and fermented liquids has nothing to do with a “shadow of what is to come” but annual Sabbaths certainly do.
The Apostle Paul consistently utilized the metaphor of the “body of Christ” being the qehal’el, Church of God, in his epistles. How can we understand this phrase in any other way without violating the text? We can’t. In context, the rules of exegesis require the metaphor “body of Christ” in Colossians 2:16-17 to refer to the apostolic church under the leadership of the apostles themselves.
What rules of exegesis?
Three reasonable ones any conservative Christian should be willing to follow are:
- The Bible is the inspired word of God.
- Every scripture must be understood in its immediate context.
- Any interpretation of scripture must be understood in the context of all other scriptures.
Realize that even a translator’s placement of a period can change the meaning of a text. Consider Ephesians 1:4-6 in the Authorized Version which reads:
According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
Here, the “in love” refers to the previously mentioned Christians. But the New International Version (NIV) emphasizes “in love” as the loving way God treats Christians as his children (Omanson, 1998, p. 43).
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Realize that the Authorized Version, begun in 1604 and completed in 1611, was an English translation of the Christian Bible (the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament) for the state Church of England. In effect, the King’s translators sanitized the Bible in order to produce an Anglicized version consistent with their 1611 worldview and doctrinal stance. There were, however, unintended consequences.
The organized state Churches (the Anglicans of England as well as the Presbyterians of Scotland) then found it difficult to suppress the common people from reading the New Testament, not just listening to selected passages read to them by the clergy during church services on Sunday and learning of its teachings. The Authorized Version enabled ordinary parishioners to question their clerics about the nuances of meaning in the New Testament. They not only learned of the apostles’ doctrine of repentance, believer’s baptism, obeying all of the Ten Commandments, keeping the weekly Seventh-Day Sabbath, observing the annual Sabbaths, applying the laying on of hands, rejecting biblically unclean animals for food and the like, but some began living accordingly and teaching others to do so as well.
The state Churches saw such practices, especially the notion of teaching his majesty’s subjects repentance from transgression of God’s laws, as threating the stability of the monarchy, legalism and Judaizing. For those reading the new translation and being convinced of its Seventh-Day (Friday/Saturday) Sabbatarianism it brought persecution, trouble and terrible turmoil.
In our day, four hundred years later, we have the New Testament translated into many editions and hundreds of tools to aid us in biblical study. For example, see the compare translations tool on biblehub.com for Matthew 1:1. As to the biblical text itself, Norman L. Geisler (1932-2019), theologian and founding president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, and William E. Nix, former dean at the Southern Evangelical Seminary and a professor of historical and theological studies at Veritas Evangelical Seminary, relying on data provided by Bruce M. Metzger (1914-2007) report that as of 1976, “there are 362 manuscripts and 245 lectionaries in uncial script, 2,795 and 1,964 lectionaries in minuscule script, totaling 5,366 officially cataloged portions of the Greek New Testament” (Geisler, 1986, pp. 387, 402, 404); (Metzger, 1981, pp. 54-56).
Reportedly, there are 7,959 verses or roughly 184,600 words in the King James Version of the New Testament. Of these, only twenty (0.0025%) are unclear. Moreover, the Majority Text (the Byzantine text-type) and the Critical Text (the Alexandrian text-type) are in agreement 98% of the time (Wallace, 1991, pp. 157-158). Currently, the Nestle-Aland text (German Bible Society, 2013), now in its twenty-eighth edition, is the Critical Text in common use, along with the Greek New Testament, 5th Revised Edition designed for translators and students (German Bible Society, 2014).
So then, we have an accurate preservation of the New Testament although we might have to work at acquiring an understanding of the meaning and implications of the message and details embodied in the biblical text. I encourage you to educate yourself in the Bible and the culture of the biblical world. My demonstration of some of the ambiguity inherent in the New Testament is not meant to aid and abet those who would deconstruct it. My intent is to encourage you to dig deeper into biblical study. Hopefully, these vagaries and ambiguities can be reduced by a fuller grasp of the subtleties of the Apostolic Age and enhance our understanding of God’s word. As we come to a fuller understanding of the actual teachings of the apostles then we have to decide their relevance for our lives.
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