[Part 2]————- Bible Texts ———————–
Why prefer the King James Version ?
Nearly every new translation takes ffrom the Scriptures. As previously mantioned, the Minority Text differs from Greek of the Majority Text in some 6,000 places. Some of the more remarkable examples would include John 7:53-8:11; Mark 16:9-20; John 3:13; John 5:4; Acts 8:37; Matthew 17:21; 18:11; 23:14; Mark 11:26; 15:28.
Nearly every new translation makes subtle changes which affect important doctrines. In many cases the miority text does not simply delete a word. This results in definite attacks on fundamental doctrines. Some of the striking examples include: Luke 23:42; John 3:16; 6:47; 6:69; 9:35, Romans 1:16; 14:10; Col 1:14; 1 Tim 3:16.
Some translations are doctrinally biased. The most notable example is the New World Translation, the official Bible of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. While it is supposedely translated from the same eclectic text as the other newer translations, it is further corrupted by the strained attempts to make scripture agree with the doctrinal position of it’s publisher. One glaring example of this bias is John 1:1, “the Word was *a* god.” This mistranslation is not attested to by *any* legitimate translator, including the most liberal. Were it not for the Watchtower’s publication of Benjamin Wilson’s Diaglott. his work would have fallen into disuse long ago.
Neraly every new translation adds to the scripture. Despite the theory that “shorter readings are to be prefered”, most new translation adapt longer readings where the Minority Text does so. A notable
example of this is 1 Peter 2:2, where new translations imply that we grow into salvation.
Some of the new “translations” are really paraphrases. A paraphrase is not a translation but a rewording of a trnalsation. The most popular today is “The Living Bible”. In this publication Kenneth Taylor paraphrased the American Standard Version, the American edition of the Revised Version of 1881. Many of it’s renderings are mearly his comments and opinions without any attempt to be scholarly. The publication should be rejected by all Christian people and used as a commentary, if at all.
Some translatins have condensed the Holy Scriptures. The Reader’s Digest Bible clearly deletes with the editorial pen, much of God’s Holy Word.
Some translations have changed meanings. The “non-sexist” reader published by the NCC blatantly and with no textual authority eliminates what is considered tobe sexist reading in the Holy Scriptures.
God continues to honor the King James Bible wherever it is believed and preached. It is the popular standard to which every new translation is compelled to be compared.
It is possible that a new, accurate updated version could be made from the same text as the King James Version. Indeed the King James Version was revised in 1629, 1638, 1762, and 1769. In 1982 Thomas
Nelson Publishers published it’s attempt at an updated version with the New King James Version.
We feel as did the learned Robert Disk Wilson, master of forty-five languages. As he stood before his classes at Princeton Theological Seminary in it’s conservative days, he would say, “The things I do not understand in the Bible I put down to my own ignorance”.
