400 years of the KJV

FOR MOST Christians in the world, this is the holiest week of the year, in which we remember the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, his Last Supper with his main followers, and his subsequent trial, torture, death and resurrection, which bought freedom from slavery to sin and death. It coincides with the week in which Jews worldwide celebrate the Passover, when they remember their liberation from slavery in Egypt and their salvation from the power of the angel of death. The two events are, of course, genealogically and theologically related, and I would like to wish you all a joyful and holy Passover/Easter!

Four hundred years ago, in 1611, the project of the Anglican Church to translate the Bible from the original languages (Hebrew and Greek) into English came to a successful conclusion. Under the patronage of James I, king of England (1603-1625) and head of the Church of England, the translation bore his name: The King James Version (KJV). It was not the first Anglican English translation of the Bible: King Henry VIII (1509-1547) had commissioned 'The Great Bible', published during his reign, and 'The Bishop's Bible' had been published in 1568 under Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603). The Roman Catholic 'Douay-Rheims' translation of the Bible into English also preceded the KJV, having been published in 1609.

The KJV is considered to be one of the foundation masterpieces of English literature. Hundreds of its turns of phrase are magical and memorable: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want"; "by His stripes we are healed"; "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". The KJV, or 'The Authorised Version', as it was then called (it was authorised by the British Parliament), has been one of the best-selling books in English over the last 400 years!

good then. good now?

The KJV is an excellent translation into English of the best Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament) texts available at the time. Since 1611, the English language has moved on, and nobody speaks like that anymore. Several English words used in 1611 have different meanings in 2011, one reason why mainstream churches - including the Anglican Church which produced the KJV - no longer use it, preferring more modern translations into contemporary English.

But there is a more serious reason why the KJV should no longer be used by serious Bible students. The best Hebrew and Greek texts available in 1611 (called the Textus Receptus, or 'Received Text') have been shown to have hundreds of flaws. Even if we are happy with using the 1611 English, we should not be happy with the 1611 Hebrew and Greek from which the English translation was made.

Prior to the invention of printing, duplicates of the Bible had to be copied by hand, and, inevitably, thousands of errors were made. There are 5,000 existing copies of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament (NT); of these, no two are identical; the differences, combined, amount to hundreds of thousands of variations. In 1516, Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus published the first printed Greek New Testament (the Textus Receptus) wherein he chose from among the variants the ones he thought were the originals (of course, there is no book of the Bible for which we have an original). Most modern scholars consider his text to be of dubious quality.

further adjustments

In 1881, the Anglican scholars Westcott and Hort published 'The New Testament in the Original Greek', which included data from the Codex Sinaiticus discovered only in 1859. The international committee that produced the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament has adopted the Westcott and Hort edition as its basic text, and modern translations of the NT are based on it.

Once the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 11 caves at Wadi Qumran in the 1940s, many corrections were made to Old Testament Hebrew texts. Thus both the Hebrew and Greek texts available to modern scholars are much more accurate than those available in 1611.

This year, English-speaking Christians celebrate 400 years of this remarkable literary work, but, except for fundamentalists, no scholars use it for Bible study.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.