The 400th anniversary of the 1611 King James Version of the Holy Bible passed during 2011 with a lot of fanfare and discussion. In fact, there is still some division among, and even within various Christian denominations regarding its use.
My first encounter with Christians who insisted that there was no other Bible except the KJV occurred in the summer of 1980, when I was working for a company selling books door to door deep in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. We carried a Zondervan Bible Dictionary, a two set Bible encyclopedia, a 10 volume set of children’s Bible stories and a guide to health and medical care for those who we encountered who might not be active Christians. While sitting on a front porch discussing the studying of the scriptures with an elderly gentleman who chewed and spat tobacco during the conversation, I was informed that the King James Version was the “preserved Word of God in English.” This gentleman, who was a leader in his Old Regular Baptist Church, informed me that it had been God’s plan all along to put the Bible in English, and once that occurred, it was not necessary for any other translation to be produced. Translations into other languages, he insisted, could now be made from the King James without having to consult those bothersome Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.
You may smile at that, but you would be surprised to know that there are a whole lot of people out there who believe something similar to it when it comes to the KJV. There are a lot of people who think that Christians who primarily use a more modern translation are compromising the veracity of their faith, and perhaps even jeopardizing their salvation, by depending on “modern versions” of the scriptures for their understanding of God. And among those Christians, it would not be hard to find those who insist that if your salvation experience itself is based on a modern version of scripture, it is not a real experience because it is not based on the KJV.
There is no doubt that the King James Version is a remarkable accomplishment, and stands alone in the history of translations of the scriptures. Of course, at the time the translation was made, those words which seem so poetic and grand to us were actually part of the vernacular of the day. In fact, what we generally consider to be that poetic, flowing, expressive English actually came along more than a century later, and is part of some later revisions and updates made to the translation over time. It would be hard for us to recognize many of the words and expressions of the 1611 English that was used in the original translation. Translating the Bible is a difficult task today, with all kinds of technology and advanced language study available to those who do the work. In 1611, the task must have seemed monumental, and the motivation must have been quite serious at the time.
But is the King James Version “The preserved Word of God in English,” and if so, what evidence is there to prove this claim?
Those who make it often cite particular scripture passages in support of their claim. The passages strongly support the claim that the Bible is the written word of God, put together by writers whose words came from the movement and direction of the Holy Spirit which God used to reveal knowledge about himself and his plan for the redemption of humankind. But there isn’t a passage that directly supports the claim that the KJV is the English version that God chose over all others, though when those passages are cited by people who believe this, they leave this fact out.
Why would God decide that a particular translation in one language would be the “preserved” text, and that any others would not be? And what is it, specifically, about the KJV that makes it the one? Is it because the British monarchy, under a Protestant king, put a stamp of approval on it? Or is it simply because it is old, it sounds “holy” with its elegant, old English language, and it managed to survive as the primary English version of scripture well into the twentieth century?
There are some facts about the KJV that are difficult to accept for those who think that God produced manuscripts on onion skin paper in black leather binders with “thee, thou and thine” as primary pronouns. It is not the first complete English translation of the Bible. Later revisions of it reflected the advance of scholarship in both the art of Bible translation and in the understanding and development of the English language. The version we have, and use, is not the 1611 version, but is almost 200 years newer. But why, if God does indeed preserve his word, even in translations of it that are made into the thousands of languages that now have copies of the scripture, would his hand not continue to guide translators as they produce more modern translations of the scripture? The KJV is not, contrary to popular opinion, a word for word translation from the original Hebrew and Greek, but is a “transliteration” of sorts, in that the translators had to sit down and figure out the nuances and contexts of the writers, to render an English text that was grammatically correct, with correct syntax.
God is big and powerful enough to make sure that his written word is preserved for succeeding generations. The art of translation is gifted with a long history of care taken to preserve the complete and total accuracy of the context, the message, and the very words written by those who were inspired by God to write them. This has resulted in a number of different English translations which not only preserve the intent of the original writers, but which provide individuals doing serious Bible study with a variety of ways to express one of God’s truths.
