Rick Beckman

More Changes Between the 1611 and the 1769 Editions of the KJV

The fol­low­ing is a sequel of sorts to my pre­vi­ous post as I want­ed to share even more vari­a­tions between the orig­i­nal KJV and the cur­rent edition.

Again, my ques­tion to KJV-Only­ists is this: How do you deter­mine what is per­fect or not? If you had a 1611 KJV in your hands, would you be hold­ing the per­fect Word of God? Why or why not? At what point did the KJV become the per­fect Word of God? Was it in 1612, 1613, 1616, 1629, 1638, or 1769? The KJV was edit­ed a bit in each of those years. Is the 1769 edi­tion per­fect? Why? Which: the Oxford edi­tion or the Cam­bridge edi­tion? Why? What about the Mod­ern King James Ver­sion or the Com­fort-able King James Version?

Was there a per­fect Word of God in Eng­lish in 1768? If so, why was it edit­ed a year later?

Most impor­tant­ly, I would like to ask this: if the 1769 edi­tion of the Eng­lish Bible is per­fect, what was the per­fect Bible a year before that? Clear­ly it could­n’t have been the KJV ’cause it was still in need of editing.

KJV-Only­ism is a divi­sive tra­di­tion full of more holes than a bowl of Chee­rios. May the Lord open the eyes and ears of all those trapped by this strong­hold, just as He did for me. 

Here are some more changes between the 1611 and the 1769 edi­tions of the KJV. You can see that the changes in some instances affect the mean­ing of the con­text quite significantly!

  • Deuteron­o­my 26:1 — “which the Lord giueth” vs. “which the LORD thy God giveth”
  • Joshua 13:29 — “tribe of Man­asseh, by” vs. “tribe of the chil­dren of Man­asseh by”
  • Ruth 3:15 — “he went into the citie” vs. “she went into the city”
  • Psalm 69:32 — “seeke good” vs. “seek God”
  • Jere­mi­ah 49:1 — “inher­it God” vs. “inher­it Gad”
  • Matthew 16:16 — “Thou art Christ” vs. “Thou art the Christ”
  • Mark 10:18 — “There is no man good” vs. “there is none good” (note that now “there is” is marked as being added by the trans­la­tors for clarity)
  • 1 Corinthi­ans 4:9 — “approued to death” vs. “appoint­ed to death”

In addi­tion to all of those vari­a­tions, there is anoth­er inter­est­ing one at Jere­mi­ah 34:16.

Mod­ern ver­sions of the KJV (the Oxford edi­tion and the Cam­bridge edi­tion) vary on this mat­ter. The Oxford ed. says “…whom ye had set at lib­er­ty…” while the Cam­bridge ed. says “…whom he had set at liberty…”

Which is correct?

If the KJV alone is our author­i­ty, how on earth would we ever fig­ure it out? How­ev­er, thank­ful­ly, the pre­served man­u­script evi­dence is our author­i­ty, not a trans­la­tion from that pre­served evi­dence. The Hebrew in that pas­sage is plur­al, and so “you” (or, as the KJV would read, “ye”) is the cor­rect trans­la­tion. But if all you have in your hands are two KJVs — one Oxford and one Cam­bridge — how could you ever come to any sort of con­clu­sion? Even if you had the Hebrew text there, cer­tain forms of rad­i­cal KJV-Only­ism, such as that of Dr. Ruck­man and his sup­port­ers, would pro­hib­it using the Hebrew text — espe­cial­ly if it would over­ride what the KJV says (or, in this instance, what the pre­ferred edi­tion of the KJV says).

Thank the Lord that He has pre­served His Word through a mass of man­u­scripts which allow us to know His Word thor­ough­ly rather than a sin­gu­lar trans­la­tion which lim­its our stud­ies to the inter­pre­ta­tions of fal­li­ble men (i.e., “God for­bid” is an inter­pre­ta­tion — the word “God” does­n’t even appear in the Greek in those pas­sages, but if you are for­bid­den to look at the Greek by an Only­ist doc­trine, how would you ever know‽).

The above infor­ma­tion is from the excel­lent work The King James Only Con­tro­ver­sy by James R. White, which I rec­om­mend to any­one curi­ous about whether mod­ern Bible ver­sions are trust­wor­thy or not.

The vari­a­tions between the 1611 & the 1769 edi­tions of the KJV can be ver­i­fied using e‑Sword which has both Bibles avail­able for down­load freely.

Posted

in

by

Rick Beckman

Tags:

Comments

31 responses to “More Changes Between the 1611 and the 1769 Editions of the KJV”

  1. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    My ques­tion in addi­tion to the above:

    Most KJVOs argue that the trans­la­tion process was inerrant, but the print­ing process was not. But in what oth­er form has the KJV exist­ed oth­er than print­ed form? Pre-print­ed? The pre-print­ed KJV, con­sid­ered by many to be inerrant, per­ished in the Great Fire after being pur­chased by Bark­er (the print­er). Based on what were the cor­rec­tions after the year 1666 (most KJVs pub­lished today are post-1666 edi­tions) made? Oth­er errant prints? A third revi­sion revelation?

    If God willed for us to have a per­fect trans­la­tion in Eng­lish, why would he go through all the trou­ble of trans­lat­ing inerrant­ly only to have man goof up when print­ing the very first copy in 1611. And the sec­ond. And the third, and so on… When did the KJV become perfect?

    The Bible sup­ports clear­ly and pre­cise­ly that God gave man His word. It also sup­ports clear­ly and pre­cise­ly that it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to spread that word. And we have been, are, and will con­tin­ue to do this. But nowhere in the Bible does it even hint toward the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Gods hand in a sec­ond rev­e­la­tion, or His hand in a sin­gle inerrant trans­la­tion. This is all a man-made doc­trine, fab­ri­cat­ed by those want­i­ng to guess how God works, and what God prefers.

    Psalms 119:89 does not say “For ever, O LORD, thy word is set­tled in the KJV”.

    I have cho­sen to remove KJVO from my faith because it has no scrip­ture back­ing it. It leaves a path of hatred and divi­sion that is real­ly sad to see in our church­es today. The trans­la­tion we choose should not be an excuse for hatred or sep­a­ra­tion sim­ply because it’s not the KJV.

    Reply
    1. Morris R. Byman Avatar
      Morris R. Byman

      I use the New Scofield Ref­er­ence Bible-the 1967 edi­tion. It is bet­ter to my mind but by no means infal­li­ble! The orig­i­nal man­u­scripts were! I heard a KJO per­son say that the KJV trans­la­tors make the KJV bible bet­ter! that my friends is about as bad as it could get! I use the bible that I do because I used it for over thir­ty years in my ministry!

      Reply
      1. Lawrence Bednar Avatar
        Lawrence Bednar

        To Mor­ris, Rick and all com­men­ta­tors crit­i­cal of the KJV:

        I begin with some famous words of our Savior

        Matthew 4:4
        “It is writ­ten, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro­ceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (quot­ed by Christ from Deut.8:3)

        Every spo­ken word of God is inerrant, and now appears as scrip­ture inspired by His spo­ken dic­ta­tion of the words to the minds of auto­graph writ­ers. To illus­trate, dic­ta­tion to Moses is the only expla­na­tion for words of the cre­ation account spo­ken before men exist­ed; it con­tin­ues through- out scrip­ture, being empha­sized by words that the text indi­cates are spo­ken by God to Old Tes­ta­ment men like Moses & David, and words that the text indi­cates are spo­ken by God Him­self in the per­son of Christ.

        Now if we today are to live by every inerrant word from God’s mouth, they must all be pre­served in their inerrant state, and in the lan­guage we under­stand, Eng­lish in our case. Fur­ther, liv­ing by God’s Word applies to the entire era endowed with His writ­ten Word, so tra­di­tion­al texts alone will pre­serve His Words. We con­clude that our tra­di­tion­al KJV and its Greek & Hebrew/Aramaic basis pre­serve inerran­cy of God’s Words spo­ken in dic­ta­tion inspi­ra­tion of the auto­graphs. In the Eng­lish, a KJV-only posi­tion can real­ly be con­sid­ered as a God’s-Word-only posi­tion that today is attacked relent­less­ly, as it has been through­out text history.

        Now mod­ern crit­i­cal Greek texts are based main­ly on Alexan­dri­an man­u­scripts high­ly vari­ant among them- selves in tex­tu­al & doc­tri­nal mat­ters, and lost to church­es for ~1400 years before being restored by schol­ars in the 19th cen­tu­ry A.D. Clear­ly, the crit­i­cal texts can’t pos­si­bly be the source of every inerrant word from the mouth of God by which mankind has always been required to live through­out the New Tes­ta­ment era, and can’t be part of God’s plan for His Word in His church.

        Now we must under­stand the nature of bib­li­cal inerran­cy as the prod­uct of both divine & human fac­tors since God bestows & pre­serves His Word through men. Thus we can expect vari­ance in text lit­er­al­i­ty due to the human fac­tor, while the divine fac­tor ensures against any actu­al error that dis­torts the teach­ing. Clear­ly, dif­fer­ent words can be uti­lized to state a giv­en truth, and the 1611 KJV trans­la­tors exclaimed this in their pref­ace. What results is an exact con­tex­tu­al equiv­a­lence in man­u­scripts of the tra­di­tion­al Greek & Hebrew/Aramaic tex­tu­al basis, an equiv­a­lence also exhib­it­ed by a trans­la­tion God has ordained through schol­ars that He calls to this kind of work, and not just any schol­ars who assume they have the right to translate.

        Now the state­ment by Christ on liv­ing by every word from God’s mouth is like­ly best inter­pret­ed as mean­ing to live by the effect of every word on the con­text of every bib­li­cal teach­ing. Thus in trans­la­tion it is nec­es­sary that no word or group of words sub­tract from, or add to, the sense of the con­text, and a good exam­ple of this is the ren­der­ing of the Deut.8:3 Hebrew by Christ in the Greek of Mat.4:4; the forms of the two ren­der­ings, as they appear in the KJV, are as not­ed below.

        Mat.4:4 “It is writ­ten, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro­ceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
        Deut.8:3…man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that pro­ceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.

        The words “shall & alone & God” in Matthew dif­fer from the words “doth & only & Lord” in Deuteron­o­my, yet the sense of each word is the same in both vers­es, so exact equiv­a­lence applies here. Fur­ther, the words “doth man live” at the end of the Deuteron­o­my quote, though not in Matthew, don’t add any­thing to the con­text of the teach­ing in Matthew, so inerran­cy in the form of exact equiv­a­lence in the Greek & Hebrew appears here, and it’s pre­served in KJV Eng­lish. It appears that Christ Him­self teach­es exact-equiv­a­lence as the form of trans­la­tion inerrancy.

        Regard­ing print­ing error, it is inter­est­ing that some error of this type pro­duces truth that sup­ports the con­tex­tu­al teach­ing, as in the cas­es of Ruth 3:15, Ps.69:32 & Jer.34:16, not­ed in my com­men­tary below. Thus God seems to take note of print­ing error, but has an unspec­i­fied goal when He does not inter­vene in this mat­ter. For print­ing error in gen­er­al, I sug­gest you con­sid­er this type of human error as the means by which God shows that His direc­tion is usu­al­ly con­fined to the trans­la­tors. Peo­ple in gen­er­al are required to be con­cerned about such error, demand­ing a cor­rec­tion as part of their devo­tion to God’ Word. It is for mankind in gen­er­al that teach­ing of the Word is intend­ed, and when nations dis­play indif­fer­ence, their text will be marred for the long term, in recog­ni­tion of their error. In regard to the KJV, we note the famous case in which the word “not” was omit­ted from the com­mand, “thou shalt not com­mit adul­tery,” an error for which the print­er was very heav­i­ly fined to show that Eng­land would­n’t tol­er­ate such error in the sacred text; this is one way that peo­ple in gen­er­al can show their high regard for God’s Word, to wit­ness to the unbe­liev­ing world in general. 

        Note to Rick: the con­cept of exact equiv­a­lence applies to var­i­ous exam­ples of dif­fer­ences in word­ing in the 1611 & 1769 KJV that you have not­ed above, and that I point­ed out in my ini­tial com­men­tary not­ed below. You should study tex­tu­al con­cepts before con­tin­u­ing to crit­i­cize the KJV, and in doing so, you might like to con­sult my web­site, KJVTextualTechnology.com that expounds on above-not­ed con­cepts & others.

        Hop­ing for your con­ver­sion to Bible-based faith,
        Lawrence Bednar

        Reply
        1. Lawrence Bednar Avatar
          Lawrence Bednar

          P.S. Rick: To be a bit more com­pre­hen­sive regard­ing my exam­ples of equiv­a­lence, I should point out that, while the 1769 edi­tion main­tains equiv­a­lence with the 1611, a pri­ma­ry goal was to max­i­mize lit­er­al­i­ty agree­ment with the Hebrew or Greek. To illus­trate this, I refer back to some of your ear­li­er-not­ed cas­es of ren­der­ings that you think of as error in one edi­tion or the oth­er. A few such cas­es are reviewed below, with the 1769 ren­der­ing appear­ing after that of the 1611, as in your listing.

          1. Joshua 3:11 – “Arke of the Couenant, euen the Lord” vs. “ark of the covenant of the Lord”
          Here con­text empha­sizes that the Lord Him­self is among the peo­ple of Israel, as in verse 10 par­tic­u­lar­ly, and the 1611 empha­sizes this aspect, say­ing in effect, “Ark of the covenant, even (of implied) the Lord” (“of” can’t be ren­dered once “even” is cho­sen). There is no dif­fer­ence in the con­tex­tu­al teach­ing of the the edi­tions. The 1769 sim­ply fol­lows the Hebrew more literally.

          2. Jere­mi­ah 31:14 – “with good­nesse” vs. “with my goodness”
          Here con­text empha­sizes that the Lord will bless Israel, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly not­ed in verse 11, so it is obvi­ous that the good­ness that will be con­ferred is that of the Lord so that absence of “my” in the 1611 has no con­tex­tu­al effect. Again, the 1769 sim­ply fol­lows the Hebrew more literally.

          3. Jere­mi­ah 51:30 – “burnt their dwelling places” vs. “burned her dwelling places”
          Here “their” in the 1611 refers to men of Baby­lon, while “her” refers to the nation of Baby­lon (that is of fem­i­nine gram­mat­i­cal gen­der) named in the same verse, and the two pro­nouns are equiv­a­lent in refer­ring to this ene­my of Israel. Again, the 1769 sim­ply fol­lows the Hebrew more literally.

          4. Ezekiel 24:5 – “let him seethe” vs. “let them seethe”
          Here the pro­noun “him” in the 1611 refers back to the “house” (of Jerusalem) in verse 3, “house” being a gram­mat­i­cal­ly mas­cu­line term, and “them” in the 1769 refers to the peo­ple of the city, so the two ren­der­ings are con­tex­tu­al­ly equiv­a­lent, with “them” being more lit­er­al in regard to the Hebrew.

          Regards,
          Lawrence Bednar

          Reply
          1. petey cruiser Avatar
            petey cruiser

            Joshua 3:11 in the 1611 is an appos­i­tive. It shows the the Arc of the Covenant is the Lord Him­self. The 1769 shows pos­ses­sive­ness, mean­ing the Arc of the Covenant belongs to the Lord, they are NOT the same doctrine.

            Reply
  2. John Rochelle Avatar
    John Rochelle

    Actu­al­ly, my Pitt Min­ion Cam­bridge edi­tion has “whom ye had set at lib­er­ty…” for Jere­mi­ah 34:16, which you list above as being the Oxford vari­ant. I have noticed that even among Cam­bridge edi­tions, there are some vari­a­tions in some vers­es, includ­ing ital­ics in Scriven­er’s work where they are lack­ing in the Pitt Min­ion and the Con­cord. I use Cam­bridge edi­tions in the (pos­si­bly naïve) hope that I am com­ing close to a 1769 revi­sion of the AV. Sure­ly (one would hope) the Cam­bridge peo­ple have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to main­tain a good con­ti­nu­ity in AV text since they’ve been pub­lish Eng­lish bibles since the late 1500s…but it appears that even at the piv­otal point of 1769 there is more than one Eng­lish text afoot.

    Thank you for address­ing this dif­fi­cult topic.

    John Rochelle, Gray, Tennessee

    Reply
  3. Steve Nickolas Avatar
    Steve Nickolas

    I’ve been rolling back a copy of a Cam­bridge print­ing to read like the 1611 ver­sion, with a few poten­tial changes marked in the notes based on evi­dence — expe­ri­ence in 16th/17th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish, com­par­i­son with ear­li­er trans­la­tions, etc., to pre­serve the exact 1611 text in mod­ern spelling and at the same time a recon­struct­ed text based on my con­jec­ture and based on the new­er printings.

    It will be a long time before I get anywhere :/

    Reply
  4. Bible Protector Avatar
    Bible Protector

    The “which edi­tion?” ques­tion is answered from a KJBO view on my biblepro­tec­tor website.

    Reply
  5. Rick Beckman Avatar
    Rick Beckman

    Bible Pro­tec­tor: Com­ment­ing in a way that does not add to the con­ver­sa­tion at all but instead sole­ly adver­tis­es your own site is spam, so I’m remov­ing your link. Curi­ous users can find you via Google.

    The chal­lenges which arise due to edi­tions and revi­sions of the King James Ver­sion pale in com­par­i­son to var­i­ous oth­er issues Only­ists must face.

    Reply
  6. Wm J Oxford Avatar
    Wm J Oxford

    Which edi­tion is cor­rect? Easy: They are all correct. 

    Obvi­ous­ly you don’t under­stand at all how preser­va­tion works.

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      And you evi­dent­ly have no idea how “truth” works; the edi­tions con­tra­dict each oth­er. If they’re all cor­rect, which truth is more, well, true?

      Reply
      1. A Burke Avatar
        A Burke

        Under­stand. The Book is fruit from the “Tree of Knowl­edge” so that the chil­dren of Adam and Eve may know the dif­fer­ence between good and evil. Cor­rect con­clu­sions can be drawn from most ANY edition.

        The impor­tant part is that you read it and learn from it!

        Reply
  7. Chad Avatar
    Chad

    Jim posed an excel­lent ques­tion. There are indeed today at least one and pos­si­bly two anno­tat­ed Bish­op’s Bibles that were used by the Trans­la­tors to take notes and effect changes where nec­es­sary. There is also in exis­tence one note­book which was the work of one of the trans­la­tors on the Pauline Epis­tles. That was dis­cov­ered in the 1950’s in a pub­lic library in Eng­land which one of the Trans­la­tors found­ed. Also, there are print­ed edi­tions that were made to cor­rect print­ing errors from edi­tions that had flood­ed the mar­ket from for­eign print­ers as well as pub­lic. So, if the schol­ars can col­late the appro­pri­ate text, then why can’t the KJV print­ers? Is that not a dou­ble stan­dard? Absolute­ly. So, man­u­script evi­dence actu­al­ly shows that there were edi­tions print­ed with the prop­er text at cer­tain print­ers through­out the entire process. Maybe all of them did not occur at Cam­bridge in sub­se­quent print­ings. Maybe all of them did not occur in sub­se­quent print­ings in Oxford. How­ev­er, the fact is that there is a tes­ti­mo­ny out there. In short, the “major” dif­fer­ences of the 1769 edi­tion and the 1611 edi­tion often came down to 12 vari­ant read­ings caused by a mis­print and which were easy to find the cor­rect read­ing by col­lat­ing the text. The daft­ness of some peo­ple think­ing schol­ars can col­late some 5,000+ Greek Man­u­scripts, the thou­sands of trans­la­tions, hun­dreds of thou­sands of quotes by Chris­tians from the ear­ly cen­turies and oth­er such issues to pro­duce a prop­er Greek read­ing but they can­not do it with less than 500 vari­ants caused by a mis­print. On top of that, how can they not do it when there is proof that in all real­i­ty only 136 vari­ants were the issue. Add to that the fact that the 1769 edi­tion and 1611 edi­tion vary in almost twelve places only due to mis­prints. Wow, and I thought nor­mal peo­ple could be igno­rant. The thought of being able to do all of that schol­ar­ly work in the Greek and Hebrew yet not being able to fig­ure out 12 read­ings that have already been tak­en care of. So, when it is all said and done, even if you are not KJVO, what is the issue? If you picked up your Bible and there were a mere 12 mis­prints would it not be the Bible? Has the pure Word of God then been pol­lut­ed? After all if it said: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Sun, that whoso­ev­er believeth in him should per­ish, but have ever­last­ing wife; any per­son would know Sun should be Son, begot­ten is miss­ing between only and Son, not is miss­ing in between should and per­ish and wife should be life. Ridicu­lous, I know, but now you see the con­text of your wis­dom. In that one instance, if anoth­er edi­tion were print­ed cor­rect­ly that one verse would make the two edi­tions dis­agree four times, one-third of what the 1769 and 1611 edi­tion did. Try study­ing these things more in full before just blun­der­ing about through pas­sages. Remem­ber, don’t bash peo­ple who do not use the KJV, but don’t bash peo­ple who do. Bash the schol­ars who mis­rep­re­sent the truth to sup­ply their side with a stacked deck. Also, the fact that Eng­lish-speak­ing peo­ple do not know what the dif­fer­ences are between an edi­tion and a revi­sion is sad. Edi­tions have to do with edit­ing, and edit­ing is the process where­by the work is ensured as adher­ing to all of the rules of gram­mar, usages, punc­tu­a­tions, spellings and oth­er such things. How­ev­er, a revi­sion is the work where­by the writer rearranges thoughts, ideas and details in the work, along with struc­tur­ing of sen­tences, para­graphs and words used to con­vey what is intend­ed. The restruc­tur­ing of words would have to do with a com­plete rear­rang­ing and not with a cor­rec­tion of words that may have been left out. A revi­sion, by def­i­n­i­tion, deals with sig­nif­i­cant changes. Edit­ing only takes place after revi­sion and deals with cor­rect­ing some­thing over­looked. So, a revi­sion is not the same thing as an edi­tion. If edi­tions con­tra­dict each oth­er, the ques­tion is not which text is true, but which print­ing is true. So, my ques­tion would be, which revi­sion of the NIV is true? Is it the NIV, NIVi, NIrV, TNIV? When chil­dren dab­ble in a grown ups are­na they always find them­selves cor­rect­ed and sent away sullen. That is the case with today’s KJVO crowd as well as those who oppose the KJVO crowd. Every­one needs to do more study­ing before mak­ing igno­rant state­ments. That is all. Have fun! : )

    Reply
    1. Morris R. Byman Avatar
      Morris R. Byman

      Chad, what do you think of the trans­la­tion errors in the 1769 KJV? For instance, John 1:12 where the word for CHILDREN is trans­lat­ed SONS. We are born into the fam­i­ly of God as chil­dren. Sons has to do with adop­tion! In Heb. 10:23 the Greek word for HOPE is trans­lat­ed FAITH. There is a big dif­fer­ence between faith and hope. All I am say­ing is that the KJV is not a per­fect trans­la­tion! I use it because of the fact that I believe it is based on the man­u­scripts that are the true word of God!

      Reply
      1. Lawrence Bednar Avatar
        Lawrence Bednar

        To Mor­ris:

        1. Faith or hope? Hebrews 10:23 in the KJV is said by so many com­men­ta­tors to be mis­trans­lat­ed that the time to respond is over­due. The KJV verse says, “Let us hold fast the pro­fes­sion of our faith with­out waver­ing; (for he is faith­ful that promised;)”

        Sem­i­nary dean & pro­fes­sor, Dr. William Combs, says “faith” in this verse is an incor­rect ren­der­ing of the Greek, the prop­er one sup­pos­ed­ly being “hope.” How­ev­er, faith is what our hope is all about, and the two terms are inter­twined so that either can apply in a giv­en con­text. Indeed, the lex­i­con mean­ings for “hope” (Gr. elpis) include terms like “trust” and “con­fi­dence” that are equiv­a­lent in sense to faith (Gr. pis­tis), and relat­ed spelling of the two Greek terms is indica­tive of a com­mon ety­mol­o­gy or derivation.

        The KJV here says “Let us hold fast the pro­fes­sion of our faith with­out waver­ing;” the prop­er ren­der­ing of the Greek here is sup­pos­ed­ly “hope,” but faith is what our hope is all about, and the two terms are inter­twined so that either can apply in a giv­en con­text. Indeed, lex­i­con mean­ings for “hope” (Gr. elpis) include terms like “trust” & “con­fi­dence” that are equiv­a­lent in sense to “faith” (Gr. pis­tis), and relat­ed spelling of the two Greek terms is indica­tive of com­mon ety­mol­o­gy or derivation. 

        Most schol­ars today seem to have lex­i­con def­i­n­i­tions so fixed in their minds that they don’t apply lan­guage to its full extent. “Faith” is the bet­ter choice in Hebrews 10:23 that speaks of a pro­fes­sion since pro­fes­sion or con­fes­sion of faith is what we are to give with­out waver­ing, hope being the pow­er behind that faith. We profess/confess our faith to those out­side the faith, but our hope applies inward­ly. This fits with the sense of faith as the sub­stance and evi­dence (what we pro­fess) in response to our hope in Heb.11:1 that says faith (pis­tis) is the sub­stance of things hoped for, the evi­dence of things not seen. 1 Peter 3:15 says…“be ready always to give a rea­son of the hope that is in you,” and giv­ing that rea­son is the pro­fes­sion of our faith

        Fur­ther, con­text here favors “faith” over “hope” in that Heb. 10:22 speaks of the assur­ance of faith, and it is the assur­ance of faith that leads to our pro­fes­sion of it, so faith is the log­i­cal sub­ject of our pro­fes­sion in Heb.10:23. Fur­ther­more, the ren­der­ing “faith” in the first clause of verse 23 log­i­cal­ly relates to the lat­ter clause, “for he (God) is faith­ful that promised,” our faith being a response to the faith­ful­ness of God. That is, because God is faith­ful we are exhort­ed to hold fast to the pro­fes­sion of our faith with­out wavering. 

        KJV trans­la­tors nor­mal­ly ren­dered “hope” for the sub­ject Greek term, as seen in many vers­es (e.g. Acts 23:6 & 26:7, Rom.5:4, 12:12 & 15:13, 1 Cor.13:13, etc., so it’s clear that they knew the basic mean­ing of the term. They made an excep­tion in Heb.10:23, obvi­ous­ly because the two terms are so close in the sense of mean­ing, and con­tex­tu­al lan­guage favors the sense of faith. This is a case of fine tun­ing in trans­la­tion work indica­tive of KJV schol­ar­ship notably supe­ri­or to the mod­ern brand. 

        2. Sons or chil­dren? Jesus Christ our Sav­ior is the pri­ma­ry sub­ject of John 1:1–18. Speak­ing of Him, verse 12–13 in the KJV says “But as many as received him, to them gave he pow­er to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” 

        The Greek term for “sons” is more com­pre­hen­sive than the term “chil­dren” pre­ferred by mod­ern trans­la­tors, being indica­tive of the gen­er­al sense of “descen­dants.” Either “sons” “chil­dren” or “daugh­ters” has this sense gram­mat­i­cal­ly, and each can apply in a giv­en con­text. How­ev­er, “sons” is con­tex­tu­al­ly required here in John, and most trans­la­tors of mod­ern ver­sions over­look this.

        Mor­ris, you say we are born into the fam­i­ly of God as chil­dren, but that is the earth­ly sense descrip­tive of our human lim­its of faith, love & wis­dom. Verse 13 speaks of a birth, not of blood, nor of flesh, but of God. This refers to God-giv­en pow­er to become descen­dants of God, mean­ing in the like­ness of Christ, who is mas­cu­line, so “sons of God” is the cor­rect term in verse 12. Male and female descen­dants of God are those who are giv­en a degree of like­ness to our divine Father through His only divine Son, who is the very image of the Father (see 1 Jn.3:2 & 1 Cor.13:12). God the Father sees His Son’s image in male & female redeemed ones. This can be one rea­son that Christ said those of the Res­ur­rec­tion do not mar­ry, being like the angels in this mat­ter (Mt.22:30).

        Reply
  8. Chad Avatar
    Chad

    Oh, and for any­one who wants the Pure text, since that is what every­one is dri­ving at, try look­ing into the 1900’s Cam­bridge Pure Edi­tion which was indeed the final edi­tion of the KJV where all of the tex­tu­al vari­ants made due to print­er’s errors have been refined. In that case, if I were to argue the KJVO point, the 1611 was per­fect from the begin­ning till some muck­i­ty-muck with a han­ker­ing for a buck start­ed crank­ing out mis­print­ed Bibles and that faith­ful men using col­la­tion final­ly got them all weed­ed out around the same time that print­ing became “mod­ern­ized”. Now we have dig­i­tal­ized print­ing. That should be a hoot in about twen­ty years!

    Reply
  9. PeterAV Avatar
    PeterAV

    Ricky, you are a 100% boni­fied pervert.
    You would change the word of God and ques­tion the word of God and sit in judg­ment against the very words of God.
    May the LORD rebuke thee!

    Reply
  10. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    Ruth 3:15 —

    “he went into the citie” vs. “she went into the city”

    In Ruth 3:15 the orig­i­nal King James edi­tion had the word “he” and not “she” as our cur­rent pop­u­lar King James ver­sion reads it today. In fact, this sup­posed error was fixed or changed from the word “he” to “she” in the sub­se­quent sec­ond edi­tion in just 1613. How­ev­er, despite this change, I believe the use of either “he” and “she” is still an accu­rate descrip­tion of truth of this pas­sage and actu­al­ly enrich­es our under­stand­ing of it when we con­sid­er both of them to be true. How so? 

    Well, first it is impor­tant to point out that accord­ing to the NLT foot­notes on Ruth 3:15, most Hebrew man­u­scripts con­tained the word “he” and that the word “she” appeared in the Latin Vul­gate. Also, accord­ing to the translit­er­a­tion by Sir Lancelot C.L. Bren­ton in 1997 the Sep­tu­agint in 350AD con­tained the word “she” in Ruth 3:15, as well. So it appears that the dif­fer­ent ancient man­u­scripts say that it was both “he” and “she”.

    Sec­ond­ly, Boaz going to the city and Ruth going to a city would both be true state­ments accord­ing to the con­text of the sto­ry. Boaz went to a par­tic­u­lar city to take care of the mat­ter of find­ing out if the next of kin was inter­est­ed in her or not (Ruth 3:13) and Ruth went to the city where she and Noa­mi lived to tell her the news of what had recent­ly hap­pened with Boaz (Ruth 3:16–17).

    Third­ly, this deep­ens our under­stand­ing of the pas­sage when we con­sid­er that the pas­sage is true between “he” and “she” thru out the var­i­ous dif­fer­ent man­u­scripts or edi­tions. For the whole book of Ruth is about the unit­ing of a man and a woman becom­ing one flesh in mar­riage. Ruth and Boaz are on the path of becom­ing one (i.e. he/she); And what does a mar­riage of a man and woman rep­re­sent? Well, it rep­re­sents Christ or God unit­ing with His bride (i.e. the church). So as we (i.e. the bride) go to our city to tell the good news, Christ up in Heav­en pre­pares a place for us in His Holy city. 

    Now, you may not choose to see the preser­va­tion of God’s Word in this way, but I take it by faith that God is true to His Word in every detail and word thru out time and it has been a very reward­ing expe­ri­ence for me in my life.

    Reply
  11. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    Psalm 69:32 —

    “seeke good” vs. “seek God”

    The 1611 says seek “good” while the 1769 ver­sion says seek “God”.

    Again, both of these state­ments with­in both edi­tions are 100% true. In fact, when we exam­ine both of them it gives us a deep­er under­stand­ing about the nature of God. How so? 

    Well, if we were to look at Matthew Chap­ter 19, we would be able to read this passage…

    Matthew 19:17 — “And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God:” 

    Wow. Do you catch that? For there is none good but God. In oth­er words, God is the equiv­a­lent or the very embod­i­ment of all that which is good. So accord­ing to Scrip­ture, when you use the word “good” you are essen­tial­ly talk­ing about “God”. For there is none good but God. For our right­eous­ness is as filthy rags (Isa­iah 64:6). It is only God’s right­eous­ness work­ing thru us that rec­on­ciles us to Him (2 Corinthi­ans 5:21). For if we did not have God, then there would be no good. For all that which is tru­ly good comes from God!

    Reply
  12. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    Jere­mi­ah 49:1 —

    “inher­it God” vs. “inher­it Gad”

    In the 1611, Jere­mi­ah chap­ter 49 says “inher­it God” and the 1769 edi­tion says “inher­it Gad”. While this appears to be a cor­rect­ed print­ing error at first glance, one must also con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that if both edi­tions might be true then it opens up some inter­est­ing the­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tives for us. Was this an acci­dent or a coin­ci­dence? I will explain below and I will let you decide for yourself. 

    In Jere­mi­ah 49:1, Jere­mi­ah’s first accu­sa­tion (as a dec­la­ra­tion from the Lord) is that the Ammonites moved into Israel’s ter­ri­to­ry when Assyr­ia took the north­ern king­dom cap­tive in 722 BC. The Ammonites took Gad and oth­er cities, as though the Jews would nev­er return. The phrase “their king” in Jere­mi­ah 49:1 and 3 can be trans­lat­ed Mol­e­ch, which is the name of the chief god of the Ammonites (1 Kings 11:5, 7, 33). They boast­ed that their god was stronger than the God of Israel, but one day Israel will “dri­ve” the Ammonites out of the land (Jere­mi­ah 49:2).

    Jere­mi­ah 49:1–2 NLT — “This mes­sage was giv­en con­cern­ing the Ammonites. This is what the LORD says: “Are there no descen­dants of Israel to inher­it the land of Gad? Why are you, who wor­ship Mol­e­ch, liv­ing in its towns? In the days to come,” says the LORD, “I will sound the bat­tle cry against your city of Rab­bah. It will become a des­o­late heap of ruins, and the neigh­bor­ing towns will be burned. Then Israel will take back the land you took from her,” says the LORD.”

    In oth­er words, the land of Gad was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of God’s cho­sen nation of Israel and the Ammonites want­ed to inher­it this land that was of the real God and then replace it with their fake god (i.e. king) named Mol­e­ch. There­by, they believed they would be inher­it­ing God (i.e. the bless­ings or the ter­ri­to­ry of God) as they had want­ed to see Him and not for who He real­ly was by tak­ing over the land of Gad with their own god Molech. 

    Anoth­er thing to con­sid­er is that Gad is the third tribe among the 144,000 men­tioned in Rev­e­la­tion chap­ter 7. Why is this sig­nif­i­cant? Well, if you were to study Bib­li­cal Numer­ics, you would know that thru out the Bible the con­stant reoc­cur­rence of the num­ber 3 is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion and the trin­i­ty (i.e. the God­head). In oth­er words, we know that Jesus chose to rise from the grave three days lat­er as a way of let­ting us know that He was God Almighty in the flesh. I believe in this way that Gad was spe­cial in being rep­re­sen­ta­tive of God. For Gad was known to being obe­di­ent to God: “We your ser­vants will do as our Lord com­mands” (Num­bers 32:25b).

    Any­ways, if you want to learn more about Gad, check out this arti­cle here…

    http://www.gotquestions.org/tribe-of-Gad.html

    Oh, and if you want to learn about Bib­li­cal numer­ics that glo­ri­fy God (i.e. Not Numerol­o­gy that attempts to tell the future), please check out these links here…

    http://www.differentspirit.org/evidence/numerics.php

    http://www.hiddenhillssgbaptistchurch.org/images/Articles%20by%20Subject/Books/G.%20E.%20Jones/That%20Ye%20May%20Marvel%20or%20The%20Significance%20of%20Bible%20Numbers.pdf

    Reply
  13. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    1 Corinthi­ans 4:9 —

    “approued to death” vs. “appoint­ed to death”

    In the 1611 ver­sion the word “approved” is used and in the 1769 edi­tion the word “appoint­ed” is adopt­ed instead. Now, isn’t it true that “approved” and “appoint­ed” each have two dif­fer­ent meanings? 

    Well, if we were to look at the ori­gin of the word “appoint” at ety­mon­line we would be able to see that one of the def­i­n­i­tions for it is to “agree”.

    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?…wed_in_frame=0

    And the word “approve” is defined as to agree.

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/approve

    See how sim­ple it is to resolve such mat­ters when we seek the truth?

    Matthew 7:7 — “Ask, and it shall be giv­en you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:”

    Reply
  14. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    Sor­ry about the bro­ken link. Here is the link from Eytmonline.com in my pre­vi­ous post.

    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=appoint&allowed_in_frame=0

    Reply
  15. Lawrence Bednar Avatar
    Lawrence Bednar

    Rick,

    To fol­low the opin­ion of tex­tu­al crit­ics is to be caught up in human­ism that offers no hope in regard to eter­ni­ty. Crit­ics seem more inter­est­ed in try­ing to find error in God’s Word than fos­ter­ing con­fi­dence in it as our guide in life. It’s easy to get locked into their opin­ions to the degree that peo­ple just dis­miss rea­son­able dis­agree­ments. Crit­ics them­selves don’t real­ize how poor their schol­ar­ship can be as they try to dis­miss accu­ra­cy of the KJV and its Greek & Hebrew/Aramaic tex­tu­al basis. The schol­ar­ship pro­duc­ing these texts is far supe­ri­or to that of today, as ver­i­fied by look­ing at what crit­ics call error in the KJV (see also “The learned Men,” Arti­cle 25. Trini­tar­i­an Bible Soci­ety). I’ve offered two exam­ples of error by crit­ics, one sim­ple and one com­plex, indi­cat­ing that schol­ars today often miss com­plex or sim­ple truths. I’ve also com­ment­ed on your con­trast of the KJV 1611 & 1769 edi­tions. As a college/seminary instruc­tor and tex­tu­al con­sul­tant, I’ve spent many years study­ing these issues. By the way, offer­ing of tex­tu­al com­ment would be great­ly facil­i­tat­ed if your site-builder offered ital­i­ciz­ing & under­lin­ing to readers. 

    1. Sim­plis­tic schol­ar­ship — 1 Tim­o­thy 6:10 – The love of money

    KJV: For the love of mon­ey is the root of all evil…
    NIV: For the love of mon­ey is a root of all kinds of evil…

    The KJV is joined by the RSV and REB in ren­der­ing this verse, and the NIV by the NASV and NKJV. The dis­agree­ment aris­es because in the Greek there’s no arti­cle with root to show whether love of mon­ey is the root of all evil or a root of many evils. There’s no indef­i­nite arti­cle “a” in Greek, though it’s usu­al­ly implied in such cas­es, but the ren­der­ing is made cer­tain only by rea­son­ing from con­text. The NIV com­mit­tee and its sup­port­ive trans­la­tion com­mit­tees appar­ent­ly rea­soned that the KJV assigns too much evil to the love of mon­ey, there being many evils due to oth­er caus­es. Actu­al­ly, this is incor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion, for the KJV does not say every act of evil ever com­mit­ted is caused by love of mon­ey. It says love of mon­ey is the all-evil root, the only one from which grows every evil known to man (the root of all evil equals the all-evil root, the only one). That is, there’s no evil not prop­a­gat­ed by love of mon­ey, and no oth­er sin has such uni­ver­sal adverse effect. Thus, as the KJV has it, “the” and “all,” not “a” and “all kinds,” are cor­rect Eng­lish ren­der­ings. This love of mon­ey is not just one root among oth­ers that grow all oth­er sins, but the only one that grows them all. And love of mon­ey is the root of all evil since it pro­duces all sin, not just the all kinds of evil of the NIV. 

    To see how love of mon­ey is the only evil giv­ing rise to all oth­er types of evil, we con­sid­er what is in involved in love of mon­ey. And we must not con­fuse it with the far-less seri­ous, stingi­ness, which can be due to a motive like inse­cu­ri­ty. We see how love of mon­ey adverse­ly affects all areas of human life when we see that it is the means for all self‑gratification, the uni­ver­sal basis of evil. Mon­ey is a means of pow­er over oth­ers, and love of mon­ey fuels the fires of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion and a desire for pow­er over oth­ers. We see this as we see the extremes of sin to which men will go for mon­ey. Love of mon­ey leads men to ful­fill all the deprav­i­ty of self‑gratification accom­pa­ny­ing this love, and pro­gres­sion into all evil is bro­ken only by death or sal­va­tion. An exam­ple of this is seen in the case of drug deal­ers. It seems to be love of mon­ey promis­ing the easy life and con­trol of oth­ers that leads drug deal­ers to dis­re­gard the wel­fare of inno­cent chil­dren and exert a pow­er of drug addic­tion on them. They start chil­dren on a life of crime, for­ni­ca­tion and slav­ery to sup­port their desire for mon­ey and pow­er, show­ing how love of mon­ey pro­duces every evil imag­in­able, down to the most hideous depths of depravity.

    Oth­er evils are not so all‑encompassing. For exam­ple, the self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion of ego sat­is­fac­tion caus­es slan­der that eas­i­ly leads to more slan­der, assault and mur­der, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly to for­ni­ca­tion, steal­ing, or gam­bling. And self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion caus­ing pornog­ra­phy eas­i­ly leads to for­ni­ca­tion or promis­cu­ity, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly to steal­ing, sell­ing dope or mur­der. On the oth­er hand, love of mon­ey moti­vates all types of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion and can begin with gam­bling or steal­ing, that in turn leads to sell­ing dope for easy big mon­ey (and loss of con­science), which in turn leads to using addic­tion to get pow­er over peo­ple, which leads to enslave­ment of peo­ple in for­ni­ca­tion, and to the mur­der of those who interfere. 

    Sin is like a tree with self‑gratification as the trunk and spe­cif­ic sins as the branch­es. The branch­es are relat­ed to each oth­er only through the trunk. Each branch can sur­vive with­out anoth­er, as in prun­ing, but none with­out the trunk. And the root love of mon­ey nur­tures the self‑gratification trunk, and thus all the branch­es. The root is the medi­um by which the trunk thrives, and the trunk in turn allows each branch of sin to flour­ish, despite a lack of any direct rela­tion­ship among the branch­es. Growth that devel­ops from the root is the trunk of self‑gratification, fol­lowed by the branch­es of all sin. Thus we see how love of mon­ey is the root of all sin. There are oth­er trees with oth­er roots, but none is so large and all‑inclusive as that whose root is the love of money.

    Indeed asso­ci­a­tion of love of mon­ey with the first sin from which all sin was hatched is evi­dent. Self‑gratification was the orig­i­nal cause of all sin when Eve yield­ed to the appeal of for­bid­den fruit to the sens­es. There was no legit­i­mate need met in hav­ing this fruit, the only induce­ment being temp­ta­tion by the dev­il. Self‑gratification was the cause of the first sin. But in that first era, every human need was met by God, and there was no mon­ey sys­tem, some­thing nec­es­sary in an inter­de­pen­dent soci­ety to meet needs of work­ers spe­cial­iz­ing in indi­vid­ual trades. In lat­er soci­ety, mon­ey became the means to sup­ply all needs & self‑gratification. Thus mon­ey became the means by which every type of self‑gratification was real­ized. It was then that love of mon­ey became the basic sin giv­ing rise to, and nur­tur­ing, all types of self‑gratification, and thus the one root that pro­duces every branch of sin known to man.

    But to see how love of mon­ey is the root of all evil, not just some, we con­trast ugly self‑gratification with beau­ti­ful self‑sacrifice (char­i­ty in its bib­li­cal sense). We view love of mon­ey from the per­spec­tive of the respectable man who is allured by a spir­it that sug­gests to him that pow­er aris­ing from mon­ey is a very desir­able means of self-pro­tec­tion and advance­ment. If this spir­it is allowed to devel­op into a love of mon­ey that seeks self‑gratification asso­ci­at­ed with pow­er over oth­ers, an unavoid­able pro­gres­sion into all deprav­i­ty begins. This hap­pens because the birth of this love begins an even­tu­al total oppo­si­tion to God, the source of all light and good. This love can eas­i­ly take up res­i­dence in a life with­out being rec­og­nized and is thus a threat to all, includ­ing those who once nev­er dreamed of sins like slan­der, assault or promiscuity.

    But how does the love of mon­ey put us in total oppo­si­tion to God and lead us into all sin? In scrip­ture char­i­ty refers to sac­ri­fi­cial giv­ing out of every area of our resources, includ­ing tal­ents, time, patience, encour­age­ment, com­pas­sion & mon­ey, and at times life itself, all for the sake of oth­ers. It’s illus­trat­ed best in the sac­ri­fice of Christ who gave Him­self ful­ly for our sal­va­tion. Mon­ey is only the small­est part of our char­i­ty, or divine love. We must give far more, and in the spir­it of per­son­al devo­tion to the wel­fare of oth­ers, to ful­fill God’s stan­dard of char­i­ty. But if we enter­tain a spir­it of love of mon­ey due to the pow­er and self‑gratification it con­fers so that we cov­et even this small­est expres­sion of char­i­ty, we give noth­ing of our­selves to God. This puts us on a path of total self‑gratification and total oppo­si­tion to God’s stan­dard of char­i­ty, the stan­dard of self‑sacrificing divine love. Love of mon­ey defines a spir­it of antichrist total­ly opposed to God’s stan­dard of per­fect divine char­i­ty. This love cov­ets every­thing for itself and even­tu­al­ly pro­duces a heart that is total­ly self-grat­i­fy­ing, total­ly out of coop­er­a­tion with God and total­ly in coop­er­a­tion with satan. 

    From a root love of mon­ey ris­es every kind of steal­ing, or “antichar­i­ty.” A will­ing­ness to defy God by steal­ing mon­ey, the least of our char­i­ty, indi­cates a will­ing­ness to steal any­thing of greater val­ue that can be man­i­fest­ed at any time. Love of mon­ey leads to cov­etous­ness (steal­ing our mon­ey gifts that should go for God’s glo­ry), and this leads us away from God and into oth­er steal­ing. Cov­etous­ness leads to lar­ce­ny (steal­ing more mon­ey), ambi­tion (steal­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties of oth­ers for rich­es), belit­tling (steal­ing oth­ers’ dig­ni­ty to advance self-impor­tance), lying (steal­ing oth­ers’ rep­u­ta­tions to advance self), cru­el­ty (steal­ing kind­ness & encour­age­ment), hard‑heartedness (steal­ing our own puri­ty of soul from God’s pos­ses­sion and giv­ing it to satan), promis­cu­ity (steal­ing puri­ty of soul of oth­ers in an attempt to cre­ate a fel­low­ship of mis­ery), etc., etc. When we love and cov­et mon­ey, we are can­di­dates for all asso­ci­at­ed evils endorsed by satan, for we’ve stolen the last small ves­tige of char­i­ty due to God who expects total char­i­ty, His divine stan­dard, from all His peo­ple. Indeed char­i­ty is the self‑sacrificing essence of the spir­it of Chris­tian­i­ty. Love of mon­ey is love of ever‑progressive self‑gratification that is the essence of the spir­it of Satan, the author of all evil.

    Thus the KJV (and RSV, REB) reveals the com­pre­hen­sive evil of love of mon­ey that gives rise to all evil since it marks a spir­it of Satan opposed to every­thing god­ly or char­i­ta­ble. Love of mon­ey marks a begin­ning of the work of a spir­it of evil in a man that ulti­mate­ly leads him to a rebel­lion of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion against every moral stan­dard of God. Love of mon­ey is the root of all evil since it’s the only evil lead­ing men into all oth­er evils and is the one uni­ver­sal evil eas­i­ly able to enter the life of every man, from the vilest to the noblest. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the inad­e­quate ren­der­ing of some mod­ern ver­sions de-empha­sizes this teach­ing, miss­ing impli­ca­tions of the love of mon­ey. This caus­es peo­ple to miss the full impor­tance of the evil of love of mon­ey. No oth­er evil is so uni­ver­sal­ly trou­ble­some, and as the one that seems least harm­ful to the respectable man, it’s the one most able to destroy him. 

    2. Com­plex schol­ar­ship — Psalm 12: Pre­serv­ing God’s Word or His peo­ple or both?
    Mod­ern schol­ars reject the tra­di­tion­al inter­pre­ta­tion of Psalm 12 as speak­ing of preser­va­tion of God’s Word, sug­gest­ing it speaks of pre­serv­ing peo­ple. Care­ful study reveals that it speaks of both, with preser­va­tion of the Word being the pri­ma­ry fac­tor, the one ensur­ing the wel­fare of the peo­ple involved. The mat­ter is not resolved as sim­plis­ti­cal­ly as schol­ars sug­gest, but an analy­sis of the dif­fer­ent ren­der­ings clar­i­fies it. 

    KJV
    1. Help Lord; for the god­ly man ceaseth; for the faith­ful fail…
    2. They speak van­i­ty every one with his neigh­bor: with flat­ter­ing lips and with a dou­ble heart do they speak.
    3. The Lord shall cut off all flat­ter­ing lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things:
    4. Who have said, With our tongue will we pre­vail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?
    5. For the oppres­sion of the poor, for the sigh­ing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safe­ty from him that puffeth at him.
    6. The words of the Lord are pure words: as sil­ver tried in a fur­nace of earth, puri­fied sev­en times.
    7. Thou shalt keep them O Lord, thou shalt pre­serve them from this gen­er­a­tion for ever (to eternity).
    8. The wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted.

    NASV
    (5) Now I will arise,”says the Lord; “I will set him in the safe­ty for which he longs.” (6) The words of the Lord are pure words…(7) Thou O Lord, wilt keep them. Thou wilt pre­serve him from this gen­er­a­tion forever.

    NIV
    (5) I will now arise,” says the Lord. “I will pro­tect them from those who malign them. (6) And the words of the Lord are flawless…(7). O Lord you Will keep us safe and pro­tect us from such peo­ple forever.

    The KJV 12:5 says of the oppressed god­ly man “…saith the Lord, I will set him in safe­ty…” 12:6 says God’s words are pure (true), and 12:7 says He keeps (per­forms) them for­ev­er. Deliv­er­ance of the god­ly is stressed, but that’s only an object of God’s words ensur­ing deliv­er­ance (and our very exis­tence), and the main empha­sis is on what “saith the Lord,” His words that promise deliv­er­ance. 12:7 stress­es God keep­ing and pre­serv­ing “them,” His words cer­ti­fy­ing His care of the right­eous, not only in David’s time, but for­ev­er. The declared eter­nal preser­va­tion empha­sizes the writ­ten form of His words cer­ti­fy­ing deliv­er­ance of the right­eous today and forever. 

    It’s said 12:7 “them” is 12:5 peo­ple, but “them” los­es its cer­tain­ty of mean­ing if it’s sep­a­rat­ed from its imme­di­ate antecedent “words” in 12:6, for if peo­ple were meant, the text would con­fuse the pro­noun ref­er­ence (12:6 shifts the empha­sis from peo­ple to words). Those who say “them” is peo­ple dis­miss the antecedent fac­tor, say­ing gen­der dis­cord denies a ref­er­ence to “words,” for in 12:7 “them” (verb suf­fix) is mas­cu­line, and 12:6 “words” (sub­stan­tive) is fem­i­nine. Hebrew pro­nouns & antecedents usu­al­ly agree in gen­der, but Gese­nius says, mas­cu­line suf­fix­es (espe­cial­ly in the plur­al) are not infre­quent­ly used to refer to fem­i­nine substantives.(1) Waltke & O’Connor say, The mas­cu­line pro­noun is often used for a fem­i­nine antecedent.(2) Dr. T. Strouse, Emmanuel Bap­tist Sem­i­nary, CT notes nor­mal gen­der dis­cord in Ps.119:111,129, 152, 167.(3) God’s Words, “tes­ti­monies” (f), link to “they/them” (m) [The present writer views this as designed gen­der dis­cord (4) relat­ing our need of God’s Word for sus­te­nance (f) to His pow­er as provider (m), which is how church­es relate to Christ by His Word]. Exam­ples of com­mon gen­der dis­cord are “mid­wives” in Ex.1:21, “daugh­ters” in Is.3:16 and “wells” [f] in Gen.26:15 that are antecedents to mas­cu­line “them.”

    Hebrew gen­der dis­cord is fair­ly com­mon, but antecedent dis­cord is not, as need­ed to avoid much con­fu­sion of sense. And in Hebrew, pas­sage sense takes prece­dence over gram­mar issues like gen­der discord,(2) and the Psalm 12:6,7 sense ties “them” to “words” in the imme­di­ate context.*

    * NOTE: It’s said chi­as­tic-inver­sion par­al­lelism links 12:5 & 7 as like vers­es on the god­ly man, sep­a­rat­ed by dis­sim­i­lar 12:6 on God’s Words, but that caus­es pro­noun ambi­gu­i­ty and style iso­la­tion of vers­es 5–7, and the entire Psalm is chi­as­tic (see below), not just a few vers­es. And the lan­guage is too dis­sim­i­lar to link sep­a­rat­ed vers­es this way, due to mis­match of 12:5 “him” to the first 12:7 “them,” dif­fer­ent 12:5 & 7 speak­ers, and “him” pro­tect­ed once in 12:5 but “them” kept & pre­served in 12:7, and there’s no ref­er­ence to God’s aris­ing and its cause in 12:7 or generation/eternality aspects in 12:5. Fur­ther, the pro­posed inver­sion doesn’t fit in any of the evi­dent Ps.12 par­al­lelisms not­ed below.
    A basic Ps.12 par­al­lelism, cou­plet claus­es with­in each verse, offers no pos­si­bil­i­ty of the pro­posed chi­as­tic inver­sion. Anoth­er basic par­al­lelism is cou­plet vers­es, one verse stat­ing an action, and the next stat­ing the cause of it, and this too denies the pro­posed chi­as­tic inversion.
    Chi­as­tic and con­trast­ing cause/effect verse pairs (1÷8; 2,3÷6,7; 4⁄5) iso­late 12:5 & 7. Vers­es 2,3 pair with 6,7 and 2,6 & 3,7 are con­trast­ing pairs. 12:1 notes a cause of trou­ble for the god­ly, and 12:8 notes a poten­tial evil effect. 12:2,3 expound the cause of trou­ble, evil men’s impure/vain/temporal intent to harm the god­ly, in con­trast with a 12:6,7 effect of God’s pure/reliable/eternal promise to defend them. In 12:4 evil ones intend to act, say­ing “We will,” caus­ing a 12:5 con­trast as God says, “No, I will.” Treat­ing each verse pair 2,3 & 6,7 as a unit reveals chi­as­tic inver­sion in Ps.12 struc­ture, in a poet­ic style iso­lat­ing 12:5 from 7 to deny a link of “them” to people.
    In sum­ma­ry, poet­ic style iso­lates 12:5 & 7 to deny “them” is peo­ple, and it ties gen­der dis­cor­dant “them” & “words,” the 12:5 god­ly man (m) being deliv­ered by God’s 12:6 words of com­pas­sion (f), and 12:7 them being words also of pow­er (m) to deliv­er. And 12:5 & 7 dif­fer by speak­er & pro­noun num­ber to deny a link by a com­mon ref­er­ence to peo­ple, but 12:6 & 12:7 link “words” to “them” in both ways to affirm a ref­er­ence to “words.”

    In the Hebrew poet­ic par­al­lelism of Psalms, a theme repeats in relat­ed word­ing, and 12:7 repeats a 12:6 theme on puri­ty of God’s words. 12:6 likens the puri­ty to that of tru­ly refined sil­ver to stress that they are not idle words, but pure ones that will be kept. The ini­tial clause in 12:7 repeats the theme, stress­ing God’s word-keep­ing to link 12:7 “them” to 12:6 “words,” and these (2nd them) are pre­served for­ev­er to sig­ni­fy being kept for­ev­er. 12:7 fur­ther stress­es puri­ty, not­ing God as word-keep­er by mak­ing “Thou” in the first clause a sep­a­rate word in Hebrew, a device for empha­sis, “thou” nor­mal­ly being lim­it­ed to a pre­fix on a Hebrew imper­fect verb here (KJV Thou and O Lord in the first clause retain the empha­sis in Eng­lish style). The major puri­ty theme direct­ly relates to God’s words, His peo­ple being sim­ply the objects of His pure words (Eph.5:26, Jn.15:3).

    Word-keep­ing empha­sis grows as Hebrew-text gen­der dis­cord ties “them” to “words” in a gen­der dis­cord by design. A mas­cu­line pro­noun with a fem­i­nine antecedent reflects Hebrew use of mas­cu­line gen­der to sig­ni­fy power/greatness and the fem­i­nine to sig­ni­fy compassion/sustenance. (5) Ps.12:6,7 ties mas­cu­line “them” to fem­i­nine “words,” relat­ing almighty God’s pow­er to keep His word, to His com­pas­sion (stressed in 12:5) apply­ing the pow­er (relates to Hebrew pri­or-gen­der mas­cu­line lan­guage inclu­sive of both nat­ur­al gen­ders (6) — e.g. the Psalm 12 god­ly man sig­ni­fies men & women). And in com­pas­sion God pre­serves His words for­ev­er to cer­ti­fy that He oblig­ates Him­self to keep/perform them for­ev­er. Cor­rect pro­noun and antecedent use in the KJV empha­sizes God’s pow­er and com­pas­sion that ensure the word-keep­ing on behalf of the people. 

    In the NASV an ini­tial “them” sug­gests “words,” but “him” in lieu of the sec­ond “them” implies peo­ple as objects of pre­serv­ing, when they’re objects of word-keep­ing, and teach­ing on words cer­ti­fy­ing deliv­er­ance of peo­ple is lost. Fur­ther, “him” ties to “them,” mix­ing the sin­gu­lar and plur­al in ambi­gu­i­ty of sense (here “them” can be words or peo­ple). Actu­al­ly “him” miss­es the gram­mar, being good Hebrew but poor Eng­lish; this 3rd-per­son­/sin­gu­lar/­mas­cu­line pro­noun sig­ni­fies, not peo­ple, but 3rd-per­son­/sin­gu­lar/­mas­cu­line “word”* Hebrew lacks neuter gen­der, “him/he” often sig­ni­fy­ing neuter terms called “it/that” in Eng­lish (e.g. in Num.22:20 God speaks, the Hebrew say­ing, “the word that I shall speak to you, him (it / that) you shall do.” Thus the Psalm 12:7 Hebrew says, “Thou shalt keep thy words (them) O Lord, thou shalt pre­serve thy word (con­sist­ing of thy words) for­ev­er.” Thy word is thy words, and “them” right­ly sig­ni­fies “word” for clar­i­ty, “it/that” being awk­ward and con­fus­ing. Psalms num­ber dis­cord, usu­al­ly a poet­ic-style fac­tor, is didac­tic here, stress­ing God’s writ­ten words pre­served for­ev­er. “Words” is spo­ken or writ­ten scrip­ture, but “word” stress­es the writ­ten (we have God’s word on it, His writ­ten words). His words are pre­served for us, requir­ing the writ­ten form, and He pre­serves them for­ev­er to show us He oblig­ates Him­self to keep them for­ev­er (by the Liv­ing Word). The KJV sec­ond “them” doesn’t lose the pur­pose of the shift, for the declared eter­nal preser­va­tion (for us) estab­lish­es the writ­ten form.

    * NOTE: Anoth­er NASV error involv­ing him is, “safe­ty for which he longs.” The sense of the Hebrew is the KJV “puffeth,” a blast of evil men’s breath, not a god­ly man’s long­ing. The NIV has the right sense, but word choice is inadequate. 

    The NIV, like the extant Sep­tu­agint text, has a wrong “us” for each 12:7 “them.” “Us,” wrong by def­i­n­i­tion in the first use and by point­ing in the sec­ond, incor­rect­ly makes peo­ple objects of keep­ing & pre­serv­ing, for they’re objects only of word-keep­ing. “Us” can’t fit pas­sage sense unless lan­guage is altered, and using “such peo­ple” serves to jus­ti­fy use of “us.” Both terms serve to mask inter­pre­ta­tion non­sense if “them” sig­ni­fied peo­ple, a sense of eter­nal preser­va­tion of god­ly men from one gen­er­a­tion of evil men in David’s time that can’t live for­ev­er. This sense would be invoked by using “us” in con­junc­tion with the cor­rect “this gen­er­a­tion,” mak­ing the incor­rect “such peo­ple” nec­es­sary. Lin­guis­tic error of this approach fur­ther shows “such peo­ple” is poor trans­la­tion, “from” peo­ple being poor lan­guage; “this gen­er­a­tion” is that of David and joins “from” and “to/for” to note a peri­od from that time to eter­ni­ty (the Hebrew says this), or for ever. And “this” acts as a rel­a­tive pro­noun,* so “such” is poor; i.e. we read “from the gen­er­a­tion this (which) is, to for­ev­er,” not “from the gen­er­a­tion such is to for­ev­er.” But eter­nal preser­va­tion of words in God’s writ­ten Word is entire­ly log­i­cal here, with no lin­guis­tic prob­lem or faulty sense.

    *NOTE: Gese­nius says the Maso­ra teach­es this, 2nd Eng. ed. 1910. Claren­don. para 126y.

    Schol­ars omit God’s role in pre­serv­ing scrip­ture, like­ly because they feel the New Tes­ta­ment text was lost for ~1400 years. They say God’s Word is scat­tered among man­u­scripts, and men must decide what is or isn’t gen­uine, which only ensures error. They feel the Psalm 119:89, “For ever O Lord, thy word is set­tled in heav­en,” means preser­va­tion exists only in heav­en. But the sense of the Hebrew here is that preser­va­tion is supervised/verified in heav­en to make truth avail­able to all, for there is no con­fu­sion there. Pas­sage con­text sup­ports this, earth­ly word preser­va­tion being why the writer can obey God’s tes­ti­monies (Ps.119:88) and why earth endures by God’s laws (119:91). 119:96 notes an end, a lim­it, to earth­ly per­fec­tion, but calls God’s com­mand­ments, His words, “exceed­ing broad,” mean­ing that their per­fec­tion is unlim­it­ed, so God’s words known on earth are ful­ly pre­served. The KJV respects this Hebrew-text per­fec­tion and achieves per­fect trans­la­tion, despite the gram­mar differences.

    End Notes
    1. Gese­nius’ Hebrew Gram­mar. Ed. Kautzsch, E.. Claren­don Press. Oxford. 2nd Eng. Ed, Cow­ley, A.E. 1910. Paragraphs135 o, 144 a.

    2. Waltke, B.K. & O’Connor, M.P. 1990. An Intro­duc­tion to Bib­li­cal Hebrew Syn­tax. Eisen­braums. Winona Lake, IN. #16.4b, p302.

    3. Strouse, T.M. A Cri­tique of “God’s Word in Our Hands:” The Bible Pre­served for Us. The Burn­ing Bush. 11⁄1 June 2005. p28

    4. Gese­nius. Op, Cit. para­graph 110k on Nahum 3:15

    5. Gese­nius, Op. Cit. para­graph 122h – see foot­note #3.

    6. Gese­nius, Op. Cit. para­graph 122g

    Rick,

    Below are some com­ments on your view of vari­ant word­ing in the 1611 & 1769 KJV edi­tions. Your treat­ment of this mat­ter over­looks some impor­tant con­cepts, like the fact that edit­ing is always part of text per­fec­tion, and in the case of Ruth 3:15, the best word­ing was delayed a lit­tle until after the first edi­tion. The change occurred very short­ly after the first 1611 edi­tion, not in the 1769 edition.

    1. Ruth 3:15 – “he went into the citie” vs. “she went into the city” 

    In the KJV first edi­tion “he” (Boaz) went into the city after Ruth’s mar­riage pro­pos­al, but in the next two edi­tions “she” (Ruth) did. Schol­ars can’t decide this issue, but “she” fits con­text best and is in today’s KJV. Yet the text says both went into the city, Ruth to tell Nao­mi results of the pro­pos­al (3:16), and Boaz to be a kins­man redeemer (4:1). After the pro­pos­al, both went into the city, so both ren­der­ings are correct. 

    The change is one of edit­ing, nor­mal in trans­la­tion work, and delayed briefly until after the first edi­tion. Prov­i­den­tial­ly, truth & accu­ra­cy were nev­er lost in the KJV, and the right ren­der­ing soon prevailed. 

    Anoth­er impor­tant fac­tor is recog­ni­tion of Greek and Eng­lish lex­i­cal vari­ance that can affect a reading.

    2, Matthew 14:9 – “the oth­es sake” vs. “the oath’s sake” 

    The KJV Matthew 14:9 reads “And the king was sor­ry: nev­er­the­less for the oath’s sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he com­mand­ed it (John’s head) to be giv­en her.” The KJV Mark 6:26 says “for his oath’s sake…”Oath’s” is right, for con­text reveals one oath stat­ed once in Matthew and twice in Mark (Mt.14:7, Mk.6:22,23). Crit­ics claim error since in both vers­es the Greek is, plur­al, say­ing, “because of the oaths.” But the Greek notes one oath spo­ken twice, while the KJV uses the sin­gu­lar sense of the one oath. This is just Greek/English lex­i­cal vari­ance, and the Eng­lish is pre­ferred in the KJV. But the Greek is fine if there’s no con­fu­sion of sense, and the 1611 KJV used plur­al “oth­es (oaths) sake” (same as “sake of the oaths” — old­er Eng­lish uses no apos­tro­phe for sin­gu­lar or plur­al pos­ses­sive, as in Col.3:6). Anoth­er case of this lex­i­cal vari­ance is the KJV Gal.6:11 where Greek gram­masin (let­ters) is “let­ter,” con­text show­ing Paul wrote one let­ter, and the Greek not­ing let­ters (writ­ings) in that letter.

    Com­par­ing the Oxford and Cam­bridge edi­tions of the KJV

    3. Tim­o­thy 2:2 “heard from me” vs. “heard of me.” No error of any kind 

    The Greek prepo­si­tion used with the gen­i­tive of “me” here has the sense of “from,” and that’s exact­ly how the word “of” is used here. Con­text makes the sense of “of” clear. When Paul says to Tim­o­thy “the things that thou hast heard of me,” he is not talk­ing about things per­tain­ing to him­self. He is talk­ing about things Tim­o­thy has heard from, or of, Paul about the faith that are to be com­mit­ted to faith­ful men. This use is like some­one say­ing, “You have heard of me all that will pre­pare you for your work.” 

    4. Jere­mi­ah 34:16 “whom ye had set” vs “whom he had set” – Print­er error, yet no error in context.

    KJV Oxford and Cam­bridge edi­tions dif­fer slight­ly here. The Cam­bridge has “…every man his ser­vant, and every man his hand­maid, whom ye had set at lib­er­ty…” The Oxford is iden­ti­cal, except that “he” replaces “ye,” and both pre­serve text sense. The peo­ple are indi­cat­ed by “he” or “ye.” In the Cam­bridge, “ye” is the peo­ple, and in the Oxford, “every man…he” in, “every man his ser­vant, and every man his hand­maid, whom he had set at lib­er­ty,” is the peo­ple. Ye is cor­rect Hebrew, and he is print­ing error, yet the text sense is pre­served in either case, so even print­ing error does­n’t pre­vent an equivalence.

    Mild­ly dif­fer­ent read­ings that are equiv­a­lent in meaning

    To indi­cate that changes between KJV 1611 & 1769 edi­tions deny accu­ra­cy & inerran­cy of trans­la­tion is to be over­ly restric­tive. Many phras­es or words in the 1769 are equiv­a­lent to their 1611 coun­ter­parts, and accu­ra­cy & inerran­cy are retained by equiv­a­lence since minor dif­fer­ences in lit­er­al­i­ty do not affect accu­rate teach­ings. Such changes are meant to make the text fol­low the Hebrew/Aramaic & Greek as lit­er­al­ly as pos­si­ble, or to clar­i­fy the Eng­lish sense as well as pos­si­ble, and there’s no sig­nif­i­cant change in the sense of what is taught in these cas­es. Your exam­ples illus­trat­ing this are list­ed below. 

    5. Deuteron­o­my 26:1 – “which the Lord giueth” vs. “which the LORD thy God giveth”
    ‑the LORD and the LORD thy God are equiv­a­lent in terms of identification.
    6. Joshua 13:29 – “tribe of Man­asseh, by” vs. “tribe of the chil­dren of Man­asseh by”
    ‑Man­asseh refers to the same peo­ple that chil­dren of Man­asseh does.
    7. Matthew 16:16 – “Thou art Christ” vs. “Thou art the Christ”
    — Christ is also called the Christ, and both are indica­tive of a title that became a name.
    8. Mark 10:18 – “There is no man good” vs. “there is none good” (note that now “there is” is marked as being added by the trans­la­tors for clar­i­ty). The term “No man” is a gener­ic equiv­a­lent of “none,” the term “man” being used in the sense of “mankind.”
    9. 1 Corinthi­ans 4:9 – “approued to death” vs. “appoint­ed to death” The two terms are equiv­a­lent since, to be appoint­ed to death equates with approved to death, both result­ing in death.
    10. Joshua 3:11 – “Arke of the Couenant, euen the Lord” vs. “ark of the covenant of the Lord” To say “even the LORD” is anoth­er way of say­ing “of the LORD” in this verse.
    11. 2 Kings 11:10 – “in the Tem­ple” vs. “in the tem­ple of the LORD” It is very evi­dent that the tem­ple spo­ken of is the tem­ple of the LORD.
    Isa­iah 49:13 – “for God” vs. “for the LORD” “The LORD” in con­text is anoth­er term for God
    12. 1 John 5:12 – “the Sonne, hath” vs. “the Son of God hath” “Sonne” in this con­text can only refer to the Son of God.
    13. Daniel 3:15 – “a fierie fur­nace” vs. “a burn­ing fiery fur­nace” The adjec­tive “fiery” includes the sense of “burn­ing fiery,” espe­cial­ly in this context.
    14. Jere­mi­ah 31:14 – “with good­nesse” vs. “with my good­ness” Con­text plain­ly reveals that the good­ness spo­ken of is that of God in both cas­es, so the pro­noun “my” is not actu­al­ly need­ed, but adding it makes the ren­der­ing more literal.

    Sev­er­al of your exam­ples are indica­tive of print­ing error, and a per­fect trans­la­tion by God’s cho­sen men is not auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­mit­ted to a sec­u­lar print­er, espe­cial­ly as ear­ly as the 17th cen­tu­ry. Indeed, cor­rec­tion of print­ing error is the means by which accu­ra­cy is extend­ed to copies in general. 

    Print­ing error is indi­cat­ed at times by the close­ness of spelling or word­ing between what the trans­la­tors ren­dered and the form appear­ing in the Eng­lish print­ed text, as seen below. 

    15. Psalm 69:32 – “seeke good” vs. “seek God.”
    16. Jere­mi­ah 49:1 – “inher­it God” vs. “inher­it Gad”
    17. Jere­mi­ah 51:30 – “burnt their dwelling places” vs. “burned (t)he(i)r dwelling places”
    18. Ezekiel 24:5 – “let (h)i(m) seethe” vs. “let t(h)e(m) seethe”
    19, Ezekiel 48:8 – “which th(ey) shall” vs. “which ye shall”+
    20. Ezekiel 6:8 – “that he may” vs. “that ye may” 

    21. 1 Corinthi­ans 12:28 – “helpes in gouern­mets” vs. “helps, governments.”
    It would be very easy to acci­den­tal­ly insert a prepo­si­tion as small as “in” in an ear­ly print­ing process. It is pos­si­ble that this is a tem­po­ral trans­la­tor error; if so, cor­rec­tion by edit­ing should have been very ear­ly, giv­en the great con­sci­en­tious­ness of KJV translators.

    22. 1 Corinthi­ans 15:6 – “And that” vs. “After that” 

    Print­ing error also results from car­ry­ing a series of phras­es too far, as in the case of 1 Cor.15:6 where the intro­duc­to­ry phrase “And that” incor­rect­ly fol­lows use of the phrase in the two pre­ced­ing verses.

    23. Ezekiel 24:7 – “powred it vpon the ground” vs. “poured it not upon the ground” 

    Print­ing error involv­ing omis­sion of the word “not” is known to have occurred in the past.

    Use of non-lit­er­al ren­der­ings like “God forbid.” 

    Rick, I recall that in one post you object­ed to KJV use of “God for­bid” that isn’t a lit­er­al ren­der­ing of the bib­li­cal lan­guage, and anoth­er exam­ple would be “God save the King.” Actu­al­ly these are idioms com­mon to lan­guage, and trans­la­tors con­stant­ly deal with Hebrew or Greek idioms that, if ren­dered lit­er­al­ly, would often be inad­e­quate, or make no sense, in oth­er lan­guages. In such cas­es trans­la­tors should express the text with their idioms, those that make the best sense in their lan­guage, equiv­a­lent sense being the cru­cial mat­ter. To use plain lan­guage would like­ly miss the spe­cial empha­sis char­ac­ter­iz­ing idioms. The mean­ing of the Hebrew for “God for­bid” is “to the pro­fane,” which would make lit­tle sense to any aver­age read­er. The NIV uses a con­tem­po­rary idiom like “far be it from” (me or you), or an inad­e­quate “Not at all,” or “Nev­er,” which are not as emphat­ic as “God for­bid,” and the Hebrew is meant to be very emphat­ic, as in Joshua 22:29 and 1 Samuel 20:2. The relat­ed Greek term means the very emphat­ic, “Let it nev­er exist,” and it applies in var­i­ous emphat­ic pas­sages, like Romans 3:4 and 1 Corinthi­ans 6:15. These uses illus­trate that old­er Eng­lish often presents a supe­ri­or way to express a matter.

    Reply
  16. Garth Hutchinson Avatar
    Garth Hutchinson

    Two prob­lems that face the trans­la­tor in every age (from the LXX in the 3rd cen­tu­ry BC) to the lat­est glossy cov­ered NT in the book store:
    1. words have dif­fer­ent breadth between lan­guages; e.g., if you look in Strong’s con­cor­dance at nephesh (soul, life, &c) you will dis­cov­er that it has been trans­lat­ed by some­thing like 20 dif­fer­ent Eng­lish words — the trans­la­tor’s job is to choose the right one for each con­text — and the Bible gives us no assur­ance that any trans­la­tor has Divine inspi­ra­tion. Nev­er­the­less, the NT quotes the LXX, a trans­la­tion, as author­i­ta­tive! (It is over 65 years ago that my grand­fa­ther began teach­ing me Hebrew, and it was about 10 years lat­er I began to learn Greek; I have strug­gled through oth­er lan­guages, prin­ci­pal­ly Latin and French and have dis­cov­ered that there is no one to one cor­re­spon­dence of words or even idiom between lan­guages. The so-called per­fect trans­la­tion of the Bible just does not exist. That is why my study of the Bible near­ly always goes back to the orig­i­nal languages.)
    2. words — espe­cial­ly Eng­lish — have changed in mean­ing through time, and they also change accord­ing to nation and cul­ture. Eg., ‘bap­tism’ was under­stood to mean ‘dippe’ in the 15th cen­tu­ry (see OED, and 1561 and oth­er exx.), but it does not have that mean­ing for many peo­ple in many places today; in fact it means many quite dif­fer­ent things.
    This is a divi­sive debate fueled by Satan to split the peo­ple of God and I chose not to argue about it, nor about the per­fect orig­i­nal text — the Bible is God’s rev­e­la­tion of how man can come to God, and, it seems that no trans­la­tion, nor faulty copy­ing of its text, can spoil its pow­er to be used by the Holy Spir­it to achieve that purpose.

    Reply
  17. Hugh McCann Avatar
    Hugh McCann

    Dear Sir,

    An arti­cle is post­ed @ AV1611.org with this title: “Haven’t there been sev­er­al revi­sions of the King James Bible since 1611?”

    Inter­est­ing reading.

    Reply
  18. Michele Michael Avatar
    Michele Michael

    Good points. Although I am not “KJV Only” I am (for Eng­lish, which is my only lan­guage) “KJV, Gene­va, Tyn­dale, et al. only.” Why? Because dif­fer­ent man­u­scripts were used that are sup­posed as old­er and there­fore better–but which crum­ble under scruti­ny. (See the excel­lent 3‑hour doc­u­men­tary TARES AMONG THE WHEAT.) 

    The mod­ern 20th and 21st cen­tu­ry trans­la­tions and para­phrased Bibles are the worst ever and use those false man­u­scripts to sow doubt where there need be none; exclude words like “holy” hun­dreds of times, change terms such as from “God’s Son” to “God’s ser­vant” when refer­ring to Jesus, elim­i­nate the name of Lucifer in the pas­sage about his fall in Isa­iah, and the list goes on and on.

    When I want to get alter­na­tive trans­la­tions I go between the King James Bible (the 1789 or what­ev­er that lat­er year was), the Gene­va Bible 1599 (pub­lished in mod­ern let­ter­ing and spelling by Tolle Legge in 2006–hurrah!–as it was trans­lat­ed by schol­ar­ly Ear­ly Reform­ers who gath­ered in Gene­va, Switzer­land to trans­late since many oth­er places they could so eas­i­ly be burned at the stake for what they were doing, the Catholic Church will­ing to kill to main­tain its near but incom­plete con­trol over Chris­ten­dom) and Study Bibles includ­ing The Com­pan­ion Bible with volu­mi­nous foot­notes giv­ing alter­nate trans­la­tions of the Hebrew and Greek, edit­ed by E.W. Bullinger). They are my trea­sure chest!!!

    Reply
  19. Michele Michael Avatar
    Michele Michael

    This sen­tence should have read (caps are the updat­ed edit):

    Because dif­fer­ent man­u­scripts were used FOR ALL THE NEWER TRANSLATIONS that are sup­posed as old­er and there­fore better–but which crum­ble under scrutiny.

    Reply
  20. Cyril Cooper Avatar
    Cyril Cooper

    The 1769 KJV was Not the Last Revi­sion of the 1611 KJV .. there was actu­al­ly One More Revi­sion in 1873. I know this to be a Fact because, in my “New Hen­drick­son Par­al­lel Bible” which has the 4 Trans­la­tions: KJV — NKJV — NIV — NLT(2nd edi­tion), this KJV is the 1873 Revi­sion. The KJV began with the 1611 Ver­sion then, the 1st Revi­sion of 1629, the 2nd Revi­sion of 1638, the 3rd Revi­sion of 1762, the 4th Revi­sion of 1769 and, the 5th Revi­sion of 1873! The 6th Revi­sion of 1982 is the NKJV!

    Reply
  21. Nate Beck Avatar
    Nate Beck

    Why on earth do you say “May the Lord…” in your arti­cle when you don’t even believe in the Lord anymore?

    Hyp­ocrite!

    Reply
    1. Rick Beckman Avatar
      Rick Beckman

      How is that hypocrisy? I believed in God when I wrote the arti­cle, so I spoke in a way which reflect­ed it. I don’t believe in God now, but the arti­cle from 2007 still exists. Do you even know what “hypocrisy” is? Because I don’t think you do.

      Reply
  22. Gene Donaldson Avatar
    Gene Donaldson

    I just love that God has cho­sen only the Eng­lish to speak to the world in today.…. I’ve had peo­ple tell me God’s word is in no oth­er lan­guage on earth.…really?? Isn’t it just peachy that most who hold this view just hap­pen to speak Eng­lish.….. How arro­gant can we be with such a ridicu­lous argument…God help us. I’ve also seen peo­ple say that the dif­fer­ences in the revi­sions of the KJV between the 1611 and oth­er were just cor­rec­tions of “Spelling” mistakes.…really, I won­der if these folk have actu­al­ly looked at a KJV 1611.….that was the way Ear­ly Mod­ern Eng­lish was spelled.….. peo­ple who post stuff like that just show their ignorance!

    Reply

Join the Discussion

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Use your Gravatar-enabled email address while commenting to automatically enhance your comment with some of Gravatar's open profile data.

Comments must be made in accordance with the comment policy. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam; learn how your comment data is processed.

You may use Markdown to format your comments; additionally, these HTML tags and attributes may be used: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Rick Beckman