How Did We Get The King James Bible

We will begin with our assumption, our purpose and our approach. Our assumption is that you cannot understand an effect without knowing its cause. Our purpose is to trace the causes of an effect, the King James Bible of 1611, to its first cause. Our approach will be in chronological order as we will explain later.

There are also things we will not do. We will not begin with the translators even though that is what is listed on the title page. If we started with them we would be starting in the middle of the story and assuming the last cause to be the first cause. We also will not answer every question that comes up as we go along. That is the job of textual criticism (studying manuscripts to find the original text). We will mention those questions but will not go into detail.

We will do this in 5 steps. How God inspired the Word of God, how it was written, how it was kept and how it was translated and how it was translated by the men that King James chose. We will do this in order because you can't walk backwards down a path.

We will look at what the Bible has to say about itself. We will let the Bible speak for itself through 2 witnesses. The first being Paul.

Inspiration is the Greek word theopneustos which means God-breathed. There is no other place in the New Testament that this word is used.¹ The second witness is Peter.

So we believe that God inspired the Bible and men wrote it down as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. This did not happen in one day.² It took place over many years. Moses gave us the law, the prophets spoke to Israel, the Son came and the word was made flesh³ and the apostles wrote the rest of the New Testament.

There are 3 questions we need to ask about the Old Testament. How was it written, how was it copied and how do we know what we have today. On a traditional conservative view Moses wrote the Pentateuch around 1400 BC.⁴ Much of which was passed down orally before it was written.

The Hebrew scriptures grew until the Jews were taken into captivity in Babylon in the 6th century BC. Most of the Hebrew Bible was finished by this time. The Soferim or scribes copied the word of God with great precision. They counted the letters and if a scribe made one letter wrong it was considered a big deal. Then the Masoretes took over around the 6th century to 10th century AD. They copied the consonants and added the vowel points and notes that we know as the Masoretic Text.⁵

There are 2 more witnesses that we should mention. The first is the Septuagint. This was the Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek around 250 BC to 150 BC.⁶ While this was helpful the Jews never replaced their Hebrew Bible with the Greek. The second is the Dead Sea Scrolls. These date from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD. When we compare these to the Masoretic Text which was copied 1000 years later they are very similar. Not the same but close enough to say that the Hebrew Bible was preserved.⁷

The New Testament was written by the apostles and their companions in the first century. It was written about the life of Jesus Christ and was sent to various churches and people. Most of it was written in Greek on papyrus and some was put together into codices which is what we know as books today.

One question that is often asked is that we don't have the original manuscripts. Yes we don't. Papyrus doesn't last forever. But that doesn't mean that the words were lost. They were copied over and over again. By the second century they were being distributed throughout the Roman Empire.

There are 2 main lines of copying that took place. The Byzantine Text was used in all of the Greek-speaking churches and became the main Greek text that the King James Bible was translated from. The Alexandrian Text was copied in Egypt.

The word of God was not preserved in ease. It was preserved through persecution and by the elements. The New Testament was accepted by most Christians by the 4th century. The Council of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397 ratified the New Testament.⁸ We are not saying that they decided what the Bible was. We are saying that they ratified what the churches already believed.

As the word of God spread to other countries so did translations. The Vulgate was translated by Jerome under the orders of Pope Damasus I in the late 4th century and was finished in the early 5th century.⁹ Jerome used the Hebrew and Greek as well as the Septuagint and the Old Latin to translate the Bible. This became the Catholic Bible for over 1000 years.

Jerome like all translators before and after him could only use what he had. There were other translations made during this time as well. The Syriac and Coptic to name a few.¹⁰ All of these went back to the Hebrew and Greek.

During the Middle Ages the Bible was copied by hand. The Greeks copied their Greek Bible and the Catholics copied the Vulgate. Mostly by monks. There were mistakes made but we have thousands of manuscripts to compare to each other.

In 1455 Johannes Gutenberg printed the first Bible using movable type.¹¹ This allowed for the mass production of Bibles. The printing press led to the Reformation.

There are a few things that happened during the 16th century that helped shape the King James Bible. The reformers believed in sola scriptura. If scripture is the final authority then the people should have access to it in their own language and not just Latin.

In 1516 Erasmus of Rotterdam printed the first Greek New Testament. He used a few late Byzantine manuscripts and put it together in a hurry.¹² It wasn't perfect but it opened the door for many others to follow. Robert Stephanus and Theodore Beza helped print more Greek New Testaments. These came to be known as the Textus Receptus or Received Text. This name was taken from a printer's preface in 1633.¹³

The Old Testament was based on the Ben Hayyim Bomberg Rabbinic Bible of 1524-1525. Not the Bomberg Bible as some may say.¹⁴

There were English Bibles before King James. John Wycliffe and his followers translated the Bible into English in the 14th century. They used the Vulgate to do this. In the 1520s and 30s William Tyndale translated the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek. He finished the New Testament and part of the Old Testament. Many of his words are still in the King James Bible today. He was killed for translating the Bible into English in 1536 near Brussels.¹⁵

The Coverdale Bible was published in 1535, Matthew's Bible in 1537 and the Geneva Bible in 1560.¹⁶ The Geneva Bible was very popular but King James did not like the Calvinistic notes that were in it. The Bishops' Bible was made in 1568 to compete with the Geneva Bible but never became as popular.

In 1604 at Hampton Court the Puritans asked for a new translation of the Bible. King James agreed.¹⁷ They were told to use the Hebrew and Greek and not put any notes in the margins. They were to make a Bible that could be read in public. The King James Bible was born.

There were many men that helped translate the King James Bible. 47 men to be exact. They were broken up into 6 groups. 2 at Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge.¹⁸

They were told to use the Bishops' Bible and correct it where the Hebrew and Greek showed errors. They were also told to use other translations that were made before them. Such as Tyndale's and the Geneva Bible. They were to keep the church terms that were commonly used and make a Bible that could be read in public.

They used the best texts that were available to them. The Masoretic Text for the Old Testament and they consulted the Aramaic and Septuagint when needed. For the New Testament they used Beza's Greek New Testament of 1598 and compared it to Erasmus and Stephanus.¹⁹ It took them years to finish because they wanted to be as accurate as possible. They also wanted it to sound good when read out loud. Which is why it still does today.

No the words that were printed in 1611 were not inspired. What we believe is that the words that were translated were inspired. The original manuscripts were inspired and without error. We don't have the original manuscripts but we have over 5000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.²⁰ They are not all the same. There are spelling differences and word order differences. But they are very similar. The Byzantine Text that most of the Textus Receptus is based on was used throughout the Greek world for centuries.

We will admit that there are some things that textual critics bring up. Some of the manuscripts that the Textus Receptus is based on are late and some verses are questionable. One being 1 John 5:7-8 the Comma Johanneum.²¹ These are valid questions that should be asked. Just because one verse is questionable doesn't mean that the whole text is. There is no doctrine that stands on one verse. God's Word never stood on one verse.

Another thing to consider is that this Bible has been used for over 400 years to preach the Gospel. It has sparked revivals, sent missionaries and taught the word of God. All of these things show that God's Word has been preserved.

We can see that the King James Bible of 1611 took a long time to get to us. It started with God inspiring his word. Men wrote it down and others copied it and preserved it. Others translated it from the Hebrew Masoretic Text and Greek manuscripts. Through the early translations and Middle Ages. Through Erasmus and the reformers. To Tyndale and the men that translated the King James Bible.

These 47 men took what others did and created a Bible that we can trust today. Using the oldest texts available to them. And it has stood the test of time for over 400 years. That is why we still read it today.