An Inerrant Translation?

The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is, without a doubt, the most influential translation of the Bible in the English language. Commissioned by James I of England and completed in 1611, it became the standard for quoting scripture. Written in the language of Shakespeare, millions can quote passages of it from memory: “man shall not live by bread alone,” “for whither thou goest, I will go,” “the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” and so on.

Since 1611, however, many discoveries either gave us older versions of the manuscripts that were then available to the KJV translators or shed light on the meanings behind the Hebrew and Greek words. Yet, the KJV had become so beloved over the centuries that release of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) in 1952 was greeted with accusations of blasphemy and book burning. It was only inevitable that, after having been used almost exclusively for almost 350 years, there would be a contingent of bible believers who conclude that the KVJ was the only English translations that Christians should read: “If it was good enough for St. Paul, it’s good enough for me.”

But it is one thing to prefer the KJV for the beauty of its language or its familiarity. It is quite another to fetishize it as a divinely inspired translation, based on specific Hebrew and Greek texts that are also divinely inspired. To be clear, many evangelicals believe the original Hebrew and Greek autographs – originals which everyone agrees are no longer in existence – are divinely inspired or inerrant (or both). But there is a certain cadre of fundamentalists who argue that the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus underlying the KJV are superior to the Hebrew and Greek texts today that have been reconstructed using older and better manuscripts.

If you turn to Gen 4:8 in the KJV, you will read: “And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” Now, let’s compare to the RSV: “Cain said to Abel his brother, ‘Let us go out to the field.’ And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.”

Cain’s words “Let us go to the field” (only two words in Hebrew) do not appear in the KJV. In the RSV (and other modern translations that have the line), there is a textual note: “Sam Gk Syr Compare Vg: MT lacks Let us go out to the field”. This note is telling us that the Masoretic Text (MT), the authoritative Hebrew text for rabbinic Judaism, is missing Cain’s actual words, but we are able to fill in this gap by looking at other ancient texts such as the Samaritan Pentateuch (Sam), the Greek Septuagint (Gk, also abbreviated LXX), the Syriac Peshitta (Syr), and the Latin Vulgate (Vg). All of these texts were copied or translated from a Hebrew text much older than the oldest complete Hebrew text we possess today and serve as a check against the MT. 

The relationship between the various ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament, according to the Encyclopaedia Biblica

In the case of Gen 4:8, it turns out that the MT appears to have lost a couple of words and the ancient versions were able to supply them. And Gen 4:8 is not an isolated example. Despite the care of the scribes copying the texts, over the centuries mistakes were made. Sometimes the eye of the scribe would jump over a line and miss copying it.

When you have several ancient manuscripts that agree with each other against the MT, what most likely happened is that the words were originally there in the root Hebrew text. When the other versions branched off they copied or translated the words that were there. But in the branch that led to the MT the words accidentally dropped out at some point.

While logical, this is not an acceptable explanation for the KJV-only crowd. Their doctrinal belief is that the MT on which the KJV is based is without error because God would not inspire the human authors to write down his words, only then to allow those holy words to succumb to scribal copying errors. No, he would divinely preserve his words through the centuries. Any “gaps” in the MT are only apparent gaps. The other ancient versions independently (and erroneously) concluded there were words missing from Cain’s speech and just happened to supply the same words to plug the hole. The KJV translators were divinely inspired to perceive that, in fact, there were no missing words and thus translated the passage exactly how God intended.

It only makes sense if you are already predisposed to the conclusion.

I appreciate that ancient texts can correct mistakes that were made somewhere down the line when a copy of a copy of a copy was being copied. I welcome new discoveries of non-biblical texts that shed light on how biblical words should be translated. We should always be striving to improve our understanding, to make known that which was once hidden.

Or as the KJV itself put it in Luke 8:17, “For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.”