Saturday, November 17, 2012

1611 vs 1769

People who insist the multitude of serious conflicts in the modern versions (which will be thoroughly documented elsewhere in this blog) are insignificant contradict themselves by appealing to the touch-ups in the various editions of the KJB as a big deal. Here is one brief article that exposes their perfidy:

Revisions of the KJB? Donald Waite

Daniel Wallace is a noted Greek scholar and professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. In his paper entitled "Why So Many Versions?" Wallace makes the following statement -"...we must remember that the King James Bible of today is not the King James of 1611. It has undergone three revisions, incorporating more than 100,000 changes!"

There you have it. A scholar of repute has spoken. Other critics have taken up the same whimpering cry.

But is it true?

No, it is not true. Furthermore, it is willfully deceptive, as I shall now demonstrate.

First, the facts... The King James Bible contains 791,328 words. Since the first King James Bible rolled off the press in 1611 to the King James Bible you buy off the shelf today, there have been - are you ready - there have been a grand total of 421 word changes! That's it!

From 1611 until now, the King James Bible has undergone a grand total of 421 word changes, amounting to only five one-hundredths of a percent of the text! But that's not all. It gets better.

Out of the 421 total changes amounting to only five one-hundredths of a percent, the following should be noted -

TOWARDS has been changed to TOWARD 14 times.

BURNT has been changed to BURNED 31 times.

AMONGST has been changed to AMONG 36 times.

LIFT has been changed to LIFTED 51 times.

YOU has been changed to YE 82 times.

Out of a grand total of 421 changes from 1611 to the present, almost 300 of the 421 are of this exact nature! Now let's do the math...

By omitting changes of this nature, we now have about 150 (to be conservative) remaining changes. This amounts to one one-hundredth of a percent of the text.

The remaining 150 changes from 1611 to today are composed of printing errors, spelling standardization, and a few minor phrase changes. For example...

In Genesis 22:7 AND WOOD was changed to AND THE WOOD.

In Leviticus 11:3 CHEWETH CUD was changed to CHEWETH THE CUD.

In Romans 6:12 REIGN THEREFORE was changed to THEREFORE REIGN.

Friends, this is the ENTIRE extent of the nature of the changes from the King James Bible of 1611 to the King James Bible of the present day.

Indeed, the words of the Holy Ghost are very appropriate here - "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." Psalm 12:6

The question now arises, how then can Daniel Wallace and other enemies of God's Word make a statement like the one he made above? If there have been only 421 changes from 1611 until today, how can Wallace et al say that there have been 100,000 changes?

It's very simple, and yet very insidious, my friends. Here is how Wallace et al attempt to justify their deception...

You see, the King James Bible you buy off the shelf today is printed in the ROMAN TYPE FACE! The King James Bible of 1611 was printed in the GOTHIC TYPE FACE!

VOILA!!!

There you have it, friends. Changes in TYPE FACE are the "changes" that Wallace et al are referring to. And yet, Wallace clearly intended his reader to believe that the King James Bible of 1611 is significantly different than the King James of today.

As usual, however, the facts don't bear the critics out. The facts condemn the critics and expose their smoke-and-mirror shell game. Deceit is the only thing modern critics can traffic in, for the facts are so overwhelmingly against them that they have no other means by which to denigrate the Word of God.

Conclusion: the FACT is that the King James Bible you buy off the shelf today is VIRTUALLY IDENTICAL to the King James Bible of 1611. God has truly preserved his word in the Bible of the King James.

EDITIONS of 1611

As for the "editions" of the KJB, the underlying text was never changed. All that was "corrected" was changing from Gothic type printing to Roman type; the updating of spelling like from Sonne to Son, and most importantly the correction of printing errors. Here is a very good article by Dr. David Reagan explaining the various "editions" of the KJB.


Even the American Bible Society, which definitely is NOT KJB only, admitted in print that the text of the KJB has never changed.

The American Bible Society wrote, "The English Bible, as left by the translators (of 1611), has come down to us unaltered in respect to its text..." They further stated, "With the exception of typographical errors and changes required by the progress of orthography in the English language, the text of out present Bibles remains unchanged, and without variation from the original copy as left by the translators" (Committee on Versions to the Board of Managers, American Bible Society, 1852).

2 comments:

  1. When it comes right down to it Gods spirit bares witness with ours the true word of God.

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  2. I agree. My first Bible was a parallel Bible with KJB in one column and Living Bible in the other. I fell for the claim that the KJB would be too difficult for a new Christian.

    But as I read it became clear to me that one column was some guy trying to help readers, but the other was GOD's words.

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