1611 King James Bible...Existing English Revision or New English Translation?

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Wife.of.Gabriel

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Speaking with a Seventh Day Adventist, I learned her parish values the 1611 King James Bible above all other English language Bibles.

In researching the 1611 Bible, it looks like less than 100 yrs after King Henry the 8th invented the English Protestant Church known as Anglican Church, King James authorized 54 “Revisionists” to create a new English language Bible which was completed by 47 Protestant Scholars in 1611, which for 274 yrs included all the books of the Old Testament before dropping some of the Old Testament books which they labeled Apocryphal.

My question is…is it really a “Translation” or is it a “Revision” of the earlier English language Bibles? In my research, it seems like it was a revision based on several existing English translations. If it was truly a Translation, what was it Translated from? Douay-Rheims was a translated from the Latin Vulgate. If 1611 Bible wasn’t a revision of existing English translations, was it a Translation from the original Septuagint Old Testament & Greek/Aramaic New Testament or did they use the later Hebrew Old Testament or did they translate it from Latin or some other language?

2nd question: Who decided to remove some of the Old Testament Books from the 1611 King James Version in 1885? Who gave the authority to make changes to which books are included in the Bible?
 
I think you will find your first question answered here, in the instructions handed out to all the
teams of translators (link below).

I don’t know the answer to your second question, but it’s my impression that only the earliest editions included all 46 books of the OT in their canonical order. The Church of England came under Lutheran influence at an early date, which might explain why they took out the seven deuterocanonical books, plus some chapters in Esther and Daniel, and placed them apart, sandwiched between the OT and the NT under the title “The Apocrypha”.

 
The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. When it was translated into Greek, the authors included some works that were written in Greek. In the first centuries after Christ, the destruction of Jerusalem and suppression of Jewish culture led to a reevaluation of scriptures with an eye toward preserving Israel’s identity. The resulting book is known as the Masoretic text and is taken as the standard Hebrew text.

At this time, Greek was the most commonly understood language. Even in the Roman Empire, Greek was used as much as Latin, if not more. The Greek Septuagint continued to be used by most Christians despite the Masoretic text. As the Western Empire drifted away from the Eastern, Latin became more important in the West.

At this time, texts were copied individually by hand. As more copies in Greek and Latin of scripture circulated, people tried to deal with errors and differences that arose during the copying. The Textus Receptus, the received text, became the standard from which translations were made.

KJV was a translation of the Textus Receptus. Probably mostly from Greek, though Latin was better known and influenced the text. Earlier English versions were also consulted. Some of the Protestants decided to follow the Masoretic text, since the OT was the books of the Jews. This was not removing books, but deciiding to follow a different longstanding tradition.
 
If one is speaking of the KJV that is commonly available in Christian book stores, that is not the 1611 KJV; rather, it is the Blayney revision of 1769. I have a replica 1611, and trust me – they are not the same.

D
 
Dovekin said:
The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew.
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If you research it, you’ll find that a couple hundred years before Christ, Sacred Scripture was translated into Greek, called the Septuagint, and it was used by all the Jews & Diaspora until after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, several decades after Jesus’ Resurrection, when it was decided by the remaining Jews to translate their Scriptures back into Hebrew.
 
Dovekin said:
KJV was a translation of the Textus Receptus. Probably mostly from Greek, though Latin was better known and influenced the text. Earlier English versions were also consulted.
Click to expand...
It’s a hybrid then? Partly Translated & partly Revised existing English Translations?
 
Dovekin said:
Some of the Protestants decided to follow the Masoretic text, since the OT was the books of the Jews. This was not removing books, but deciiding to follow a different longstanding tradition.
Click to expand...
But the longstanding tradition of English Protestants, Anglicans, had been to use 1611 which included all books of the Old Testament for 274 years… If you think about it, the KJV had all the books longer than the KJVs been around after removing them. 274 yrs with & only 134 yrs without.
 
The woman I know, uses a modern version the 1611, stamped with 1611 inside, but without all of the Old Testament so definitely part of the 1885 revision when the books were thrown out, but certainly I didn’t see that date stamped inside.
 
Wife.of.Gabriel said:
The woman I know, uses a modern version the 1611, stamped with 1611 inside, but without all of the Old Testament so definitely part of the 1885 revision when the books were thrown out, but certainly I didn’t see that date stamped inside.
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The “Apocrypha” were omitted in the 1769 Blaney revision. The 1885 revision was not called the King James (or “Authorizes”) Version; it was the Revised Version. The replica 1611 that I have includes the deuterocanonicals in a section between the testaments.


D
 
In 1563 CE the 39 articles distinguished the unquestioned books of the OT from what became known as the apocrypha.
And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine…
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Every edition of the KJV was composed in that context. If it took until 1885 for an edition without the apocrypha, that does not negate the lesser status those books had.
 
Wife.of.Gabriel said:
If you research it, you’ll find that a couple hundred years before Christ, Sacred Scripture was translated into Greek from Hebrew, called the Septuagint, and it was used by all the Jews & Diaspora except when they used the Hebrew text or a similar Aramaic one until after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, several decades after Jesus’ Resurrection, when it was decided by the remaining Jews to use only their Scriptures in Hebrew.
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I have corrected your text with bold faced insertions. It is what I believe is correct.
 
I have this basic tenet, use the oldest reliable source possible written in the original language and a recent translation into a language you are fluent in. The KJV Bible, it must be remembered, is one of the few translations that are royalty free. People also seem to love their Thee’s and Thou’s. As much a Catholicism tries to harmonize Biblical passages through its teachings, Protestants are left mainly with the bare Bible. The problem mainly comes with very conservative Protestants, of which the Adventists definitely are, who really need a fixed translation to work from. I personally believe Biblical understanding is not frozen in time, rather as our understanding of our world changes, our interpretation of it should have the latitude to evolve. The creation stories are a great example.
 
Dovekin said:
I have corrected your text with bold faced insertions. It is what I believe is correct.
Click to expand...
Okay, except some of the Old Testament books had originally been written in Greek (and I think at least 1 in Aramaic), though most of it in Hebrew, Before Philadelphus II ordered the translation into Greek for his library in Egypt.

The oldest known Hebrew manuscripts in existance today were written by the non-Christian Jews post Resurrection of Jesus & post-final-Temple destruction, in other words, they’re newer. The errors found in these ‘newer’ Hebrew manuscripts aren’t found in the Greek Septuagint, like the error in numbers in Chronicles and Kings & in Chronicles and Samuel.

My opinion is that it seems likely, the errors have to do with the fact their writers wereN’t inspired by the Holy Spirit, as they’d knowing rejected Jesus as their Messiah & rejected His Church, the household of God. Centuries earlier, the 6 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel was while they were the Chosen People of God, before long before Jesus was born and were working with, not against, the Holy Spirit.
 
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I think you will find that the Masoretic text was all written in Hebrew. Books, and parts of books, that were written in Greek were not accepted into the Jewish canon. They wished to preserve their heritage as the Hebrw speaking people of Israel, not as Greek speakers. (If I am wrong, please correct me.)
 
Dovekin said:
I have corrected your text with bold faced insertions. It is what I believe is correct.
Click to expand...
Exactly. The Hebrew texts of the books retained in the Tenakh were never lost. The deuterocanonical books are a different story. The Hebrew original of Tobit, for example, was thought to have been lost until it was discovered in fragmentary form among the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran, in the 1940s or 1950s.
Dovekin said:
Books, and parts of books, that were written in Greek were not accepted into the Jewish canon.
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2 Maccabees, for instance, was originally written in Greek, and was left out of the Jewish canon accordingly. But so was 1 Maccabees, although it was written in Hebrew, and so was Tobit, which I just mentioned. In both cases it was evidently because of their content that these books were deemed theologically unacceptable.
 
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Wife.of.Gabriel said:
But the longstanding tradition of English Protestants, Anglicans, had been to use 1611 which included all books of the Old Testament for 274 years…
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No, that dating is incorrect. As early as 1660, under Puritan influence, the “Apocrypha” (deuterocanonicals) were entirely omitted from the editions of the King James Bible authorized by the Anglican hierarchy to be read in churches.
 
Wife.of.Gabriel said:
If you research it, you’ll find that a couple hundred years before Christ, Sacred Scripture was translated into Greek, called the Septuagint, and it was used by all the Jews & Diaspora until after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, several decades after Jesus’ Resurrection, when it was decided by the remaining Jews to translate their Scriptures back into Hebrew.
Click to expand...
I was under the impression that the Septuagint was a “secular” (by non Jewish benefactor) atempt to gather Jewish religious literature, inspired or not, and translate it into Greek. Kind of commissioned by a pagan king, hiring 70 Jewish scholars, translators ( for his library?). I have understood it as if it would have been Christian times, they would have included some of the early father writings also, such as Clements letter to the Coronthians, or the Didache.

So it was not Jewish leaders getting together to translate their sacred Hebrew writings into Greek, but much more, if I recall correctly.
 
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Wife.of.Gabriel said:
…
2nd question: Who decided to remove some of the Old Testament Books from the 1611 King James Version in 1885? Who gave the authority to make changes to which books are included in the Bible?
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The apocrypha was first omitted in 1666 A.D. but not in all printings. “In 1826 the British and Foreign Bible Society, which has been one of the principal agents in the circulation of the Scriptures throughout the world, decided never in the future to print or circulate copies containing the Apocrypha; and this decision has been carried into effect ever since.”
http://www.bible-researcher.com/kjv1.html
 
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This what it says in the old (1906) online Jewish Encyclopedia:

The Septuagint.

The oldest and most important of all the versions made by Jews is that called "The Septuagint" ("Interpretatio septuaginta virorum" or "seniorum"). It is a monument of the Greek spoken by the large and important Jewish community of Alexandria; not of classic Greek, nor even of the Hellenistic style affected by Alexandrian writers […] According to Aristeas, the Pentateuch was translated at the time of Philadelphus, the second Ptolemy (285-247 B.C.), which translation was encouraged by the king and welcomed by the Jews of Alexandria. […] Whatever share the king may have had in the work, it evidently satisfied a pressing need felt by the Jewish community, among whom a knowledge of Hebrew was rapidly waning before the demands of every-day life.

It is not known when the other books of the Bible were rendered into Greek. The grandson of Ben Sira (132 B.C.), in the prologue to his translation of his grandfather’s work, speaks of the “Law, Prophets, and the rest of the books” as being already current in his day. A Greek Chronicles is mentioned by Eupolemus (middle of second century B.C.); Aristeas, the historian, quotes Job; a foot-note to the Greek Esther seems to show that that book was in circulation before the end of the second century B.C.; and the Septuagint Psalter is quoted in I Macc. vii. 17. It is therefore more than probable that the whole of the Bible was translated into Greek before the beginning of the Christian era (Swete, “An Introduction to the O. T. in Greek,” ch. i.). The large number of Greek-speaking Jewish communities in Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and northern Africa must have facilitated its spread in all these regions. The quotations from the Old Testament found in the New are in the main taken from the Septuagint; and even where the citation is indirect the influence of this version is clearly seen. This will also explain in a measure the undoubted influence of the Septuagint upon the Syriac translation called the “Peshiṭta.”

Being a composite work, the translation varies in the different books. In the Pentateuch, naturally, it adheres most closely to the original; in Job it varies therefrom most widely. […]

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3269-bible-translations
 
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