King James of the KJV Bible

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I am a Catholic who for several weeks was posting on a site called Former Catholics for Christ—a group of former catholics who are now viciously anti-catholic. They also adamantly refuse to use any other translation other than the King James.

They have deleted many of my posts, and finally banned me altogether from their site. The banning came shortly after I posted allegations I found in different sources about King James being a practicing homosexual and an Anglican who burned Baptists at the stake (most of the anti-Catholics on this site are now Baptist).

I am interested in any information about King James—his personal and spiritual life as well as his authority in authorizing a new translation of the Scriptures. Also any info on the reliability of the KJV translation would also be appeciated.
 
iwu.edu/~iwunews/newsrlse/tw10.html

I found the above website to be the only ‘non-religious’ reference to King James I and IV. There are websites that use Jack Chick cartoons that claim the Catholic Church fostered the accusation of homosexuality in order to defame the King. I think it is very difficult to prove a negative - that he was NOT something - so I would be nervous about making these kind of accusations.

I don’t know. I’m just not comfortable with bashing King James - I think we do better when we refute anti-Catholicism with the Catechism and the Holy Scripture.
 
kim wilson:
I am a Catholic who for several weeks was posting on a site called Former Catholics for Christ—a group of former catholics who are now viciously anti-catholic. They also adamantly refuse to use any other translation other than the King James.

They have deleted many of my posts, and finally banned me altogether from their site. The banning came shortly after I posted allegations I found in different sources about King James being a practicing homosexual and an Anglican who burned Baptists at the stake (most of the anti-Catholics on this site are now Baptist).

I am interested in any information about King James—his personal and spiritual life as well as his authority in authorizing a new translation of the Scriptures. Also any info on the reliability of the KJV translation would also be appeciated.
Click to expand...
What is the reason for mentioning that King James may have been a practising homosexual ?
how would this have any bearing on if the King James version is a good translation or not ?
I personally feel the main problem with today’s King James version is that it is short by 7 books.

Trick
 
I would also be wary of casting aspertions at King James I. I don’t see how his morality, or lack thereof would affect the accuracy of any Bible. What we now refer to as King James’ Version was originally known as the ‘Authorised Version’. It became known as the King James Version simply because at the beginning was a dedication to the monarch.

The Catholic Encyclopedia states:-

*soon after his accession King James I appointed a commission of revision–the only practical outcome of the celebrated Hampton Court Conferences. The commissioners, who numbered forty-seven, were divided into six companies, two of which sat at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, respectively; each company undertook a definite portion of the Bible, and its work was afterwards revised by a select committee chosen from the whole body. The instructions for their procedure were, to take the Bishops’ Bible, which was in use in the churches, as their basis, correcting it by a comparison with the Hebrew and Greek texts. They were also given a list of other English versions which they were to consult. The commissioners set to work in 1607, and completed their labours in the short period of two years and nine months, the result being what is now known as the “Authorized Version”. Although at first somewhat slow in gaining general acceptance, the Authorized Version has since become famous as a masterpiece of English literature. The first edition appeared in 1611…

It is generally admitted that the Authorized Version was in almost every respect a great improvement on any of its predecessors. So much was this the case that when Bishop Challoner made his revision of the Douay Bible (1749-52), which is now commonly in use among English-speaking Catholics, he did not scruple to borrow largely from it. Indeed, Cardinal Newman gives it as his opinion (Tracts Theol. and Eccles., 373) that Challoner’s revision was even nearer to the Authorized Version than to the original Douay, “not in grammatical structure, but in phraseology and diction”. Nevertheless, there remained in the Authorized Version here and there traces of controversial prejudice, as for example, in the angel’s salutation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the words “highly favoured” being a very imperfect rendering of the original. *

newadvent.org/cathen/02141a.htm

I hope this is of some interest! 🙂
 
kim wilson:
I am interested in any information about King James—his personal and spiritual life as well as his authority in authorizing a new translation of the Scriptures. Also any info on the reliability of the KJV translation would also be appeciated.
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One thing that I found interesting when I was doing research on the KJV is that the original 1611 KJV had the extra 7 books that the protestant fathers took out. The contemporary version of the KJ bible doesn’t have these books. These 7 books are called the apocrypha. We call it the Deutorocanonical books.

I actually have a picture of the 1611 and the 1824 version. Try to search the internet and you’ll definitely find on.
 
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Trick:
What is the reason for mentioning that King James may have been a practising homosexual ?
how would this have any bearing on if the King James version is a good translation or not ?
I personally feel the main problem with today’s King James version is that it is short by 7 books.

Trick
Click to expand...
Agreed Trick–it wouldn’t have had any bearing and I agree that the main problem is that it is now short 7 books (though it wasn’t to begin with). However, I got so fed up with them accusing Bishop Sheen and several male catholic saints of being practicing homosexuals that I wanted to see how these people might react to allegations (whether founded or unfounded) about their beloved King James. The practicing homosexual, Baptist burning allegations about James can be found on several net sites. The former catholics on this site believe that the KJV of the Bible is the only valid English translation.
 
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gryskull:
snip

I actually have a picture of the 1611 and the 1824 version. Try to search the internet and you’ll definitely find on.
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You can buy replica 1611 KJVs for about $25 from the on-line booksellers. I have one.

DaveBj
 
I agree that it would be counter productive to talk about King James being a homosexual if your goal is apologetics.

If we’re just talking history, then yes, there is an abundance of anectdotal evidence that King James was a homosexual. You should be able to find it spoken of in any objective biography.
 
I agree that King James’ personal character has no direct bearing on whether the 1611 Bible is a good, or the only acceptable, version.

But to answer the question, yes the consensus of secular historians is that there is little doubt that James was a practising homosexual, profligate with the treasury for his personal pleasures, cruel and volatile. He managed to oppress and persecute both Catholics and Protestants, ordering the deaths of both whenever they looked like getting uppity, to keep them in a kind of “balance” so they could not challenge his autocratic rule. He believed that it was an offence against God for Parliament or anyone else to try to thwart his orders and ambitions, under the theory he called “The Divine Right of Kings”. He had a phobia about witchcraft, introducing the wholesale burning of witches to both Scotland and England. He sowed the seeds for the English Civil War.

Probably his character was largely the result of his extremely dysfunctional childhood. (Inter alia, his father was murdered, his mother married the suspected murderer and was then forced to flee to England (where she was later murdered on orders of his cousin Elizabeth I, and James, now grown, for political reasons made only a token protest). He had a series of male protectors who met violent deaths and one of whom apparently inducted him into homosexuality as an adolescent.)
 
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Petergee:
I agree that King James’ personal character has no direct bearing on whether the 1611 Bible is a good, or the only acceptable, version.

But to answer the question, yes the consensus of secular historians is that there is little doubt that James was a practising homosexual, profligate with the treasury for his personal pleasures, cruel and volatile. He managed to oppress and persecute both Catholics and Protestants, ordering the deaths of both whenever they looked like getting uppity, to keep them in a kind of “balance” so they could not challenge his autocratic rule. He believed that it was an offence against God for Parliament or anyone else to try to thwart his orders and ambitions, under the theory he called “The Divine Right of Kings”. He had a phobia about witchcraft, introducing the wholesale burning of witches to both Scotland and England. He sowed the seeds for the English Civil War.

Probably his character was largely the result of his extremely dysfunctional childhood. (Inter alia, his father was murdered, his mother married the suspected murderer and was then forced to flee to England (where she was later murdered on orders of his cousin Elizabeth I, and James, now grown, for political reasons made only a token protest). He had a series of male protectors who met violent deaths and one of whom apparently inducted him into homosexuality as an adolescent.)
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My history prof also said he was known to poop in his armor…well, if we’re going to trash him, let’s not do it by halves!

(I’m serious, the prof said it was true)
 
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JKirkLVNV:
My history prof also said he was known to poop in his armor…well, if we’re going to trash him, let’s not do it by halves!

(I’m serious, the prof said it was true)
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Wow, thanks for that information! My husband keeps asking me what I am laughing about as I sit here at the computer.
 
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JKirkLVNV:
My history prof also said he was known to poop in his armor…well, if we’re going to trash him, let’s not do it by halves!

(I’m serious, the prof said it was true)
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ROFL. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “as welcome as a poot in a space-suit.”

DaveBj
 
Hi Kim, James White ( the well known protestant apologetist ) has a good book on the topic worth a read.

aomin.org/kjvo.html

The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Modern Translations? (Paperback)
by James R. White

amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1556615752/102-8551477-2499347?v=glance

The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism (Paperback)
by D. A. Carson

amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801024277/ref=pd_sim_1/102-8551477-2499347?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

One Bible Only?: Examining the Claims for the King James Bible (Paperback)
by Roy E. Beacham (Editor), Kevin T. Bauder (Editor)
 
So Marsh are you a KJV onlyist—somehow I doubt it. When I was about 10, I watched the preacher at our fundamentalist S. Baptist church tear pages out of and throw with great force a stack of bibles which were not KJV from the pulpit. His face was all red and he was screaming. At the bottom of the stack was a red KJV which he held up like a baby.

Don’t think I would trust any of James White’s writings, but I do appreciate the KJV onlyist site.
 
I will leave aside this morbid interest in the personal life of one of England and Scotlands most famous monarch’s. He had a most unfortunate and very dysfunctional childhood, OK.

I have often wondered why it was that the committee which King James commissioned for this great task of coming up with a reliable English language translation of the Bible, chose to write it in archaic English (I mean archaic even by the standards of 1611). I have also often wondered why it was that despite the work of these scholars there are still something approaching 32,000 errors (misunderstandings, mistranslations, glosses, etc.) in it.

And has anyone else noticed how the literati ‘fetishise’ the English of the KJV while attacking the contents - like, “wonderful poetry; shame about the superstitious nonsense though”.

Just some thoughts of mine I’m sharing; I don’t have any answers.

:tiphat:
 
Cockney Clive:
I will leave aside this morbid interest in the personal life of one of England and Scotlands most famous monarch’s. He had a most unfortunate and very dysfunctional childhood, OK.

I have often wondered why it was that the committee which King James commissioned for this great task of coming up with a reliable English language translation of the Bible, chose to write it in archaic English (I mean archaic even by the standards of 1611). I have also often wondered why it was that despite the work of these scholars there are still something approaching 32,000 errors (misunderstandings, mistranslations, glosses, etc.) in it.

And has anyone else noticed how the literati ‘fetishise’ the English of the KJV while attacking the contents - like, “wonderful poetry; shame about the superstitious nonsense though”.

Just some thoughts of mine I’m sharing; I don’t have any answers.

:tiphat:
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CLIVE (what a totally cool Brit name)–what would some of the more glaring of the 32,000 errors be? Personally, I can’t stand the KJV—I find it extremely difficult to understand. At best, it’s soporific on a night when you can’t fall asleep.
 
Being an Orthodox Christian I used to get upset at how people think that the King James Version was the “God” of all Bible translations. After attending a respectable theological college, i have come to realise that NO Bible translation is perfect appart from following the Greek Bible which was used by the Saints of our Church. eg. St John Chrysostom, St Basil and St Augustine are good sources for commentaries on the Holy Bible and so help us determine which Bibles are good translations or not.Using the Fathers of the Church is valuable, one wll find however that the KJV, despite rumours of his sexuality, was not created by himself but by a group of Scholars who used the Greek Texts to create a Bible which closely resembles that used in the Orthodox Church, (but without the Deutercanonical Scripture).

I used to like the NRSV the most, because it was very literal, and when we had KOINE Greek translation exercises at Uni, it was the NRSV which was an almost perfect tool.

But the problem was that NRSV was not only based on the Greek Bible we use in the Church, but also on other differing Greek manuscripts, many of which were found in Alexandria which was unfortuantely influenced by heresies, ie Gnosticism and Arianism in the past. The new Greej manuscripts that were found were probably those rejected by the Church when the Bible was being formed and in fact do not help but are greatly lacking.

The other bad thing was that the NRSV OT was based on the MT, which my Biblical Studies lecturer agreed that (she was a catholic NUN btw) the best source for the OT is not the MT but the LXX which is much older than the MT. It also included the Deuterocanonical texts which both Orthodox and Catholics use.

Jesus probably never quoted the Deuterocanonical literature, but the Apostles did. Jesus and the Apostles do not use the Maseretic (MT), they used the Septuagint (LXX) most of all. This gives us a clue as to what Bible vesion the LXX canme from. the Qumran caves have revealed that the Greek LXX is almost spot on with the Hebrew Manuscripts they found in the caves.
 
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