King James Vs NAB Bible

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What are reasons that someone would accept the King James Bible as Authoritative over the Latin Vulgate or NAB bible? Why is Textus Receptus the word of god over the Say Codex Vaticanus or Codex Sinaiticus? My friend believes King James is the absolute word of god because it does not come from Egypt. Says its closest to Hebrew. I say it doesn’t have Apocrypha like original King James. Can anyone offer any scholarship on this issue. Thanks in advance…
 
interesting thread! i will look forward to the posts you get on this topic. i believe that the DR bible influenced the King James to some extent and vice versa. i am in no way a scholar so i will be interested to hear from some who know more on this subject than i do.
 
Actually, the DR didn’t influence the KJV.
The KJV comes from the Textus Receptus tradition, which is primarily Byzantine,
whereas the Douay-Rheims is largely derived from Saint Jerome’s Latin Vulgate,
which he put together with copies of Hebrew-language and Greek Language scriptures, along with seeking the help of Jewish rabbinical scholars when translating the “Old Testament.”

Though both the DRV and the KJV use what we could lump together as “King James style of English” they come from different textual tradtions. Really, the only thing in common between the two versions are the thee’s, thou’s, and thy’s.
Both are beautifully written, but from different text types.
And today, both are very difficult to correctly understand because, for example,
some of the words used in both versions,
no longer even mean the same things today that they meant 400 or so years ago.
 
I own KJV and NAB bibles. I don’t honestly like either one very much. The KJV is too archaic to be easily understood by modern English speakers, unless they were raised with it or are English majors. The NAB reminds me of the NIV, only more awkward and with Catholic notes. But I accept both as valid translations, and would use them if they were the only bibles I had. Btw, if you want a KJV with Apocrypha, they’re still out there, there’s just not a big market for them.

My preference? I like a good many others, but especially the RSV and its successors, the NRSV and ESV. The NJB would probably be one of my favorites from looking it over, but I don’t currently own one.
 
The original 1611 printing of the KJV did include the Apocrypha (although the were not considered as canonical by all of the translators).

King James Onlyism is the belief that the only pure, unadulterated written Word of God is found in the KJV.

There are many videos on YouTube about this.

If your friend is a KJV-Only advocate, then to them all all other Bible translations are considered to be false and perversions of scripture.​

P.S. There is no MSS that is the “Textus Receptus”. The KJV translators used earlier translations and chose from the few, various mss printings they had to translate from. There are issues with this, such as the Johannine Comma and word additions that do not appear in any extant manuscript whatsoever.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_Johanneum
 
Jaypeeto4 said:
Actually, the DR didn’t influence the KJV.
The KJV comes from the Textus Receptus tradition, which is primarily Byzantine,
whereas the Douay-Rheims is largely derived from Saint Jerome’s Latin Vulgate,
which he put together with copies of Hebrew-language and Greek Language scriptures, along with seeking the help of Jewish rabbinical scholars when translating the “Old Testament.”

Though both the DRV and the KJV use what we could lump together as “King James style of English” they come from different textual tradtions. Really, the only thing in common between the two versions are the thee’s, thou’s, and thy’s.
Both are beautifully written, but from different text types.
And today, both are very difficult to correctly understand because, for example,
some of the words used in both versions,
no longer even mean the same things today that they meant 400 or so years ago.
Click to expand...
i thought i had read that the kjv relied on the dr for the new testament or old testament translation and the dr relied on the kjv for either the new testament or old testament translation. i know that the dr was done in england and in rheims - the new testament in one city and the old testament in the other. my mind is blank today and i cannot remember which translation was done in which city. i am not saying that they copies word for word from each translation, but they did use the translations to help with the DR and the KJV. in fact, i believe i read this in the introduction of my DR bible.
 
peeteyg said:
What are reasons that someone would accept the King James Bible as Authoritative over the Latin Vulgate or NAB bible? Why is Textus Receptus the word of god over the Say Codex Vaticanus or Codex Sinaiticus? My friend believes King James is the absolute word of god because it does not come from Egypt. Says its closest to Hebrew. I say it doesn’t have Apocrypha like original King James. Can anyone offer any scholarship on this issue. Thanks in advance…
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So according to his logic:

A Country’s King version, after the fact, is more authoritative than the Universal Church version?

The Holy Spirit showed more favor to a King and his team of translators than to His Universal Church?

So Jesus said that he would be with the King and not His Church?

Paul said in 1 Tim 3:15, that the Kingdom of England is the pillar and foundation of truth?

Talking about *authority *only, correct? Because I’m not a fan of NAB :o, RSV or The Jerusalem Bible (1966), or ESV FTW 🙂

Hmmm… not only against Scripture Itself, but very faulty logic, IMHO.
 
How can the King James version of the bible be considered authoritative to some when the Church did without it for the first 1600 years? 🤷
 
CalCatholic said:
How can the King James version of the bible be considered authoritative to some when the Church did without it for the first 1600 years? 🤷
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Doesn’t make much sense, does it? :doh2:

But really, the idea that any Bible would depend on the translation to be authoritative is silly. It helps if the translation is honest and competent, and the KJV was state of the art in 1611, but 400 years is a loooong time.
 
7_Sorrows said:
i thought i had read that the kjv relied on the dr for the new testament or old testament translation and the dr relied on the kjv for either the new testament or old testament translation. i know that the dr was done in england and in rheims - the new testament in one city and the old testament in the other. my mind is blank today and i cannot remember which translation was done in which city. i am not saying that they copies word for word from each translation, but they did use the translations to help with the DR and the KJV. in fact, i believe i read this in the introduction of my DR bible.
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If memory serves, the Textus Receptus was in very poor condition when found, so it had a few gaps. They used the Douay to fill those gaps. I’m not sure I’d call that relying on the DR, but they did use it some.
peeteyg said:
What are reasons that someone would accept the King James Bible as Authoritative over the Latin Vulgate or NAB bible? Why is Textus Receptus the word of god over the Say Codex Vaticanus or Codex Sinaiticus? My friend believes King James is the absolute word of god because it does not come from Egypt. Says its closest to Hebrew. I say it doesn’t have Apocrypha like original King James. Can anyone offer any scholarship on this issue. Thanks in advance…
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Well, your friend made one point and one claim. For the point - that it does not come from Egypt - you should ask why that matters. What, exactly, is a geographical location’s impact on accuracy?

For his claim - that its closest to Hebrew - ask for evidence. A claim without evidence is just empty words.
 
Farsight001 said:
If memory serves, the Textus Receptus was in very poor condition when found, so it had a few gaps. They used the Douay to fill those gaps. I’m not sure I’d call that relying on the DR, but they did use it some.

Well, your friend made one point and one claim. For the point - that it does not come from Egypt - you should ask why that matters. What, exactly, is a geographical location’s impact on accuracy?

For his claim - that its closest to Hebrew - ask for evidence. A claim without evidence is just empty words.
Click to expand...
  1. There is no mss that is the Textus Receptus… it was never “found”. It is collected from several mss. There is no manuscript that is exactly like the TR.
  2. King James Onlyists believe that any Alexandrian text is a corruption of the Word of God.
YouTube has many videos pro & con KJV Only
 
One thing the KJV, the DRC, and the Vulgate share is that they were all translations into the common language of the people. One of the impetuses of the KJV was that the language of the Bishop’s Bible had become dated. Thus it is a modern-language translation, no different from olther updates, even to this day. BTW, the translation that most KJV Bibles are in was actually an update done in 1769, not one of the three printings done in 1611. Have your friend read the preface by the original translators to see what their goals were. They did not see their work as that final solution of the puzzle of making the Word of God understood to everyone.

As for the Textus Receptus, it was the identifying term for a translation done by Desiderius Erasmus and comes from the printer’s forward. It was based on a few Byzantine texts dating from the 1100’s through the 1400’s. The TR went through several revisions, since the first edition was done so hurriedly that it did not even edit out spelling and other errors made by Erasmus. The Johanine Comma appeared in the third edition, thus is not found in the Luther Bible, since Luther used the second edition. Tyndale used the third edition, which included the Comma for the first time, to translate his Bible, 80% of which was adopted into the King James New Testament.

Finally, all the named texts are in about 97% agreement, a truly astounding amount considering that we are looking at a body of work that extended from the 300’s to the 18th century, in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, German, Latin, and English. This truly is miraculous and illustrates God’s plan to reveal His Word to all generations.
 
“Textus Receptus (Latin: “received text”) is the name subsequently given to the succession of printed Greek texts of the New Testament which constituted the translation base for the original German Luther Bible, the translation of the New Testament into English by William Tyndale, the King James Version, and for most other Reformation-era New Testament translations throughout Western and Central Europe. The series originated with the first printed Greek New Testament to be published; a work undertaken in Basel by the Dutch Catholic scholar and humanist Desiderius Erasmus in 1516, on the basis of some six manuscripts, containing between them not quite the whole of the New Testament. The lacking text was back-translated from Vulgate. Although based mainly on late manuscripts of the Byzantine text-type, Erasmus’s edition differed markedly from the classic form of that text.”
 
Oldtimer_7 said:
One thing the KJV, the DRC, and the Vulgate share is that they were all translations into the common language of the people. One of the impetuses of the KJV was that the language of the Bishop’s Bible had become dated. Thus it is a modern-language translation, no different from olther updates, even to this day.
Click to expand...
  1. The KJV was a direct attack against the Geneva Bible, which had notes that were anti-Monarchy; something that King James despised. It was created to replace the use of the Geneva Bible, as well as other older translations (such as the Bishop’s Bible that you mention) into one that upheld the authority of the crown.
  2. The language of the KJV was not in the common language of that day. It used many phrases that were already outmoded in English at that time. You hear a lot of people say "the King James version sounds majestic in its language: - well, it had the same effect back then as it does now, in that it is not common language (in 1611 or in 2012).
 
Justice_Mercy said:
  1. There is no mss that is the Textus Receptus… it was never “found”. It is collected from several mss. There is no manuscript that is exactly like the TR.
Click to expand...
Agreed.

They used what they had, which was a sampling of some Greeks texts of various ages and conditions, but not necessarily the best texts or even the most common variants, it’s just what they could get in north-western Europe at the time. These were probably purchased or stolen from the collections of old monasteries far to the east.

I wonder if these were copies of the texts Erasmus used …
Justice_Mercy said:
  1. King James Onlyists believe that any Alexandrian text is a corruption of the Word of God.
Click to expand...
What exactly is meant by Alexandrian texts? Are they referring to the Septuagint?

It is certain that the KJV Old Testament is based on the Septuagint, so I don’t really understand the criticism. It must mean something else I am not familiar with.
 
Hesychios said:
Agreed.

What exactly is meant by Alexandrian texts? Are they referring to the Septuagint?

It is certain that the KJV Old Testament is based on the Septuagint, so I don’t really understand the criticism. It must mean something else I am not familiar with.
Click to expand...
There is a lot on the Net about the KJV Onlyists.
This link gives a brief intro to the Alexandrian vs Byzantine families of mss:

kjvonlydebate.com/tag/alexandrian-text/

🙂
 
Oldtimer_7 said:
Finally, all the named texts are in about 97% agreement, a truly astounding amount considering that we are looking at a body of work that extended from the 300’s to the 18th century, in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, German, Latin, and English. This truly is miraculous and illustrates God’s plan to reveal His Word to all generations.
Click to expand...
If it is truly miraculous, why aren’t the texts in 100% agreement?
 
Farsight001 said:
I get the impression that you’re basically advertising for the KJV. You do know, as a Catholic, that it is missing seven books right?
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That is ridiculous!

I am not a KJV Onlyist… I am answering the questions about those that hold that idea. There are a lot of misconceptions regarding it and if we are to show it for the false belief that it is, we need to understand it. Also, as i said before, it originally had the full canon of scriptures, but those were weeded out by others later.

It is obvious that the OP is facing someone that is a KJV Onlyist and I have seena lot of misconceptions regarding that posted in this thread. It is just something I know about from engaging those people over the years.

P.S. I just received my NABRE in the mail two days ago!
 
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