NKJV (history of translation & opinions of it)

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I do not own the NKJV. I am interested in learning more about the history of the translation and opinions of it. I know that it is based on the Textus Receptus, as the original KJV is also. Is the NKJV a brand new translation, using the Textus Receptus, then comparing the original KJV, or is it just a revision of the KJV, such as the ASV or RV? For those of you who have the NKJV, what do you like about it? What do you dislike about it?

I also know that the Orthodox Study Bible which is due next year is going to be the NKJV (with revision and with the Deuterocanonical books added). Does anybody know why the NKJV was chosen for the Orthodox Study Bible, as opposed to using the Septuagint for the Old Testament and a brand new translation of the New Testament from the original Greek texts (many of which are older than the Textus Receptus–for example the Majority Text)?
 
lak611 said:
I also know that the Orthodox Study Bible which is due next year is going to be the NKJV (with revision and with the Deuterocanonical books added). Does anybody know why the NKJV was chosen for the Orthodox Study Bible, as opposed to using the Septuagint for the Old Testament and a brand new translation of the New Testament from the original Greek texts (many of which are older than the Textus Receptus–for example the Majority Text)?
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Great question. This probably won’t help to fully explain it, however it’s the best I could muster up.

Q: Is the LXX project a complete translation of the Septuagint into modern English? It seems like that would be a much larger project than I see here.

A: You see as thorough a translation as that to be found anywhere. We are taking the New King James Version as a starting point – “boilerplate” you might say – and changing it everywhere it is different from the Septuagint. The result will indeed be a Septuagint translation.

lxx.org/qa_d1.htm

For more questions, you may consult this page.

I just don’t understand why the Douey Reims is not used as the boilerplate… however I have very little background on these matters.
 
icxc_nika said:
I just don’t understand why the Douey Reims is not used as the boilerplate… however I have very little background on these matters.
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If not the Douay-Rheims as the boilerplate, why not the RSV? I find the NKJV to be an odd choice since it does not have the Deuterocanonical books.
 
I have one and I like it…except for the fact that the Deuterocanonicals are missing.
At the advice of a family friend who is a Methodist minister, I got the Nelson Study Bible (at Walmarts, yet!), mostly for the study notes, back some years ago. (I’m not as crazy about them than I used to be, before hanging out around here, but there really are a lot of them–almost as much as there is Bible!).
I have it by my bed now…I don’t read in bed much, but its handy to have there to read on a rough night.
If you like the feel of the KJV, but could do without the thees & thous, it is worth a look. If they would just print one with the whole Bible included, I’d most likely buy it.
I’m not sure that there is much reason for that at this point, though, because I love my RSV-CE so much, & it sits with my Douay-Rheims (Challoner), & a:thumbsup: 👍 very good pair they make!!
 
Zooey said:
I have one and I like it…except for the fact that the Deuterocanonicals are missing.
At the advice of a family friend who is a Methodist minister, I got the Nelson Study Bible (at Walmarts, yet!), mostly for the study notes, back some years ago. (I’m not as crazy about them than I used to be, before hanging out around here, but there really are a lot of them–almost as much as there is Bible!).
I have it by my bed now…I don’t read in bed much, but its handy to have there to read on a rough night.
If you like the feel of the KJV, but could do without the thees & thous, it is worth a look. If they would just print one with the whole Bible included, I’d most likely buy it.
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The Orthodox are working on it right now and will have all the books in it, including those that Catholics do not recognize either.
 
I have it, and I liked it as a Protestant, and still like it, except for the exclusion of the deuterocanonicals.

My understanding (without getting up from my comfortable recliner) is that it is based on the Scrivener Text for the NT and the Massoretic Text for the OT. Background: where the NT is concerned, there are three textual traditions. The Majority Text is based on a majority of the Greek NT manuscripts. The NU (Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies) Text, also called the eclectic text, is based on only a few of the oldest manuscripts. The Scrivener Text is a scholarly re-working of the Textus Receptus.

What I liked about the NKJV is that it documents in footnotes the differences among the three various textual traditions. Those footnotes were background information, so to speak, that came to the foreground when I realized that we needed an authority for interpretation of the scriptures. That’s what started me on the track to becoming Catholic.

DaveBj
 
I cannot stand the NKJV, it’s hard for me to read.

I can do the Douay-Rheims/Challoner-Rheims/Confraternity or the KVJ, but the hodgepodge of literary style in the NKJV kills me.
 
icxc_nika said:
We are taking the New King James Version as a starting point – “boilerplate” you might say – and changing it everywhere it is different from the Septuagint. The result will indeed be a Septuagint translation.
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I get the impression that by using the NKJV as a “starting point” and “changing it everywhere” it differs from the LXX, it will no longer be accurate to say the Orthodox Study Bible (OSB) is based on the NKJV. And given that the Apocrypha is not available in the NKJV, why was this translation chosen in the first place? Why not the RSV?

On the other hand, consider this: I believe it’s Thomas Nelson and Sons who publish the OSB; and it is Thomas Nelson who commissioned the translation of, and owned the original copyright to, the NKJV. Perhaps the thinking was: let’s see how well the NT of the OSB sells; if it does well, we (Nelson) can commission a translation of the Apocrypha for the NKJV. Sound reasonable?
 
I believe it’s Thomas Nelson and Sons who publish the OSB; and it is Thomas Nelson who commissioned the translation of, and owned the original copyright to, the NKJV. Perhaps the thinking was: let’s see how well the NT of the OSB sells; if it does well, we (Nelson) can commission a translation of the Apocrypha for the NKJV. Sound reasonable?
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Makes sense to me…This would be a good thing, I think. I bet that the NKJV would pick up more readers than Nelson suspects, if they had a complete Bible…
 
Manfred said:
I get the impression that by using the NKJV as a “starting point” and “changing it everywhere” it differs from the LXX, it will no longer be accurate to say the Orthodox Study Bible (OSB) is based on the NKJV. And given that the Apocrypha is not available in the NKJV, why was this translation chosen in the first place? Why not the RSV?

On the other hand, consider this: I believe it’s Thomas Nelson and Sons who publish the OSB; and it is Thomas Nelson who commissioned the translation of, and owned the original copyright to, the NKJV. Perhaps the thinking was: let’s see how well the NT of the OSB sells; if it does well, we (Nelson) can commission a translation of the Apocrypha for the NKJV. Sound reasonable?
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I find the dollars and cents aspect of this dealing intresting.
However, I would like your opinion, and anyone else’s, as to the validity and accuracy of the translation.
 
Talmida said:
I don’t know anything about the NKJV, but if you’re interested in a new English translation of the LXX from the Greek (as opposed to from the NKJV), don’t forget NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint) which has been available online, book by book, as translation has been completed.
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Just so everyone knows, those that are posted may not necessarily be the final versions. They could be very close or even the same, however, and are just being placed there provisionally (i.e. for a limited time, until the hard copy comes out). So, get them while you can!

The NETS will be close to the NRSV, but without the inclusive language. It may very well turn out to be excellent. I have not compared the preliminary editions to the RSV or NRSV very closely, so I don’t know how close in reality it comes to those, especially after they altered their translation policies such as to not use inclusive language.
 
Zooey said:
Makes sense to me…This would be a good thing, I think. I bet that the NKJV would pick up more readers than Nelson suspects, if they had a complete Bible…
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I think this is true. I have the KJV but not the NKJV. This is one of the reasons why I have not yet considered the NKJV.
 
lak611 said:
I do not own the NKJV. I am interested in learning more about the history of the translation and opinions of it. I know that it is based on the Textus Receptus, as the original KJV is also. Is the NKJV a brand new translation, using the Textus Receptus, then comparing the original KJV, or is it just a revision of the KJV, such as the ASV or RV? For those of you who have the NKJV, what do you like about it? What do you dislike about it?

I also know that the Orthodox Study Bible which is due next year is going to be the NKJV (with revision and with the Deuterocanonical books added). Does anybody know why the NKJV was chosen for the Orthodox Study Bible, as opposed to using the Septuagint for the Old Testament and a brand new translation of the New Testament from the original Greek texts (many of which are older than the Textus Receptus–for example the Majority Text)?
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I have used it at times, but my general opinion, which I believe is shared by a lot of academics, is that it is really the worst of both worlds. It loses the beauty of the KJV while not actually retranslating the places where the limitations of 17th-century scholarship led to poor translations in the KJV.

I do not see a lot of use for the NKJV. Mostly, it seems to me, it’s used by people who want to be conservative without the stigma of using an archaic translation. They’d be a lot better off sticking with the KJV.

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
I have used it at times, but my general opinion, which I believe is shared by a lot of academics, is that it is really the worst of both worlds. It loses the beauty of the KJV while not actually retranslating the places where the limitations of 17th-century scholarship led to poor translations in the KJV.

I do not see a lot of use for the NKJV. Mostly, it seems to me, it’s used by people who want to be conservative without the stigma of using an archaic translation. They’d be a lot better off sticking with the KJV.

Edwin
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Is the NKJV just the latest in a series of revisions? IOW, is it a revision of the RV and ASV?
 
lak611 said:
Is the NKJV just the latest in a series of revisions? IOW, is it a revision of the RV and ASV?
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No, it is not. I’ve excerpted the following from Michael Marlowe’s Bible Researcher site; his analysis agrees with other reviews of the NKJV written by other (Protestant) biblical scholars.

The New King James Version is a conservative revision of the King James version that does not make any alterations on the basis of a revised Greek or Hebrew text, but adheres to the readings presumed to underlie the King James version. In the New Testament, this means that the Greek text followed is the Textus Receptus of the early printed editions of the sixteenth century. The ancient manuscripts, upon which critical editions of the Greek text have been based for nearly two centuries now, are ignored (except in the marginal notes). So, for example, the Johannine Comma is printed in the text of 1 John 5:7-8 just as it was in the King James Version (although a note informs the reader that “only 4 or 5 very late manuscripts contain these words in Greek”).

Statements made in the Preface regarding this aspect of the version are somewhat misleading. The Preface points out that the few late medieval manuscripts upon which the Textus Receptus was based “were representative of many more” which constitute “the traditional text of the Greek-speaking churches” (also called the ‘Byzantine Text’), and it further asserts that “it is now widely held that the Byzantine Text that largely supports the Textus Receptus has as much right as the Alexandrian or any other tradition to be weighed in determining the text of the New Testament.” While this statement is true as far as it goes — all manuscripts and other witnesses to the text deserve to be weighed and are weighed by scholars — the reader should be told that nearly all competent scholars agree that the so-called Byzantine manuscript tradition of the middle ages can never be given the same evidential weight as the ancient manuscripts.

The NKJV editors have provided information on the readings of the ancient manuscripts in the margin. Most of the significant differences between the underlying Greek text of the NKJV and the ancient manuscripts are indicated there, by notes which give the readings of the United Bible Societies’ third edition (see Aland Black Metzger Wikren Martini 1975). Also indicated are significant differences from the “Majority Text” published by Hodges and Farstad in 1982. The Preface explains that with these notes the NKJV “benefits readers of all textual persuasions,” and this is true. No other Bible version has such a complete set of text-critical notes. However, it is not true that the editors have presented this information minus “tendentious remarks,” as is claimed in the Preface. The textual note on the Story of the Adulteress in the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel reads, “NU brackets 7:53 through 8:11 as not in the original text. They are present in over 900 mss. of John.” Obviously the purpose of the second sentence in this note is to give a ‘Majority Text’ rationale for the authenticity of the story. Students would have been better served by a note which indicated that the verses are absent from the ancient manuscripts and versions.

bible-researcher.com/nkjv.html
 
Manfred said:
The textual note on the Story of the Adulteress in the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel reads, “NU brackets 7:53 through 8:11 as not in the original text. They are present in over 900 mss. of John.” Obviously the purpose of the second sentence in this note is to give a ‘Majority Text’ rationale for the authenticity of the story. Students would have been better served by a note which indicated that the verses are absent from the ancient manuscripts and versions.

bible-researcher.com/nkjv.html
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Interestingly, in the NEB (New English Bible) these verses are omitted and placed at the end of John with a note that says “This passage, which in the most widely received editions of the New Testament is printed in the text of John 7.53 - 8.11, has no fixed place in our witnesses. Some of them do not contain it at all. Some place it after Luke 21.38, others after John 7.36, or 7.52, or 21.24.”
 
lak611 said:
Interestingly, in the NEB (New English Bible) these verses are omitted and placed at the end of John with a note that says “This passage, which in the most widely received editions of the New Testament is printed in the text of John 7.53 - 8.11, has no fixed place in our witnesses. Some of them do not contain it at all. Some place it after Luke 21.38, others after John 7.36, or 7.52, or 21.24.”
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Now, see, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), in its footnote to this passage, also mentions its possible placement following Luke 21.38, but does NOT state, as does the NEB, that it has “no fixed place in our witnesses.” It’s almost as if the NEB is suggesting that the passage has no place where it belongs in our Bible!
 
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