Why are some words italicized in the Bible?

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paterpetri

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Can anyone tell me why in some versions of the Bible, particularly in the Douay-Rheims or the KJV, some words are in italics? There doesn’t seem to be any consistency. I know that italics are usually used to emphasize certain words, but the words that are italicized often do not seem any more important than the words around them. The only reason that I can think of for this is to justify the margins. Am I correct in my assumption, or is there any deeper significance to the italicized words?
 
I believe that the words that are italicized are not in the original text (Greek/Latin/Hebrew) but are inserted in order to form proper sentences in English or because the words are implied in the text even though a purely literal translation might omit them. Most commonly it is articles such as “he” or “the”. Greek is a very dense language and one word may require a short phrase to translate into English.

John
 
Thank you for the reply, John. Yours seems to be a logical explanation. I don’t have a Bible on me right now, so I’ll have to check it out when I get home. I’ll have to look up some passages with italics and compare them to the original text. Do you know of a Greek-to-English translation of the NT that is available online? thanks again for your help.

Steven
 
According to the introduction to one version of the King James Bible the italics represent words that do not have a direct translation from the original manuscripts (i.e., weren’t in the original text, but were added to make a better translation to English). Don’t know anything about the DR Bible though. I would assume the italics are for the same reason in that version.
 
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paterpetri:
Do you know of a Greek-to-English translation of the NT that is available online? thanks again for your help.
Click to expand...
ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/new-testament/default.asp
The above link has the Greek text (forget which one) parallel with the Darby translation.
This can be found along with samples of many classical Greek texts on this page ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/greek-word.asp where you can also find a link to download the entire Parallel New Testament in Microsoft Help format.
 
prodromos said:
ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/new-testament/default.asp
The above link has the Greek text (forget which one) parallel with the Darby translation.
This can be found along with samples of many classical Greek texts on this page ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/greek-word.asp where you can also find a link to download the entire Parallel New Testament in Microsoft Help format.
Click to expand...

As my daughter would say, “Way cool!” I’ve been using a Greek-only version: www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~fisher/gnt/.
 
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