There are some Christians who staunchly believe the King James Version of the Bible is a “perfect” translation. This belief is called “King James onlyism.” I encountered this belief early on in my pastoral days and have since spent untold hours studying it. In regards to “K.J.V. only” advocates, I’ve listened to sermons from Jack Hyles, who ruled as the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, for over 40 years. I’ve spent hours reading David Cloud’s “Way of Life” website. I’ve subscribed to “The Sword of the Lord” paper, which is edited by Shelton Smith. I’ve even attended two Sword of the Lord conferences in Walkertown, North Carolina. Trust me, I’ve heard the arguments for the K.J.V. translation being a “perfect” Bible. Here are three of those main arguments.
#1: God has promised to preserve His words. The supposed “proof text” for this promise is Psalm 12:6-7, which says in the K.J.V.:
The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
According to the “K.J.V. only” folks the K.J.V. is God’s preserved word for the English-speaking people. Putting it another way the K.J.V. is God’s way of fulfilling His Psalm 12:6-7 promise to “keep” His words and “preserve” them forever, at least in regards to the English language. As for the more than 7,000 other languages in the world, especially the more than 3,700 languages for which we currently don’t have a Bible translation, evidently God doesn’t have a promise of preservation for them.
Sarcasm aside the majority of commentators tell us the word “them” in the line “thou shalt preserve them” refers to the oppressed “poor” and “needy” of verse 5 rather than the “words of the Lord” of verse 6. Why do they interpret the Psalm in this way? They do it because 95% of Hebrew scholars agree that “them” in verse 7 should be translated as “us.” This makes the Psalm about God preserving the godly weak in a world of the ungodly strong rather than preserving His word in some singular translation of the Bible. Consequently, translations such as the English Standard Version, the Holman Christian Standard, and the New International Version use the word “us” in verse 7 instead of “them.” Of course, how those other translations read means absolutely nothing to the “K.J.V. only” folks.
Before we move on from this first argument let me also mention that it is commonly accepted that the K.J.V. translation, which was first published in 1611, has been revised at least four times before what we call the “modern” age, with the last revision taking place in 1769. And how many differences are there between the 1611 version and the 1769 one? Over 22,000! While most of those changes simply involved either changes in the spelling of certain words or the correction of printing errors, let’s not ignore the more than 100 of them that involved actually “revising” (i.e. “changing”) a word or phrase. This leads to the question, “If God’s preserved word for English-speaking people is the K.J.V., which version of that translation is the preservation?” The vast majority of the “K.J.V. only” people would answer, “The 1611 edition.” Okay, fine, then why did God allow all the changes to take place to it, and why is everybody in the “K.J.V. only” camp today reading a later revision?
#2: God’s word is settled in heaven. The so-called “proof text” here is Psalm 119:89, which says in the K.J.V.:
For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.
I once heard Jack Hyles say in a sermon that the “word” that is settled in heaven is the King James translation. He said that when he got to heaven, he would see a King James Bible there. I guess all those Christians who make it to heaven but can’t read English will have to take the time in eternity to learn the language. Then again God might just instantaneously give them that ability the way he caused those Pentecost believers to speak in languages unknown to them (Acts 2:1-13). Actually, though, since Jack Hyles also taught that the K.J.V. is the “incorruptible” “seed” of “the word of God” that 1 Peter 1:23 says is necessary for anyone to be “born again,” maybe there won’t be anybody in heaven who’ll have to learn to read English after all!
Would you believe the most extreme of the “K.J.V. only” group even contend that the K.J.V. is actually superior to the Old Testament’s original Hebrew and the New Testament’s original Greek? This idea was most famously promoted by Peter Ruckman, who founded the Pensacola Bible Institute. He went so far as to teach that the K.J.V. is advanced revelation over the Bible’s original texts! This doctrine is now known as “Ruckmanism.”
#3: The men who served as the translators of the K.J.V. were all godly men who believed they were handling the word of God. While the group of translators who gave us the K.J.V. might have been godly men, they weren’t even “K.J.V. only” themselves. In the original 1611 K.J.V. there are eleven pages that serve as the Preface. This Preface is labeled “The Translators To The Reader.” By way of that preface the translators clearly encourage the use of other translations. To quote that Preface, “a variety of translation is profitable for finding out the sense of the Scriptures.”
Those same K.J.V. translators also praise translations that came before theirs by saying:
Truly (good Christian reader) we never thought from the beginning, that we should need to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one…but to make a good one better or out of many good ones, one principal good one.
Furthermore, those translators made a point of saying that scripture must always be in the most current, up-to-date language so that the common people can easily understand what they are reading. The direct quote is:
But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar.
Ironically, even the meaning of that word “vulgar” has changed since those translators wrote. During their day it meant “common, simple, or uneducated.” Now it typically means “crude, lewd, offensive, or profane.” Does that make the translator’s argument or what?
As evidence that much of the language of the K.J.V. is no longer even close to being language a commoner can understand consider the following list of archaic, obsolete words the translation uses:
“abjects”; “aceldama”; “affright”; “afore”; “agone”; “ague”; “almug”; “ambassage”; “amerce”; “anon”; “appertain”; “assayed”; “astonied”; “beeves”; “bethink”; “betimes”; “bewrayeth”; “blains”; “bolled”; “brigandines”; “bruit”; “caul”; “chambering”; “chapiters”; “chapmen”; “chode”; “choler”; “churl”; “cieled”; “clouted”; “cogitations”; “collops”; “concision”; “concupiscence”; “contemn”; “cotes”; “countervail”; “crookbackt”; “cruse”; “cumbered”; “daysman”; “descry”; “discomfited”; “doleful”; “durst”; “emerads”; “ensample”; “espied”; “felloe”; “flagon”; “forswear”; “gad”; “gainsaying”; “glede”; “habergeon”; “harrow”; “hart”; “hoar”; “holpen”; “hough”; “husbandman”; “implead”; “importunity”; “inditing”; “jangling”; “kine”; “knop”; “lade”; “lees”; “listeth”; “mammon”; “marishes”; “maw”; “mete”; “meteyard”; “murrain”; “neesing”; “nitre”; “noised”; “noisome”; “obeisance”; “ouches”; “outwent”; “paps”; “paramour”; “pate”; “patrimony”; “penury”; “peradventure”; “pilled”; “plaiting”; “prating”; “purloining”; “purtenance”; “quarternion”; “redoud”; “requiet”;”rereward”; “ringstraked”; “sackbut”; “scall”; “scrip”; “servitor”; “sheepcote”; “sith”; “staves”; “stomacher”; “suretiship”; “surfeiting”; “tabret”; “taches”; “thitherward”; “trode”; “trow”; “unction”; “untoward”; “vaunt”; “verity”; “victuals”; “visage”; “wen”; “wimples”; “winefat”; “wont”; and “wot”
Getting back now to the problem of certain words changing meanings over time consider the following examples from the K.J.V.:
The word “fetched” in “fetched a compass” (Joshua 15:3; 2 Kings 3:9; Acts 28:13) doesn’t mean “went and got.” Instead, it means “to turn around” or “to go around” or “circled.”
The word “leasing” in “seek after leasing” (Psalm 4:2) doesn’t mean “entering into a contract whereby you pay for the use of property or land.” Instead, it means “lying.”
The word “replenish” in “replenish the earth” (Genesis 1:28) doesn’t mean “fill something up again.” Instead, it means “fill.”
The word “wax” in “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse” (2 Timothy 3:13) doesn’t mean “polish,” “treat,” or “cover.” Instead, it means “increase.”
The word “conversation” in “ye have heard of my conversation in time past” (Galatians 1:13) doesn’t mean “a talk” or “a dialogue.” Instead, it means “conduct.”
The word “instant” in “be instant in season, out of season” (1 Timothy 4:2) doesn’t mean “happening immediately.” Instead, it means “persistence,” “readiness,” or “steadfastness.”
The word “mean” in “he shall not stand before mean men” (Proverbs 22:29) doesn’t mean “unkind,” “unpleasant,” or “cruel.” Instead, it means “obscure” or “insignificant.”
The word “without” in “without the camp” (Exodus 29:14; Leviticus 4:12; Numbers 5:3; etc.) doesn’t mean “in the absence of.” Instead, it means “outside.”
The word “simplicity” in “the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3) doesn’t mean “easy to understand.” Instead, it means “sincere,” “pure,” or “not corrupted.”
The word “emulation” in “I may provoke to emulation” doesn’t mean “imitate in an effort to surpass.” Instead, it means “jealousy.”
The word “let” in “only he who now letteth will let” (2 Thessalonians 2:7) doesn’t mean “allow.” Instead, it means “restrain.”
The word “polled” in “he polled his head” (2 Samuel 14:26) doesn’t mean “recorded the opinion of.” Instead, in the case of a human it means “to cut the hair from.” In the case of an animal, it means “to cut the horns from.”
The word “carriages” in “we took up our carriages” (Acts 21:15) doesn’t mean “a four-wheeled passenger vehicle pulled by animals.” Instead, it means “”baggage.”
The word “prevent” in “shall not prevent them” (2 Thessalonians 4:15) doesn’t mean “keep from happening.” Instead, it means “precede” or “go before.”
The word “wit” in “we do you to wit” (2 Corinthians 8:1) doesn’t mean “keen intelligence” or “mental sharpness.” Instead, it means “make known to you.”
The word “charger” in “in a charger, the head of John the Baptist” (Mark 6:25) doesn’t mean “a horse trained for battle.” Instead, it means “a platter.”
The word “quick” in “the word of God is quick” (Hebrews 4:12) doesn’t mean “moves at a fast rate.” Instead, it means “living.”
The word “rank” in “rank and good” (Genesis 41:6) doesn’t mean “having an unpleasant smell.” Instead, it means “fat” or “healthy.”
The word “devotions” in “beheld your devotions” (Acts 17:23) doesn’t mean “times of prayer or religious observances.” Instead, it means “objects of worship.”
The word “convenient” in “to do those things which are not convenient” (Romans 1:28) doesn’t mean “blending in well with a person’s needs, plans, or activities.” Instead, it means “fitting” or “proper.”
I certainly mean no disrespect to the K.J.V. translation. After all, I did grow up reading it and have preached from it for the bulk of my pastoral ministry. I’ll even agree with the assessment that the K.J.V. has been used in God’s service more than any other translation. But let’s not go off the deep end here. The K.J.V. is not “perfect.”
Even if we choose to overlook the translation’s use of 17th century, Old English words that nobody understands today, and even if we explain away the fact that the meanings of some of the translation’s words have now changed, outright errors in translations are things we should never ignore. And does the K.J.V. have various demonstrable translation errors in it? Yes, it does. Here is a list of some of its translation mistakes:
Genesis 22:1: “tempt” should be “test” (This clears up an apparent contradiction between this verse and James 1:13.)
Genesis 42:27; Genesis 43:21; Exodus 4:24: “inn” should be “the lodging place” or “the encampment”
Genesis 49:6: “they digged down a wall” should be “they hamstrung an ox”
Exodus 20:13: “kill” should be “murder” (This clears up an apparent contradiction between this verse and passages such as Exodus 21:12-21.)
Judges 15:19: “in the jaw” should be “in Lehi” or “at Lehi”
1 Samuel 27:10: “Whither have ye made a road today?” should be “Where have you made a raid today?” or “Where have you gone raiding today?”
1 Kings 10:28: “linen yarn” should be the Egyptian town “Keveh”
Psalm 77:2: “my sore ran in the night” should be “my hand was stretched out in the night without ceasing”
Matthew 6:25: “Take no thought” should be “Do not worry” or “Do not be anxious”
Mark 6:20: “observed him” should be “kept him safe” or “protected him”
Luke 14:7: “chief rooms” should be “places of honor”
Acts 5:30: “and hanged” should be “by hanging”
Acts 12:4: “Easter” should be “Passover”
Acts 19:2: “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” should be “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
Romans 8:16,26: “Spirit itself” should be “Spirit Himself”
1 Corinthians 4:4: “For I know nothing by myself” should be “For I am conscious of nothing against myself”
Galatians 2:10: “forward” should be “earnest” or “diligent”
1 Thessalonians 5:22: “all appearance of evil” should be “every form of evil”
1 Timothy 6:10: “the root of all evil” should be “the root of all kinds of evil”
2 Timothy 2:15: “Study” should be “Be diligent” or “Do your best”
James 3:2: “For in many things we offend all” should be “For we all stumble in many things”
You see, if even one of these errors stands up to scrutiny and proves to be factual, it means the K.J.V. loses the claim of perfection. You can’t be wrong in even one way and still be “perfect.” Please understand now that the K.J.V. is by in large a reliable translation that does a good job of translating the Bible’s original Hebrew and Greek into English. We’re talking about just a few problems in the translation’s vast universe of words. Nevertheless, those problems are there.
In closing, let me mention Romans 10:2, where we learn that it’s possible to have a zeal for God that is misdirected in that it is “not according to knowledge.” Even though the zeal is sincere it is either uninformed or ill-informed. In the cases of some of the “K.J.V. only” folks, their zeal is uninformed because they’ve never really taken the time and put in the work to study the issue for themselves. In the cases of others, their zeal is ill-informed because they’ve studied the issue in great detail and reached the wrong conclusion about it.
Either way it’s an honest-to-goodness shame because the “K.J.V. only” people are for the most part devout Christians who desire to live a life pleasing to the Lord. I know some of them personally and can say without reservation that if everybody served Jesus as well as they do, the world would be a better place. I just wish they’d consider all the evidence against the King James translation being the best translation for the 21st century (to say nothing of it being “perfect”) and give other translations a chance. One thing is for sure: If they won’t, most of their children and grandchildren will. That’s just the way things are trending. And I, for one, think that’s a good thing.
