It is commonly understood that The Lord has given us his Words in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

Key Points:

  • #1 -- The issue is not whether one should take the KJV translation of 1611 (or any other English translation) and use it as the basis of providing a translation into any other language.

  • #2 - All translations rely on a set of NT Greek manuscripts.

  • #3 - There are two basic families of manuscripts that are used to provide an English translation (or any other language translation).

  • #4 - Those two basic families of manuscripts are what is at issue!

The Issues Of Manuscripts

FORMAL EQUIVALENCY - A SUPERIOR METHOD OF TRANSLATION

The King James Bible translators used a superior method in translating called formal equivalency. Formal Equivalence, sometimes called Verbal Equivalence is a method of translation which takes the Greek, and Hebrew words and renders them as closely as possible into English. This is the method used by the King James translators and is certainly a superior method, seeing that our Lord is concerned about every word, even the jots and tittles (Matthew 5:18; 24:35).

The King James Bible is built on the foundation of faith by men who had a high regard for the Bible, and massive manuscript evidence to support their work. They meticulously translated the Greek and Hebrew words, as closely as possible into English.

DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCY & PARAPHRASING - AN INFERIOR METHOD OF TRANSLATING

The modern versions of the Bible use dynamic equivalency, also called concept inspiration in their translations. Dynamic Equivalence is not following a word for word translation but changing, adding, or subtracting from the original to make it flow as the translator sees fit. We are warned against this in the Bible. The New International Version is this type of a version.

Then, there is one further step that is even worse and that is paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is simply taking what the text says and rewriting it to what you think it says. It is more like a condensed commentary than a Bible. The most popular paraphrase is the Living Bible. It is really not a translation at all!

The Modern versions are built on a foundation of doubt by men who have a low regard for the Bible. A few corrupt manuscripts were used to support their work. For the most part, they loosely translated the concepts of the Greek and Hebrew and some versions are even sloppier, not translating at all but paraphrasing.

Those two families or sets of manuscripts are . . . .

The Textus Receptus, which is sometimes called the Received Text, The Majority Text, or The Traditional Text

AND

The Critical Text, which is also called the Minority Text, The Modern Text, or Alexandrian Text