BEFORE YOU PURCHASE A NEW BIBLE

What Others are saying about

the King James Version

Here's what some other translations have said about

the Authorized King James Version of 1611.

“... the style of the (1611) English Version has been creative as well as a creation. It has entered into
the literature and language of the English-speaking race ... To them this version brought what they
understood to be the direct words of God”
--Preface, James Moffatt translation, 1950

"The King James Version has with good reason been termed 'the noblest monument of English prose.'
... It entered, as no other book has, into the making of the personal character and the public institutions
of the English-speaking peoples. We owe to it an incalculable debt. "
--Preface, Revised Standard Version, 1952

"The most important document in the history of the English language is the King James Version of the
Bible. To measure its spiritual impact on the English speaking world would be more impossible than
counting the grains of sand along the ocean shores."
--Preface, Contemporary English Version, 1995

"We are, it is hardly needful to say, deeply grateful for the works of our non-Jewish predecessors, such
as the Authorized Version with its admirable diction, which can never be surpassed”
--Preface, Jewish Publication Society Translation, 1917

But is it accurate to ancient manuscripts?

"The King James (1611) translators were committed to producing an English Bible that would be a
precise translation, and by no means a paraphrase or a broadly approximate rendering ... the scholars
were fully familiar with the original languages of the Bible ... their reverence for the divine Author and
His Word assured a translation of the Scriptures in which only a principle of utmost accuracy could be
accepted. "
--Preface, NEW King James Version, 1990

In 1786 the Catholic Scholar, Alexander Geddes, said of the King James Bible: "If accuracy and
strictest attention to the letter of the text be supposed to constitute an excellent version, this is of all
versions the most excellent.” (Ibid)
George Bernard Shaw said of the King James scholars: "The translation was extraordinarily well done
because to the translators what they were translating was not merely a curious collection of ancient
books written by different authors in different stages of culture, but the Word of God divinely revealed
through his chosen and expressly inspired scribes. In this conviction they carried out their work with
boundless reverence and care and achieved a beautifully artistic result." (Ibid)

What about things like the Dead Sea scrolls?

'Altogether, the remains of more than 500 different manuscripts, or large portions of manuscripts, and
multiplied thousands of fragments were found in these eleven (Dead Sea) caves ... The scroll of Isaiah,
known as St. Mark's Isaiah scroll, which was written on seventeen sheets of parchment sewn together
end-to-end, making a scroll 24 feet long and 10.2 inches high .. .is the largest and best preserved of all
the scrolls, and was written in an early form of the "square letter," which ... places it in the second
century B.C. This makes it the oldest known complete Hebrew manuscript of my Biblical book, and it
agrees in almost every respect with our traditional Hebrew texts, as used in the translation to the King
James Version of our Bible."
--Thompson-Chain Reference Bible, pg. 4356

Isn't the old English hard to understand?

Sometimes, the newer translations are even worse.

Genesis 6:4
King James Bible "There were giants in the earth"
Modern Versions "The Nephilim were there" (?)

Numbers 21: 14
King James Bible "What he did in the Red Sea ...”
Modern Versions "Waheb in Suphah ...” (?)

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

"The Revised Standard Version Bible seeks to preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has
been known and ... to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition."
--Preface, Revised Standard Version. 1952

"We have ... tried to put the message of the Scriptures in simple, enduring words and expressions that
are worthy to stand in the great tradition of the King James Bible."
--Preface, NEW Revised Standard Version, 1989
“As for other proper nouns, the familiar spellings of the King James Version are generally retained."
--Preface, NEW International Version, 1978

"The translators ... have sought to maintain that lyrical quality which is so highly regarded in the King
James Version ... A special feature of the New King James is its conformity to the thought flow of the
1611 Bible. "
--Preface, NEW King James Version, 1990

If other translations and their editors still praise the King James Bible of 1611 after four centuries,
shouldn't you be reading it too?
"Where the word of a king is, there is power"
Ecclesiastes 8:4
Authorized King James Version 1611