The English Letter “J” and the KJV

In a strange screed about “Translation Errors In The King James Version,” the author contrives a weird view of translation. Since “No ‘J’ Sound Existed In Hebrew,” the KJV translators were “obviously wrong” to use Jehovah or Jesus in their Bible. He claims, “the KJV used the letter ‘J’ to replace the sound of the Hebrew ‘י’ (yod).” This weird writing ignores and/or is oblivious to several facts.

First, it conjures up an unsustainable standard for translation, one that would ultimately void all translations – that the sounds of the target or receptor language must match the sounds of the source or original language. How odd is that?!! This should not even need rebuttal. (Even that same author says in another place, “Everyone speaks a different language so I would suggest that they speak the name of our Lord in what ever it translates into in their particular language.”)

Second, the writer, in his excitement to find something wrong with the KJV, obviously never checked an original printing of the King James Bible. Neither the KJV translators nor the KJV printers chose to use a “J”. There are no Js in the earliest printings of the King James Bible, whether printings are in Blackletter type or Roman type. The letter where we would expect to see a “J” today is rather the letter “I” instead. So, no – no, no – the KJV translators did not use the letter “J” to replace the sound of the Hebrew yod, or for any other reason.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “The process of differentiation [between the i and j] began about the 14th century but was not complete until the 17th century.” Some sources claim that the 1629 Cambridge King James Bible was the first to make a distinction between i and j. I have not found a 1629 Cambridge printing, but on Google Books there is a 1640 printing by Buck and Daniel, printers for the University of Cambridge. It can be contrasted to the 1611 printing of the KJV by Robert Barker. In doing so, one can see examples that the 1611 printing of the Bible did not have a “j”. Later changes were made by printers and/or editors, not by the translators of the King James Bible. This issue has nothing to do with translation.

1611, Nahum 3:2 iumping

1640, Nahum 3:2 jumping

1611, Psalm 119:73 IOD

1640, Psalm 119:73 JOD

Notice also the capital I (Psalm 119:73) is mistaken by some to be a J. It is not.

[After I pointed out the situation with the “KJV” and the “J,” the author added a note: “In fact, during the time of the first KJV edition, there was no ‘J’ used in the KJV, nor in the Bible that it was based on, which was the Bishop’s Bible.”]