“the KJV has 1,000 different words...”

Several days ago, a member on the King James Bible/Textus Receptus Defenders Facebook group posted a link and wrote:

“I’m looking for sincere and respectful discussion if possible. King James only folks, how would you respond to this information?”

His sincerity is questionable, since he only seemed to engage with those with whom he could start an argument, or wanted to start an argument with him. Those who were “sincere and respectful” did not rate replies, apparently. After too much pushback, he took the post down. I am saving my reply by posting it here.

The statements to which he sought discussion is this below, which originated HERE.

“What do you do with the fact that the KJV has 1,000 different words that do not mean today what they meant in 1611, even having the opposite meaning? Our understanding of Hebrew and Greek has astronomically improved since 1611. There have been thousands of manuscripts discovered since 1611, and we now have 5,898 Greek NT manuscripts and numerous ones dating within decades of the originals. And the 1611 KJV translators said in the 1611 PREFACE that a new revision should be made upon such circumstances. So, why reject efforts to do so with the 1881 English Revised Version (ERV), the 1901 American Standard Version (ASV), the 1952 Revised Standard Version (RSV), the 1995 New American Standard Bible (NASB), the 2001 English Standard Version (ESV), and the forthcoming Updated American Standard Version (UASV)? Are not these revisions simply following the instructions of the 1611 KJV translators?”

1. “What do you do with the fact that the KJV has 1,000 different words that do not mean today what they meant in 1611, even having the opposite meaning?”

A. First, I would ask from whence this number comes? It sounds excessive and doubtful. I have an Excel file of “hard/difficult” words in the KJV (so-called archaic, obsolete, and “false friends”) compiled from the works of Mark Ward and others. I have only 123 words in that file – far off from 1000! Another inaccuracy is saying that the words “do not mean what they meant in 1611.” This is a loose way of stating something that often does not agree with the facts. For example, take the word “suffer.” Many people would say it has “changed meaning.” However, it is not hard to search for the word “suffer” in the KJV and find there it can mean either “allow” and “to endure pain.” Look it up on Dictionary.com and definition 7 is “to tolerate or allow” (the same meaning some claim no longer exists!). Possibly what people mean is that we seldom use it that way anymore. That is not the same as it no longer carrying that meaning in its semantic range.

Another is the word “let.” The meaning of “let” has not evolved from “to hinder” into “to allow” over the course of 400 years since the KJV was produced. Search the King James Bible and we will find that “let” has the meaning of “to allow” which was in use in 1611 (even in the same chapter, cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:3, e.g.). The varying or opposite meanings of the word “let” is not a case of a word altering its meaning over time. The etymology of these words show that the “let” that means “to allow” and the “let” that means “to hinder” are homonyms – two different English words that are spelled the same but mean something different. The words each have a different origin or entrance into the English language.

2. “Our understanding of Hebrew and Greek has astronomically improved since 1611.”

A. To this assertion, I would ask, “Has it really improved?” Perhaps in some ways, yes, but even if so astronomical is a ridiculous adjective to use. However, even if it has improved in some ways (there are always new discoveries) it clearly has not in others.

Let me quote Bart Ehrman, a recognized top-notch text critic (and specifically referenced since he is obviously not KJV-even, much less KJVO). Speaking of the KJ translators, he says, “...the best answer is that there were forty-seven translators, who were all skilled, highly skilled, in Greek and Hebrew. Today when somebody is highly skilled in Greek, like Jeff Siker and me, we’re considered highly skilled – that means we can kind of slosh our way through a Greek text if we have a good dictionary sitting next to us. These guys, including King James, could speak Greek and did speak Greek to each other when they felt like it. They could read Hebrew like the newspaper. These were serious serious scholars. They didn’t have TV – no ESPN. So what did they do? They sat around and studied Greek. This is what they did. And Latin, and Hebrew...” (From Ehrman’s keynote address at the “Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible” exhibition at the William H. Hannon Library at Loyola Marymount University in 2013.)

Daniel R. Streett passed out a Greek quiz at the Evangelical Theological Society in November 2008. He summarized the experience this way, “...my audience was made up of mostly Greek professors and doctoral-level students who had probably taken, on average, 4-7 years of Greek by now and some of whom had been teaching Greek for 20-30 years by now. After the audience had finished, I collected their quizzes. The average ‘grade’ was 0.4 out of 10 correct.” That doesn’t sound astronomical, or even good, to me.

For more information on these, see “Do they know Greek?”

3. “There have been thousands of manuscripts discovered since 1611, and we now have 5,898 Greek NT manuscripts and numerous ones dating within decades of the originals.”

A. I understand that many manuscripts have been discovered. I assume “thousands” would be an accurate representation (although, something recently “discovered” may have been known to those in prior times, and the exact total number we have today is a matter of continuing debate). It is worth mentioning that thousands of manuscripts have been lost from the 1st century until now. So those were accessible to others but not to us.

Interestingly, the primary Greek text promoted today often ignores the thousands (majority) and go with the minority (especially Sinaiticus & Vaticanus). The “embarrassment of riches” of thousands of manuscripts are embarrassingly disregarded in favor of two older manuscripts that have many disagreements just between themselves. An interesting way to look at this is to notice that the majority texts of Hodges-Farstad, Robinson-Pierpoint, and Pickering exhibit much closer agreement with the Textus Receptus than with the Critical Text. Why? Because the “embarrassment of riches” of thousands of manuscripts usually, though not always, favor the readings in the TR. The “thousands of manuscripts discovered since 1611” usually support the TR rather than the CT. Further, the KJV translators and others even before their time knew about the variants most commonly cited today.

4. “And the 1611 KJV translators said in the 1611 PREFACE that a new revision should be made upon such circumstances. So, why reject efforts to do so with the 1881 English Revised Version (ERV), the 1901 American Standard Version (ASV), the 1952 Revised Standard Version (RSV), the 1995 New American Standard Bible (NASB), the 2001 English Standard Version (ESV), and the forthcoming Updated American Standard Version (UASV)? Are not these revisions simply following the instructions of the 1611 KJV translators?”

A. To what statement in the 1611 does this refer? It is hard to address unidentified assertions, that is, whether I think they are following the instructions of the translators without inspecting the statement. Even if they were, which is doubtful, the specific efforts mentioned (ERV, ASV, RSV, NASB, UASV) are based on different Greek texts.

Too often “The Translators To The Reader” by Miles Smith (the 1611 Preface) is bone-picked by both sides to see what meat they can find for their arguments, with really trying to understand it in context. Some people think the King James translation is a poor translation and try to convince others so. Some of these same people, when they write about the preface in the King James, then act as if everything in it must be taken as if it were inspired! It would be comical if not such as serious issue.

[Note: this version has been slightly modified, with typographical and grammatical corrections, and formatting not available in the Facebook group.]