Check your sources

Not long ago, Alex Suarez shared something he was looking at in Psalm 30, verse 8. The question presupposed the idea that the ALL CAPS or Small Caps of LORD / Lord in the Authorized Version of the Bible (King James) signifies the tetragrammaton (that is, is a translation of Jehovah).[i] In The Authorized Edition of the English Bible (p. 147), F. H. A. Scrivener writes: “Heb. Jehovah. The words ‘Lord’ and ‘God’ are always intended to be printed in small capitals in the Authorized Version, when they are employed to translate that Holy Name.”[For more detail, see also my post Lord, Lord, and lord.)

Alex noticed the ALL CAPS (or Small Caps) feature in Psalm 30:8 in the Authorized Version for Lord (i.e., the tetragrammaton / Jehovah / Yᵊhōvâ) seemed to be wrongly placed.

Psalm 30:8 I cried to thee, O LORD (יְהוָה / Yᵊhōvâ); and unto the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy) I made supplication.

According to his source, it showed the second LORD in this verse to be a translation of Adonai rather than Jehovah. The text of the Authorized Version clearly has the same type-face for Lord both times.

This is a picture of the 1611 printing. It has Small Caps in both places.

Alex later reported that he ran across some other examples: 

• 1 Kings 3:15 “And Solomon awoke; and, behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the covenant of the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy), and offered up burnt offerings, and offered peace offerings, and made a feast to all his servants.
• Psalm 90:17 "And let the beauty of the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy) our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it."
• Isaiah 38:14 “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy), I am oppressed; undertake for me."
• Ezekiel 21:9 “Son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus saith the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy); Say, A sword, a sword is sharpened, and also furbished:”
• Malachi 1:12 “But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the LORD (אֲדֹנָי / 'ăḏōnāy) is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible.”

These findings raised two questions in my mind.

1. Is this found using the same Hebrew text as used by the King James translators?
2. Is the “Caps” rule re Jehovah universal and consistent?

On the first, I did a check of Psalm 30:8 in the King James Bible at Blue Letter Bible. This site gives the corresponding original text  words beside the English words. Hebrew is not my forte, and I use this resource as a quick online check of original language words in the King James Bible. Having made the same finding as Alex, I moved on to think about the second.

On the second, particularly then, is there some rule or explanation somewhere that says LORD (ALL CAPS or Small Caps) always and only means Jehovah in the King James translation? It seems there is no statement by the translators themselves about this. It is an observation that has been made based on the text itself. I wondered if this might relate to translation rule # 1, which was about generally following the Bishops Bible. The 1602 Bishops had LORD in the same style both times in this verse. However, the answer was not to be found along these lines.

I found that I had too quickly accepted the reliability of my source at Blue Letter Bible, and did not follow up on the better explanation.[ii] However, David Stark, pastor at Grace Presbyterian Church of Redding, California, rescued us from our quagmire.

“Brethren, the Hebrew printed editions that the AV translators used had YHWH in all those places, and correctly translated it, according to the usage they chose, as LORD.

“The St. Petersburg Codex has ‘Adonai’ in those places. (Psalm 30:8; 90:17; 1Kings 3:15; Isaiah 38:14; Ezekiel 21:9 [21:14 in the Hebrew text]; and Malachi 1:12).

“It is always important to make sure you are looking at the actual text the AV translators used whenever you are checking their accuracy.

“From the Hebrew text they used, the AV is completely reliable in all those passages. (YHWH = LORD)”

David provided scans of a couple of examples from the Jacob Ben Chayim/ Daniel Bomberg edition of the Masoretic Hebrew Old Testament. These have (יְהוָה), not (אֲדֹנָי).

Psalm 30:8

Psalm 90:17

There are different readings behind LORD in different Hebrew texts. Sources must be carefully checked and confirmed, lest we find the wrong answer. I had not previously checked the underlying Hebrew text used in the Blue Letter Bible tools. I had falsely assumed that since this was the King James Bible then the Hebrew text would be that which matched the King James Bible (i.e., was used by the King James translastors). Wrong. Lesson learned. The hard way.[iii] 

This Hebrew text is a digital version of the Leningrad Codex developed by the Westminster Hebrew Institute and made available by The J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research. This version is based on the January, 2016 WLC v4.20 release.

Wiping the egg from his face, he passes along a lesson learned (actually two, I suppose).

• Always check your sources.
• Don’t just take the quick and easy source.

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[i] Whether ALL CAPS or Small Caps seems to be a printer’s choice.

[ii] Even had I bothered to check on my shelf the print editions of Youngs and Strongs Concordances, the answer is there as well (apparently correctly following the underlying text of the King James Bible this instance).

[iii] They were not hiding it. I made assumptions and just have never bothered to check.

Critique of “A Nearly Forgotten Heritage: The Geneva Bible”

A critique of “A Nearly Forgotten Heritage: The Geneva Bible,” by Jonathan Edwards (a modern one, not the Puritan preacher) represents another curious piece of the “pro-Geneva/anti-KJV” puzzle.[i] It contains some of the so-called “common knowledge” that is “widely available online” which passes for historical truth.

“In 1568, the Bishops Bible was published. Although partially using the Tyndale work, it mostly translated from the Latin Vulgate.”

This is false, The Bishops Bible was not “mostly translated from the Latin Vulgate.”

“The Geneva remained popular, and despite many reprints, the Geneva did not require any revisions.”

This is also false. Yes, the Geneva Bible was revised – one revision admitted by this author – but there were others as well. The Geneva Bible itself finds its basis in the prior English translations. Some Geneva Bibles were printed with the New Testament revised by Laurence Tomson (for example, this 1590 printing).[ii]

“All of the KJV printings prior to 1666 contained the Apocrypha...”

This is probably generally true, but not totally correct, in an age when printers bound Bibles in all sorts of ways (e,g., they might add the Book of Common Prayer, Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter, etc.) This 1637 printing of the KJV does not contain the Apocrypha, but skips from Malachi to Matthew.

“…the King James Bible…also included the Apocrypha, books the Roman church used, but which had been removed from the Geneva (the 1560 edition did include the books in an ‘inter-testamental’ section). No marginal notes, no cross-references…”

This statement implies that King James translation did not have the Apocrypha in an “inter-testemantal” sections – but it does! It does not deal with The Prayer of Manasseh, which in the Geneva Bible did not include in or ever move to the “inter-testamental” section. He further misunderstands marginal notes and cross references, both of which the 1611 contain. However, it did not have commentary or study notes, as the Geneva Bible.

“It was a publishing failure. The people did not flock to the new Bible, they continued to use the tried and true Geneva.”

“In its first five years of existence, readers called for seventeen editions, compared with six editions of the Geneva Bible during those same years. Expanding the time frame, in the first 35 years of its existence the KJV went through a whopping 182 editions.” See “The Reception of the King James Bible” in Correcting the Internet.

“The Mayflower pilgrims brought the Geneva to America. As I learned my family history as a 10th generation descendant of John and Priscilla (speak for yourself, John) Alden, I became interested in the Geneva Bible. John’s Bible is on display in the museum at his home near Plymouth, Massachusetts.”

Apparently, this descendant of John Alden does not know Alden’s Bible on display in the museum at Plymouth is not a Geneva Bible, but is rather a King James Bible instead.

“The KJV...is nearly word-for-word identical to the Geneva. Because of the exceptionally close copy of the KJV to the Geneva, I refer to the ‘Authorized Version’ as the ‘Plagiarized Version.’ It is simply hard to believe that being so close, with the exception of maybe 10 places, the KJV is not simply plagiarized rather than an actual work of dedicated scholars.”

This is strange complaint from one touting the Geneva Bible. If it is so great, then he ought to be glad its replacement was so exactly like it! However, in honesty the King James translation definitely is not a plagiarized version of the Geneva Bible, and there are certainly many more than 10 places where the Geneva is different. Many many more. Yet it is true that all the early generations of the English Bible are all built on the work of one William Tyndale. And rightly so.

It is good that this (probably young) “amateur Christian historian” is interested in the Geneva Bible and the history of the English Bible. It is bad that he gets so many facts wrong – facts that someone else can now come along and say this is information “widely available online”! Sadder still that a site that dubs itself “Christian History Institute” allows such to pass as “Christian History.” “Maybe 10 places” the KJV is different from the Geneva? Does anybody at CHI even check the stuff that gets posted?

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[i] “Jonathan Edwards is an amateur Christian historian living in the Salt Lake Valley. He has studied many eras of Christian history in depth, most recently focusing on the Reformation. He is a descendant of John Alden, a crew member of the historic 1620 voyage of the Mayflower, which brought the English settlers known as Pilgrims to Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.”

[ii] A Dictionary of the Bible, Extra Volume, James Hastings, Editor. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912, p. 250.

Correcting the Internet: 1881, not 1894

From time to time, I run across factual errors in the realm of theology or church history on the World Wide Web. If I think it is egregious and possibly influential, I try to contact the web site owner or owners to suggest a correction. Sometimes the suggestions are met with appreciation, sometimes with ambivalence, sometimes with anger, and sometimes with silence. I intend (Lord willing) to start a series “Correcting the Internet” for the times I meet with these issues.

The following correction is to an article section titled “Addendum I: The King James Version” on the textual criticism site of Robert B. Waltz. In this case the “silence” is because I could not contact the owner. The site no longer has a valid contact e-mail and my message was returned undeliverable. There are several things on the site to which I object, but some are matters of opinion which I will overlook for the time being. I note two things.

The Greek Text of the King James Bible

The 2nd paragraph of the article states, “Scrivener reconstructed the text of the KJV in 1894, finding some 250 differences from Stephanus.”

This seems to be a common misconception. The original publication is 1881 rather than 1894. It seems that the 1894 publication of F. H. A. Scrivener’s The New Testament in the Original Greek is the best known, and the edition that was reprinted. Nevertheless, it was first published in 1881. F. H. A. Scrivener was commissioned to compile this work as part of the English Bible revision project. He served on the revision committee with B. F. Westcott, F. J. A. Hort, Charles J. Ellicott, and others. It came out the same year as the New Testament translation The scan of this book available at Google Books verifies the 1881 date.

The New Testament in the Original Greek, According to the Text Followed by the Authorised Version (1881)

This is a simple correction, easily verified in numerous sources.

The Reception of the King James Bible

The next to last paragraph in the article has this statement: “…at the time of its publication, the KJV was greeted with something less than enthusiasm, and for the first few decades of its life, the Geneva Bible remained the more popular work…”

Regarding the reception of the new King James Bible, this is a common misconception. It is not that this has no ring of truth. Rather, the Geneva vs. KJV embellishment is often simply passed on without scrutiny. (I have dealt with this is a few places, e.g., HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.) In this manner the overstatement exerts a wide and powerful influence on what people think about the reception of the KJV without inspecting the details. The King James Bible was a dud. People would not have used it if King James had not made them. There is a Geneva Bible partisanship running through the WWW, in both scholarly and popular circles, that rushes to judgment.[i] If we take a breath and do some research, we find that this idea encompasses some confirmation bias.

• As might be expected, the new translation faced early and weighty competition with the Geneva Bible. 
• The popular use of the Geneva Bible continued, though in decline, through the first half of the 17th century. 
• For many it was the commentary, the “study notes,” that kept their continued loyalty more than a dislike of the new translation.[ii]
• In the Puritan Commonwealth Oliver Cromwell favored the King James Bible, which was printed by John Field, first Printer to Parliament and “one of His Hignes [i.e. Cromwell’s] Printers.”
• The last known printing of the Geneva Bible occurred in Amsterdam in 1644.

In “Ten Fallacies about the King James Version” (Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Vol. 15, No. 4, Winter 2011, p. 9), Leland Ryken calls this “Fallacy #5: The KJV Fell Flat And Was Ignored When It Was First Published,” writing:

“It is true that the release of the KJV was surrounded by misfortunes that could easily have subverted the entire publishing venture. The first printer of the KJV found himself in almost immediate financial difficulty, and the early years of printing were bound up in litigation…the new translation was in immediate competition with the entrenched best-selling Bible of the day, the Geneva Bible…Despite this, the KJ V did very well. In its first five years of existence, readers called for seventeen editions, compared with six editions of the Geneva Bible during those same years. Expanding the time frame, in the first 35 years of its existence the KJV went through a whopping 182 editions. The KJV supplanted the Geneva Bible within fifty years of its publication, very good indeed.”[iii] 

There is no doubt that a new translation would not immediately supplant a popular and entrenched Bible, but it was far from a publishing failure.

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[i] Some of this is exacerbated by a rush to oppose King James Onlyism, and the historical facts are left to die in the gutter. It keeps getting repeated without scrutiny.
[ii] This may be seen in the fact that King James’s Bibles were printed with Geneva notes in 1649, 1679, 1708, and 1715.
[iii] Ryken served as a literary consultant for the English Standard Version, so he is obviously no KJVO partisan. See also The Bible in the Making, Geddes MacGregor, London: Murray, 1961; and “Introduction: the King James Bible and its reception history,” Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones, in The King James Bible After Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences, edited by Hamlin and Jones, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. See especially “Birth and Early Reception of a Masterpiece: Some Lose Ends and Common Misconceptions,” Mordechai Feingold, Chapter 1 in Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord: Erudition and the Making of the King James Version of the Bible (Brill, 2018). For example, “As in the case of any new contribution to knowledge, a phase of acculturation was required before the KJV could establish itself as the paramount vernacular version of the Bible—assisted by commercial incentives of interest published. However, scholars and the reading public more widely began engaging seriously and approvingly with the KJV from the start” (p. 27).