gengwall

Holly – the KJV only debate is a whole ‘nother can of worms. It boils down to quantity vs. quality.

The Greek foundation of the KJV is called the “Received Text” because it was basically all we had “received” (very little) at the time of the translation. The term currently used for the same text with the addition of the many, many more manuscripts we now have available is “the Majority Text” because it is based on the vast majority of manuscripts. Please note that the KJV has been updated a number of times since 1611 and we have a few other “Majority” based translations like the New King James.

The Greek foundation of almost all modern translations is based on just a few Greek manuscripts, but they are much older and more complete than what is used for the King James.

Now, three things you must know.

1) Even within a manuscript “family” there are variations. Not all of the King James based Greek manuscripts were completely in agreement which led to one of the major debates about the Greek leading up to the KJV, the inclusion of the so called (and extrabiblical IMO) “Johanine Comma” in 1 John 5:7-8. So, there are variations within and between families of manuscripts. That is why translators actually rely mostly on a consolodated Greek text to do their work, leaving the consolodation to other scholars. As mentioned above, that consolodated text for the KJV was the “Texus Receptus” (received text) which was compiled by Erasmus. Newer KJV-like bibles used the “Majority Text”. And all other modern translations use the Nestle-Aland text which uses those fewer but older and therefore presumably (in the view of the compilers at least) more reliable Greek sources. The bottom line is that no originals exist. Everything, even the oldest Greek manuscripts we have, are copies of copies of copies, often created hundreds of years after the original author penned his original gospel or letter.

2) Despite all of this variety, the manuscript evidence for the bible is far, far stronger than for any other ancient writting.

3) And even with the variation in the Greek sources, there is no variation in fundimental doctrines. It is not because of the Greek sources that we have these arguments, it is because of the introduction of cultural and editorial biases in the translation of those Greek sources.

That is why it is important to use a variety of translations – some literal (i.e. KJV or NASB), some semi-literal (i.e. NIV), and some paraphrase (i.e. NLT) when doing a deep study. If one finds discrepancies or even stark contradictions between translations, that is the time to go back to the Greek and, in essence, do some translating yourself.

There are many online resources that can help you, as well as hard copy resources. For hard copy translations of the NT, I have an 8 translation parallel bible (Get Here at Amazon). It includes KJV, NASB, NCV, CEV, NIV, NLT, NKJV, and The Message. For hard copy standard bible, I use the NASB, although as I noted above, it performs rather poorly on this passage. Online resources that many here use include http://www.blueletterbible.org which has really good multitranslation listings of verses, interlinear “view” (showing the Greek), and a great listing mechanism when you select a Greek or Hebrew word which shows all verses that use that word. Other people use http://www.studylight.org, which has an even better interlinear (Greek underneath English). For the best interlinear bible (both OT and NT) evah, we use http://www.scripture4all.org. You can also download thier interlinear bible as software with even greater functionality like a lexicon and search capabilities. It absolutely rocks and has been indispensible when it comes to understanding the underlying grammer (the Greek is fully parsed) and word order of a verse or passage. Oh, and this should make you happy, the current English translation being used is the good ole KJV (with the underlying Greek also being the “Received Text” which is the basis for the KJV).