A brief history of the KJV and Textus Receptus

I once believed that God had preserved every word of Scripture through a perfect, error-free line of manuscripts, culminating in the King James Bible (KJV). But when I finally studied the history, my assumptions quickly unraveled. My first surprise came when I compared the 1611 King James to the version I grew up using and found meaningful differences. This raised questions. If the KJV was perfect, why did it undergo revisions that changed the text’s meaning?


Then, I found that the original KJV translators had included numerous footnotes suggesting alternate translations—variations that sometimes altered the meaning of passages. Even more surprisingly, in their preface, the translators stated that even an imperfect translation could still be considered the Word of God. In their view, a flawed translation was not less holy or less authoritative. This challenged my deeply held belief that the KJV represented a uniquely perfect translation. The translators themselves admitted that they didn’t consider their work flawless.


Determined to understand more, I looked into the history of the KJV’s creation. I had assumed it was an entirely new translation, but in reality, it was a careful revision of earlier Bibles, including the Bishops’ Bible, Geneva Bible, and Tyndale’s New Testament. This approach helped the translators refine their work by comparing previous translations, but it also showed that the KJV was part of an evolving tradition, not a single perfect text.


The final challenge to my assumptions came when I studied the Greek manuscripts underlying the KJV’s New Testament. I had always assumed the translators worked from a perfectly preserved Greek text, known as the Textus Receptus. However, I discovered that the Textus Receptus was actually a compilation assembled in the 1500s by Erasmus, who had only a handful of late Greek manuscripts, some of which were incomplete. To complete his work, he had to reconstruct sections of Revelation by translating back from Latin into Greek—a far cry from the flawless manuscript line I had expected. Over the next century, Erasmus’s work was revised by others, including Stephanus and Theodore Beza, and only in 1633—22 years after the KJV was published—did the Textus Receptus gain recognition as a “received text.”


This journey through history dismantled my assumptions. The evidence showed that the KJV and its Greek source text were shaped by dedicated but imperfect translators and scholars who worked within the limitations of their resources. Yet, even as my understanding of “perfect preservation” changed, my faith in God’s Word remained.


Recommended reading

Know How We Got Our Bible (https://amzn.to/3Uunkbe) by Ryan M. Reeves and Charles Hill


Scribes and Scripture: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible (https://amzn.to/3C21Snx) by John D. Meade and Peter J. Gurry


The Forgotten Preface: Surprising Insights on the Translation Philosophy of the King James Translators (https://amzn.to/3UzoXVf) by Joshua Barzon


The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? (https://amzn.to/4fBNHEe) by James R. White


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