Contents

Introduction 3
One English Bible 3
Other Languages 3
The Beginnings of the English Bible 6
Anglo-Saxon 9
The New Millennium 11
Wycliffe 12
Tyndale 14
Coverdale 17
Matthew’s Bible 18
The Great Bible 19
The Bishops’ Bible 20
The King James Bible of 1611 21
King James: A Godly Christian 22
Sequence of translation 24
The King James Bible Translators 25
Sources and Methods of the KJB Translators 28
“Purified Seven Times” Not Eight 36
Bishops’ Bible to King James Bible: Separate From Sinners 38
“Ye May Understand” 41
“The Beauty of Holiness” 43
The Heartbeat of God 45
The Comfort of the Scriptures 48
“Come ye yourselves apart…and rest a while…” Mark 6:31 50
Introduction

T HE HOLY BIBLE has been hidden in hearts, hidden in homes, and hidden
from the wise and prudent; its true history has been hidden by heretics. Yet,
thousands of years ago, penned in the East, the words of the true Bible have never
ceased. It was the first book on the printing press, bound there to stay, no less
than every day. Millions are given away; some are worth millions today. The Bible
so seeks to touch the blind, it raised its type for them to find. Our beloved King
James Bible has never been out of print since 1611. It has been given away freely
until the bolts on the presses strain. For four hundred years it has been widely
available to English-speaking people worldwide, and today it is still in plain view on
coffee tables, nightstands, and pulpits around the globe. As the very words of the
“living God,” its perpetuity witnesses to its spirit and life. As the very “word of life” it
“liveth and abideth” beyond the man-made versions of the Bible which have sought
to counterfeit it (Phil. 2:16, 1 Peter 1:23).

One English Bible

For English-speaking people, the King James Bible is the “one faith,” by which we
“all speak the same thing” (Eph. 4:5, 1 Cor. 1:10). The Old Testament prescribed “one
tabernacle” and “One law and one manner” (Exod. 26:6, Num. 15:16). Just as the Bible
speaks of multiple prophets of old speaking with “one mouth,” and even the “two
witnesses” of Revelation having one “mouth,” so too, when the words of God came
to the New Testament church, Christians were told to “let one interpret” (1 Kings
22:13, Acts 3:18, Luke 1:70, Rev. 11:3, 5, 1 Cor. 14:27). Those who are “in Christ” will
find the English word of God in this “one place” to keep us in “one accord,” that we
may with “one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ” (Acts 2:1, Rom. 15:6, Phil. 3:16, Rom. 12:16, 15:6). In the Old Testament God’s
people “did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink”
(1 Cor. 10:3, 4). Through the pages of our English King James Bible, God provides the
“same” spiritual nourishment for all. Just as there is only one set of legal statutes by
which a criminal is judged, so there must be just one book, which is available to all,
by which those who speak English will be judged on that day (John 12:48). We will be
judged by “the things which are written in this book” (Rev. 22:19). The priesthood of
believers will recognize the true “volume of the book,” because it is the only English
Bible which “is written of me...” (Heb. 10:7). “[L]et us walk by the same rule, let us
mind the same thing,” seen on the pages of this one Holy Bible (Phil. 3:16).

Other Languages
The word of God is in many ways comparable to Jesus Christ, the Word. Mark
16:12 tells us, “[H]e appeared in another form.” The “form” of the Word, Jesus Christ,
seemed different at various times and places, yet it was still Jesus. He was in the
beginning as the Word (John 1:1); he was seen as the Son of God in the fiery furnace
(Dan. 3:25); he was a babe in Mary’s womb and the “babe wrapped in swaddling
clothes” (Luke 2:12); he was observed as a twelve year old teaching in the temple;
he was transfigured before Peter, James and John and his “face did shine as the sun”;
he was watched on the cross at Calvary, when his visage was marred more than
any man; he was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth; he rose and
appeared in his “not yet ascended” form to Mary Magdalene, who thought that he
was the gardener (John 20:15); he then appeared to two disciples “in another form”;
he appeared to the apostle John when “His head and his hairs were white like wool,
as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire” (Rev. 1:14 ); today Jesus is
seated on the right hand of the Father.
Like Jesus, the Word, the written word of God appears in many forms, such as
Hebrew, Hungarian, English and Polish. Asking, “Which Jesus do you worship?” would
be as wrong as asking which word is true, the pure Hebrew, Greek, Gothic, Old Latin,
Anglo-Saxon, English, or Persian Bible. When the Word “appeared in another form,”
as did the resurrected Christ, “neither believed they them” (Mark 16:12, 13). The
resurrection and eternal life of Jesus Christ, the Word, prefigures the resurrection
of the “lively oracles” from the now decayed material on which they were originally
written. And so today, the “word of life” appears resurrected from its original form
into many languages, in forms such as Arabic script, Roman letters, and Chinese
characters (Phil. 2:16). The sign above Christ on the cross was written “in letters
of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew” (Luke 23:38). This phrase is omitted in the new
bible versions as it indicates too strongly that the Word incarnate, through the word
“engrafted,” is now going to speak, not just through Hebrew and Greek letters, but
through Latin letters, like ABCDEFGHIJESUS. One language is not better than the
other. Each speaks to the culture of its audience.
God promised that he would speak to people in other languages. He said, “With
men of other tongues and other lips will I speak...saith the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:21, Isa.
28:11, 13, 14). This promise was fulfilled in Acts 2:4, 5 when, “they were all filled
with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them
utterance.” Thus “devout men, out of every nation under heaven” proclaimed, “hear
we every man in our own tongue.” As recorded in the rest of the book of Acts,
those who received these languages soon “preached the gospel” in these languages
“with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven” (Acts 2:4-11, 1 Peter 1:12, 25). We
read, “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God
with boldness” and “the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word...For they
heard them speak with tongues...” (Acts 4:31, 10:44, 46).
Christians have historically believed that God gave his inspired word “to all
nations.” Scholars, such as Herman Hoskier, have long demonstrated that the originals
were not written in Greek only. In the 1500s John Foxe records a statement from
what he called “a certain old treatise, found in a certain ancient English book.” This
“ancient” book says, “Also the four evangelists wrote the gospels in divers languages,
as Matthew in Judea, Mark in Italy, Luke in Achaia, and John in Asia. And all these
wrote in the languages of the same countries...since Christ commanded his apostles
to preach his gospel unto all the world, and excepted no people or language” (John
Foxe, The Acts and Monuments, 1583, Stephen Cattley, ed., republished at London:
R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 8 volumes, 1837, vol. 4, pp. 671, 675). The Prologue
before the book of Matthew in an edition of the Bishops’ Bible said, “Matthew, who
also was called Leui, being of a Publican made an Apostle, did first in Iurie [Jewry]
write the Gospel of Christ in the Hebrew tongue for their sakes which beleeued of
the circumcision. It is uncertaine who afterwards did translate it into the Greeke
tongue. Howbeit the copy of the Hebrew is kept unto this day in the library of
Cesarea, which library one Pamphilus Martyr did gather together most diligently.
And the Nazarenes, which in Berea a city of Syria, did vse the same booke, gaue vs
leaue to copie it out” (J.R. Dore, Old Bibles: An Account of the Early Versions of the
English Bible, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1888, 2nd edition, p. 285).
“God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation” “the Holy Ghost” gave
“the word” in the “tongues” of the people (Acts 10:14, 15, 34-37, 44-47). Acts 10
demonstrates God’s acceptance of “common” men (i.e. Italian) who speak the
vernacular (common) language of “another nation.” Paul, who penned much of
the New Testament, logically said that he spoke “with tongues more than ye all”
(1 Cor. 14:18; Rom. 15:24). His letter to the Galatians, who spoke Celtic, and to the
Romans, who spoke Latin, would of necessity be written by him in those languages
also. History professor Kenneth W. Harl (Yale Ph.D.) reminds us that it was not a
Greek-speaking world when the New Testament was written. The Roman Empire
had carried their Latin language across the empire. The barbarians and non-urban
provinces often retained their native languages, just as they had during their
conquest by the Greeks. Scriptures in Berber, Iberian, Celtiberian, Iranian, Sythian,
Basque, Ligurian, Cantabrian, Parthian, Angli, Saxon, Gothic, as well as many other
languages and dialects, would have been needed to “preach the gospel” (Rome and
the Barbarians, Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2004).
The King James translators wrote: “[I]nsomuch that most nations under heaven,
did shortly after their conversion, hear Christ speaking unto them in their mother
tongue, not by the voice of their minister only, but also by the written word
translated.” “But I say, Have they not heard? Yes, verily, their sound went into all the
earth, and their words unto the ends of the world” (Rom. 10:18). They wrote, “Every
country that is under the Sun, is full of these words (of the Apostles and Prophets)
and the Hebrew tongue (he meaneth the scriptures in the Hebrew Tongue) is turned
not only into the language of the Grecians, but also of the Romans, and Egyptians,
and Persians, and Indians, and Armenians and Scythians, and Sauromatians, and
briefly unto all the languages that any nation useth...[including] the Gothic tongue...
Arabic...Saxon...French...Sclavonian...Dutch...English (i.e. Trevisa 1300s)...Syrian...
Ethiopian….” “So that to have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint
conceit lately taken up...but hath been thought upon, and put in practice of old, even
from the first times of the conversion of any nation…(The Holy Bible, London: Robert
Barker, 1611, The Translators to the Reader). They add, “As the King’s Speech which
he uttered in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian and Latin, is still
the King’s Speech...No cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to
be the word....”
The Cambridge History of the Bible states that scriptures were so widely known
worldwide that a deacon in the ancient church in Heraclea was “confident that even
if all copies of the Scriptures should disappear, Christians would be able to rewrite
them from memory....” All pure vernacular scriptures began from the pure spring
of languages used by the Holy Ghost in Acts 2; they were preserved and purified,
generation by generation, as those root languages developed. Old Latin became
Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Romanian; Gothic became English, German,
Danish etc..
God’s safety net in Acts 2 provides that no one language group would have a
monopoly on the pure gospel or whose apostasy could thwart its preservation. Just
as the enemy would have “destroyed the seed royal” in 2 Kings 11, leaving but one
descendent, so too the seed, which is the word of God, would be subject to “many
which corrupt the word of God” (2 Cor. 2:17). It is because of God’s fulfilled promise
to speak in “other tongues,” that we have support for pure verses in the King James
Bible, such as 1 John 5:7, Acts 8:37, and Rev. 16:5, which have been altered or excised
by the unorthodox Greek church, but have been preserved in other languages, such
as the Old Latin manuscripts, which had their genesis in Acts 2. The aggregate body
of Christ, as the New Testament priesthood, ‘received’ and preserved the true text.
Although the Holy Ghost inspired the word of God for “every nation under
heaven,” some have not chosen to keep it widely in print as Amos 8:11 foretells. Like
those who “were in doubt” or “mocked” at the Spirit’s inspiration of God’s word for
“every nation under heaven,” some skeptics are still digging for the bones of the
resurrected Word and his written word in ancient graveyards and Greek manuscripts
(Acts 2:12).

The Beginnings of the English Bible

Many time-fogged chronicles of the history of the English Bible have been
written. Like a hall of mirrors, they merely copy and echo what a few men say other
men did, not what the scripture demonstrates that God did. A history of the Bible
must be documented from the time-buried words of old Bibles, their texts, their
prologues, and the eye-witness reports of history’s great Christians, translators, and
martyrs. It should be documented by direct quotations from the men who actually
lived during these times: Tertullian (200s), Gildas (500s), Bede (700s), Asser (800s),
William of Malmesbury (1100s), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (700-1200s), and John
Foxe (1500s). Anglo-Saxon and Gothic, the great great grandfathers of English, were
major world languages at the time of Christ and the apostles. In this Prologue, we
will examine the Bible’s unbroken preservation from the apostles to the King James
Bible, discover the kernel of the King James Bible in the ancient Gothic Bible, see
its Germanic seeds sprout in the Anglo-Saxon Bible, and witness the English Bible’s
bud bursts forth in the 12th and 13th centuries, even before it bloomed for our
appreciation with the watering of Wycliffe, Tyndale, and Coverdale. The perennial
King James Bible now sends forth the sweet scent of the full bloom in its bouquet of
words from many languages.
The King James Bible of 1611 was not the first English Bible by any means. “A
scientific study of English begins with the study of Gothic” (The First Germanic Bible,
ed. G.H. Balg, NY: B. Westermann & Co., 1891, p. v). The Gothic language was one
of those spoken of in the book of Acts, when men of “every nation under heaven”
“heard them speak in his own language” (Acts 2:4-7). The Gothic language benefited
from that gift by which the Holy Ghost superintended over the preaching of “the
word of the truth of the gospel; Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world”
(Col. 1:5, 6). God promised “the thoughts of his heart to all generations” through the
“scriptures...made known to all nations” (Psa. 33:11, Rom. 16:26). Those unnamed
Christians who received this Gothic gospel message took it to the Goths, obeying
Christ’s command to “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel” (Mark 16:15)
“unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). “[A]bout the middle of the second
century [A.D. 150]” and “the early centuries A.D....[the Goths] swept southeastward
across Europe to the Black Sea.” God drew them from Scandinavia to Scythia (modern
Romania and Bulgaria) to meet the recently completed New Testament half way. The
Goths “migrated into Scythia” and became part of the “Barbarian, Scythian,” people
mentioned in Paul’s letter to the Colossians (3:11). The Gothic Bible “must have been
the vernacular Bible of a large portion of Europe” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed.,
NY: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., s.v. Goths; Bruce Metzger, The Early Versions of
the New Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977, p. 377; The Bible Through the
Ages, R.V. Huber, ed., Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest, 1996, p. 225; World Book
Encyclopedia, Chicago: Field Enterprises, 1961, s.v. Goth; de Reb. Eccles. cap. 7, as
cited in G.W.S., The Gothic Version of the Gospels, London: Oxford University Press,
1926, p. 248; EB, s.v. Goths.). The words of the English language are much older than
most think. The earliest English sentence to be discovered appears on an old coin
dated around A.D. 450. It says, “This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman” (see The
Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson).
Gothic is much like English in the pronunciation of its root words and even in
its spelling. The Gothic language not only often sounded like English, sometimes it
even looked just like it, because it used Roman, as well as Greek and Runic letters.
All new versions depart from this ancient Gothic text, which agrees with the KJB.
For example, in 1 Cor. 5:7b the KJB says, “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed
for us.” New versions omit “for us,” but the Gothic text includes it as “faur uns,”
sounding exactly like a current English colloquial expression. Likewise, Eph. 5:5
echoes the KJB’s “whoremonger” as the Gothic “hors,” which the new versions water
down to “immoral person.” The Gothic text of John 6:69 echoes the KJB’s “Christ,
the Son,” as “Christus, sunus…” which continues in the pre-700 A.D. Anglo-Saxon
gospels as “Crist…suna,” in 1389 as “Crist, the sone,” in 1526 as “Christ, the sonne,”
and in the Bishops’ Bible as “Christ the sonne.” Suddenly new versions, following
the Catholic and the Jehovah Witness versions, echo the devils, changing John 6:69
to “Holy One” (Mark 1:24). The sound of “heaven” in Luke 4:25 has echoed since
the Gothic “himins,” with a slight spelling variation from the Anglo-Saxon “heofon,”
the Wycliffe 1389 “heuene,” the Tyndale 1526-1534 “hevyn,” the Geneva 1560-1599
“heauen,” the Bishops’ 1568 “heauen,” and finally the KJB “heaven.” The modern
versions’ substitute, “sky,” does not reach high enough. The perennial agreement of
the Gothic text with the KJB has caused references to the ancient Gothic Bible to be
slyly removed from the manuscript evidence shown in corrupt Greek text footnotes
(critical apparatus).
All words omitted in modern versions are seen in the Gothic scriptures. For
example, in Mark 9:29 the new versions omit “fasting” from the KJB’s “prayer and
fasting.” Yet it is seen in the Gothic as the recognizable “bidai yah fastubnya” (“bid
and fasting”), the Anglo-Saxon “gebedu and on fæstene,” Wycliffe’s “preier and
fastinge,” and the Bishops’ “prayer and fasting.”
It is often wrongly stated that all of the words in italics in the KJB were not in
the originals, but were added to complete the thought in English. This is not true
in numerous cases. For example, the KJB sometimes uses italics where the textual
tradition was inconclusive, as in Matt. 12:31. The reading “Halgan Gastes” is seen
without italics as early as the Gothic, with “Holy Goost” following in Tyndale’s
edition. The new versions omit the word “Holy” entirely. (Furthermore, the italics
in 1 John 2:23 are actually a non-italicized part of Beza’s Greek text and a fourth
century uncial, but not part of Stephanus’ edition.)
A scarlet line of letters, like our Saviour’s life-preserving blood, binds the words
of each successive Bible from the most ancient to the English King James. The Bible’s
text is like a textile, a weaving of words. God wove it from a fabric which could
withstand the wear and tear of the ages. Wycliffe said that to peel a thread from
any word is to begin unraveling the entire holy garment of scripture (John Wycliffe,
On the Truth of Holy Scripture, translated from the Latin by Ian Christopher Levy,
Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 2001,
p. 2 et al.).
England was dominated by the Celtic Britons for at least 500 years before Christ.
In marched the Romans in 55 B.C. carrying their laws, their Latin language and
building byways which in less than 100 years would carry the gospel of Jesus Christ
to the natives of Britain. According to historians, Christ’s command to “Go ye into
all the world,” coupled with the new gift of tongues, carried countless Christians to
“preach the gospel” in Celtic and Old Latin in the first century to the ‘isle’ which is
today called England (Mark 16:15). The scarlet trail of blood which brought the Bible
to England begins with those nameless Christians, who according to Acts 2, received
the Celtic tongue spoken by the “Barbarians,” Celtic Britons, living “in the isles of the
sea” (Col. 3:11, Isa. 24:15). These missionaries brought the gospel and the vernacular
scriptures to England, Scotland, and Ireland. The documentation establishes a firm
first century foundation for the scriptures in England. This is demonstrated in my
1,184 page book In Awe of Thy Word: Understanding the King James Bible, Its Mystery
and History, Letter By Letter, of which this booklet is only a brief summary (Ararat,
VA: A.V. Publications, 2003, 1-800-435-4535). That book proves that God preserved
his word to “all generations” (Psa. 33:11). It dispels the myth that God fed his true
church at the hand of Rome with crumbs from corrupt Latin scriptures. In spite of
intense persecution, a strong Christian community passed the treasured vernacular
scriptures from one generation to the next. John Foxe [citing Gildas, who wrote
in A.D. 633] said, “Britain received the gospel in the time of Tiberius the emperor,
under whom Christ suffered; and saith moreover, that Joseph of Arimathea, after the
dispersion of the early church by the Jews, was sent of Philip the apostle from France
to Britain, about the year of our Lord 63…” Foxe adds, “Their service was then in
the vulgar [common] tongue...[They] baptised then in rivers, not in hallowed fonts”
(Foxe, vol. 1, pp. 306, 308 et al.). Foxe said, “Simon Zelotes [apostle called in Luke
6:15, Acts 1:13] did spread the gospel of Christ to the west ocean, and brought the
same unto the isles of Britain.” Walter Scott confirms that, “Christ and him crucified
was preached in Great Britain as early as the first century, especially during the
reigns of Nero and Domitian, A.D. 54-68, 81-96, and probably by the immediate
companions of the Apostle Paul, while numerous translations of portions of the
Scriptures from the...[Old] Latin Bible...were made and circulated during the second
century…” (Walter Scott, The Story of Our English Bible, London: Pickering & Inglis, c.
1890, p. 126).

Anglo-Saxon
Due to the departure from Britain of the Roman military machine in A.D. 410,
the inhabitants of Britain were quickly overcome in A.D. 449 by the sea-navigating
Germanic tribes called the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Once again, foreign invaders
destroyed the Bibles held by the native Celtic Britons and Picts who fled to the
western and northern fringes of the island. The Celtic language gave way to the
language of the Angli and Saxon conquerors. Anglo-Saxon (Old English) texts call
the language Engle or Englisc (pronounced English). Tacitus and Ptolemy agree that
the common language of the Angli and Saxons was in use at the time of Christ.
The Angli are mentioned by the Roman historian Tacitus (A.D. 55-117), who lived at
the time of the apostles. Ptolemy (A.D. 127-141), in his Geography, records that the
Angli were “one of the chief tribes of the interior” of Europe during the 1st and 2nd
centuries. Ptolemy also writes of the Saxon presence in Europe in the first century.
“It is doubtful how far the Saxons who invaded Britain were really distinct from the
Angli, for all their affinities both in language and custom are with the latter...” (E.B.,
s.v. Angli, s.v. Saxons). The Angli and Saxons were in Europe when “every nation
under heaven”...“heard them speak in his own language” in Acts 2. The Angli and
Saxons therefore received the gospel message and scriptures in their own language
in the first century, though no copies survive today. Gildas wrote a history of Britain
about the year A.D. 546 and includes lengthy quotations from both the Old and New
Testaments. He does not quote from the Vulgate (J.R. Dore, Old Bibles: An Account
of the Various Versions, London: Basil M. Pickering, 1876, 1st ed., p. 3). The prologue
to an edition of the Bible written in 1395 says, “Bede translatide the bible...in Saxon,
that was english, either comoun langage of this lond, in his tyme” (The Holy Bible,
Oxford, ed. John Wycliffe and His Followers, At The University Press, 1395 M.DCCC.L,
digitized by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Co., 1997-2000, p. 59). “Our
records tell us of translation...of the whole [Bible] into the same language [Saxon] by
Beda within forty years after [the 700s]” (Matthew Poole, A Commentary on the Holy
Bible, Preface, c. 1685, p. iv).
The cornerstones of English—Gothic and Anglo-Saxon—were spoken concurrently
during the first millennium, but by different groups of people. They often match
because they were carved out of the same north-central European foundation, set in
place at the confounding of languages in Gen. 11:7. Many Anglo-Saxon words sound
quite like today’s English; some words, like ‘God,’ ‘he,’ ‘his,’ and ‘me’ even have the
same spelling. Today’s available Anglo-Saxon manuscripts are ninth century copies of
seventh century manuscripts; many of the words themselves probably date from the
1st century. The KJB’s “devil” in Matt. 9:32 grew from the Anglo-Saxon “deofol,” into
Wycliffe’s “devel,” and the Bishops’ “deuyll. All of them were pronounced “devil,”
and stand in sharp contrast to the “demons” in today’s new versions. In Mark 10:30
the KJB’s “world” parallels the Anglo-Saxon “worulde,” Wycliffe’s “world,” and the
Bishops’ “worlde,” contrasting the false theology of the new versions, with their new
“age to come.” The Anglo-Saxon “helle” carries into the Wycliffe 1389 as “helle,”
and the Tyndale, Bishops’ and KJB as “hell.” This lineage cools abruptly with the new
versions’ “hades,” “grave,” and “depths.” In Luke 4:4 the King James Bible says, “…It
is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God….” The
phrase “but by every word of God” is omitted in new versions, but can be traced
back to the Gothic as the recognizable “ak bi all waurde GuÞs,” the Anglo-Saxon,
“ac of ælcum Godes worde,” the Wycliffe 1389 “but in euery word of God,” and the
Tyndale 1526-1534 “butt by every worde of God.”

The New Millennium

In time, Old English became Middle English, or as the preface to the Great Bible
calls it, “the newer language.” Grammatical relationships began to be expressed
by word order, not by word ending. (This downgrade may have been caused by
the pidgin language created as the invading Danes and Normans tried to talk to
the Britons.) Actually, much of the shift from Old English to Middle English simply
involved spelling. In Old English ‘cwen’ was pronounced ‘queen,’ but in Middle English
it was finally spelled ‘queen.’ Likewise, the Old English scip was pronounced ship and
finally spelled ‘ship’ in Middle English. Old English Bibles look odd to us because the
narrow Germanic base of the Old English vocabulary broadened in Middle English
to include Scandinavian, French and Latin words. This broadened the boundaries of
English, later opening the doors for international acceptance of the King James Bible.
Nearly 1000 Scandinavian words entered English through the frequent invasions by
the Danes between A.D. 789 and 987. Canute, “the Scandinavian king who also ruled
much of England, [in the early 1000s] was a fervent Christian” (The Horizon History
of Christianity, Roland Bainton, NY: American Heritage Publishing Co, 1964, p. 164).
In 1066 the French Normans invaded Britain and over the next two centuries
brought nearly 10,000 French words (75% nouns) into the English language. Since
the French population in Britain never exceeded 2%, English remained the language
of the majority. Examples of French words introduced in that period and appearing
today in the KJB include: crown, majesty, minister, prince, heir, trespass, prison,
baptism, charity, creator, faith, prayer, repent, temptation, Saviour, virtue, and
adultery. During the 14th and 15th centuries many words were introduced into English
from Latin, such as antichrist and pope. English became a rich language, born with a
silver spoon in its mouth, ready to feed many. The deposit of many words into the
English word bank has lead to its highly distinctive feature of having different words
to express the same thing. One can rise in Anglo-Saxon (Matt. 20:19), mount in French
(Isa. 40:31), or ascend in Latin (John 20:17). This rich vocabulary accomplishes several
things: It gives English and its King James Bible a vast storehouse from which to draw
in order to create alliteration, rhythm, and rhyme. It gives the King James Bible an
international vocabulary, a great deal of which is recognizable today by those from
many nations which share the Latin alphabet seen on the cross in the first century
(John 19:20). Seth Lerer, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford
University, feels that English has the largest vocabulary in the world because it has
borrowed from so many different languages. According to the Professor, English
is the perfect ‘international’ language, because of its borrowings. In turn, the KJB
has been the tide which carried this international language back to many shores
worldwide. (See Seth Lerer, The History of the English Language, Springfield, VA: The
Teaching Company, 1998.)

Wycliffe
The myth that the English people had only scraps of scriptures before Wycliffe
(1325-1384) is perpetuated to degrade God’s promise of preserving “the word which
he commanded to a thousand generations” and “to all nations” (1 Chron. 16:15, Rom.
16:26). When the impression is fostered that the common man has no preserved
and infallible scriptures, the position and authority of the word of God can more
easily be pirated by “Popish Persons” and “self conceited Brethren, who...give liking
unto nothing, but what is framed by themselves, and hammered on their anvil” (The
Holy Bible, London: Robert Barker, 1611, “The Epistle Dedicatory”). Such persons
harness the word of God to the names of good men such as Wycliffe, Tyndale, King
James and others. It is and has always been entitled, ‘The Holy Bible,’ on its title
page. Oxford scholar, Christopher De Hamel said there was a “medieval passion for
dogmatically linking texts with the name of famous authors” (De Hamel, p. 170).
Wycliffe did not need to ascend Mt. Sinai to receive a new revelation from the Holy
Ghost. The English scriptures had been passed down through the hands and hearts
of faithful men. He and his associates merely ‘polished’ the spelling and idiom and
Anglicized the word order of the scriptures already existing in his time (i.e. Bede,
Alfred, Athelstane, Richard Rolle et al.). In the last half of the 1300s, others, like John
de Trevisa, produced an English edition of “the entire Bible,” through the patronage
of Lord Thomas de Berkeley. This patron loved the scriptures so much that he had
“the whole book of Revelation...written upon the walls and ceiling of his chapel at
Berkeley, where it was to be seen hundreds of years after” (Alexander McClure, The
Translators Revived, Litchfield, Michigan: Maranatha Bible Society, hardback edition,
1858 facsimile, p. 17). The myth that the English scriptures began with John Wycliffe
in the 1300s is shattered, letter by letter, with quotations which prove that the roots
and shoots of the English scriptures flourished from Acts 2, through the Anglo-Saxon
period, and throughout the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, before Wycliffe. “The hole
byble was long before Wycliffe’s days by vertuous and well learned men, translated
into the English tong...” (taken in part from Dyalogues, 1530, p. 138, as cited in Dore,
2nd edition, pp. 1, 2). Dore adds, “That the Psalter and other portions of the Old
and New Testament were translated from the [Old] Latin into English at various
times from the 7th century to the 14th there can be no doubt” (Dore, 2nd ed., p.
3). “In fact, before the middle of the 14th century the entire Old Testament and
the greater part of the New Testament had been translated into the Anglo-Norman
dialect of the period” (EB, s.v. Bible, English, p. 895). Wycliffe’s “Early Version, apart
from its completeness, shows but little advance upon preceding efforts” admits the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB, s.v. Bible, English, p. 897). Wycliffe admits his friends
helped him gather many old English Bibles (elde biblis) and the interlinear English
‘glosses’ (comune glosis) as they were called. He states in his Preface, “First, this
symple creature hadde myche trauaile, with diuerse felawis, and helperis, to gedere
manie elde biblis, and othere doctouris, and comune glosis, and to make oo Latyn
bible sumdel trew; and thanne to studie it of the newe, the text with the glose, and
othere doctouris, as he mighte gete...” (EB, s.v. Bible, English, p. 897). Of the Wycliffe
version, De Hamel feels, “[I]t was copied (hastily, no doubt) from a text already in
English. Therefore they were not translating but transcribing” (De Hamel, p. 171).
Wycliffe said, “the clergy cry aloud that it is heresy to speak of the Holy Scriptures
in English, and so they would condemn the Holy Ghost, who gave tongues to the
Apostles of Christ to speak the word of God in all languages under heaven” (John
Wycliffe, Speculum Secularium Dominorum, Opera Minora, London: Wycliffe Society,
John Loserth, editor, 1913, p. 74). Wycliffe said, “I am astonished, therefore, that
some of our own people would slander those who say that they possess the Holy
Spirit speaking to them in this way,” that is, through the scriptures in English (Truth,
p. 194). Of Bible translators Wycliffe says, “the Holy Spirit, author of wisdom, and
cunning, and truth, dress him in his work, and suffer him not for to error...(John
Wycliffe, Holy Bible, Prologue, Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, digitized edition of
Forshall and Madden’s 1850 edition, 1997, pp. 59-60). Wycliffe said, “[W]e should
believe that the Holy Spirit gave us the law of Scripture in the form which he wanted
the church to observe” (Truth, pp. 204-205). How could a gardener take credit for
the scent of a lily, or a man for the beauty in God’s word? A gardener’s hand, moving
only with the strength God gives, may set God’s seeds, line by line. Gardener and
grammarian can bow on bended knee to see God’s word, the “seed...which liveth
and abideth for ever,” bring forth “life” under heaven’s “Sun” (Mal. 4:2, John 6:63, 1
Peter 1:23).
Of Bible study Wycliffe said: “[T]he word is not to be opened by means of the
grammar used by boys; Scripture has its own rules” (Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia
of Religious Knowledge, NY: Funk and Wagnalls, 1911-1912, s.v. Wyclif, p. 463). The
Prologue to the Wycliffe Bible (1384) reveals how the translator found the Bible’s
built-in meaning of a word by studying the words and verses before and after the
word or verse under consideration. “Therefore a translator hath great need to study
well the sense, both before and after, and look, that such uncertain words accord
with the sense...” (The Holy Bible, John Wycliffe and His Followers, At the University
Press, 1395, Prologue, p. 60, digitized Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1998-2000).
Wycliffe adds, “In Holy Scripture is all the truth; one part of Scripture explains
another” (as cited in Fountain, p. 48). Wycliffe said, “[E]ach sense may be proved by
the other places of holy scripture for to accord to truth; for without doubt the Spirit
of God, that spake by write of that scripture, before say and provide beforehand,
that this true sense should come to mind of the reader or hearer” (Prologue, pp. 44,
45). He concludes, “...the same words of scripture...may be proved by other places of
holy scripture...” (Prologue, p. 45).
An English law, which was enforced for over 125 years, called for “extreme
thoroughness in searching out and burning” all books and Bibles associated with
Wycliffe (De Hamel, p. 166.) If he had translated from the Catholic Latin Vulgate, as
some pretend, such persecution would not have occurred. The myth that Wycliffe
translated from the corrupt Vulgate has arisen because after Wycliffe’s death, his
associates, Purvey and Hereford, conformed certain places in his Bible to the Vulgate
to avoid persecution. Phrases seen in Wycliffe’s true Bible, such as “the deep things
of God,” “whited sepulchres,” and “Who is this King of glory?” have sounded for over
seven hundred years in English ears. Such a Bible was used for over 140 years until
Tyndale and Coverdale saw the opening of the petals of the prize English rose.

Tyndale
The handwritten English Bible was used widely in the 1400s and 1500s, in
spite of the “furnace” which burned at the stake hundreds of English Christians
and thousands upon thousands of Bibles (Psa. 12:6). Although the Bible had been
available in handwritten form since the apostles, the first printed Bibles became
available in Italy, France, Germany and the Low Countries after 1455. Miles Coverdale
had complained that “other nations should be more plenteously provided for with
the printed scriptures in their mother tongue than we in ours” (Dore, 2nd ed., p.
108). The English Bible was cast in print under the watchful eye of William Tyndale (c.
1484-1536). He lent a finishing touch, polished a bit by Coverdale, the Bishops,’ and
the King James translators. “[O]ur present New Testament and portions of the Old
are mainly as Tyndale left them” (Dore, 1st ed., p. 13). For example, in Rev. 21:1-3 the
KJB is identical to the Tyndale except for four words. The KJB translators took three
of these words from Wycliffe and one from the Geneva Bible.
William Tyndale gave his life a living sacrifice, and his “pen of a ready writer” for
polishing, preserving, and publishing the printed English Bible (Psa. 45:1). Tyndale
states that his interest in scripture was prodded when he read the Latin Chronicles
(Gesta Regum Anglorum; Great Deeds of the English Kings) which recount “how that
King Athelstane, caused the Holy Scripture to be translated into English” [Athelstane
was King Alfred’s grandson who lived in the 900s] (Benson Bobrick, Wide as the
Waters, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2001, p. 80). The time Tyndale spent tucked away as a
tutor in the early 1520s unfolded as polished pages of the English New Testament. It
shone with too much light for the ecclesiastical owls perched in positions of power.
They rejected Tyndale’s appeal for help, therefore he carried his precious cargo
to Europe where he completed the New Testament in July of 1525. His printers in
Cologne collapsed under the Catholic hammer of the Inquisition, so he fled again to
Worms where the work was finished by late 1525. The name William Tyndale was
not included.
Between 1525 and 1526 ships from cities producing Tyndale’s New Testaments
were forbidden entry to English ports. But God interceded miraculously to preserve
his word. In the spring of 1527 rain pelted England, preventing the planting of crops.
By fall, famished Britons sought the foodstuffs which flourished on the continent’s
Bible-loving lands. Hungry souls now welcomed ships laden with bread for the body
and the forbidden “bread of life,” that is, cleverly hidden copies of Tyndale’s New
Testament. Foxe said, “It was wonderful to see with what joy this book of God was
received, not only among the learneder sort, and those that were noted for lovers
of the reformation, but generally all England over among all the vulgar common
people” (Dore, 2nd ed., p. 15). There was a “great demand for copies of the New
Testaments” (Dore, 1st ed., p. 16). Since they could not be printed in England, a
printer in Antwerp supplied the need. Over “15,000 of his first New Testament were
issued within four years” (J. Paterson Smyth, How We Got Our Bible, London: The
Religious Tract Society, 1886-1911, p. 88, n. 2). One 1526 edition was “a little pocket
size book...easy to conceal” (De Hamel, p. 242).
By 1530 there were “fifty-thousand copies about in the land.” The printed English
Bible “reached everyone who could read,” which included most Christian people
(Bobrick, pp. 142, 84). McGrath confirms that, “In 1527, John Rastell, one of Henry
VIII’s advisors, noted that ‘the universal people of this realm had great pleasure
and gave themselves greatly to the reading of the vulgar English tongue’” (Alister
E. McGrath, In the Beginning, New York: Doubleday, 2001, p. 34). The cost of a New
Testament, whether handwritten or printed, has always been within the reach of
English Christians. An entire handwritten Bible in 1420 was “four marks and forty
pence,” which was “not an impossible sum to achieve if a group of Lollards bought
a copy between them.” With the invention of printing, a Tyndale New Testament
could be purchased for 7 groats, which was “easily affordable for even a labouring
man.” “[F]olks were often charged simply what they could afford, and it was not at
all uncommon for the sellers to give them away if the recipient was too poor to buy
a copy” (McGrath, p. 34, pp. xv, xvi).
The Cambridge History of the Bible describes the Tyndale text as “modern...too
colloquial...[using] an unnecessary number of words.” “[T]he Authorized Version [is]
more majestic…” (G.W.H. Lamp, Cambridge: University Press, vol. 2, pp. 144-145).
Psa. 29:4 confirms that, “[T]he voice of the LORD is full of majesty.” The Encyclopedia
Britannica states that Tyndale used “simple and popular language” (EB, s.v. Bible,
English, p. 899). Tyndale anticipated the need for the ‘elevated’ and fuller vocabulary
of our KJB. Of his own edition he said, “...[C]ount it as a thing not having his full
shape...a thing begun rather than finished...In time to come...we will give it his full
shape...to seek in certain places a more proper English” (Dore, 2nd ed., pp. 23-24).
Yale University Press author, David Daniell, comments on Tyndale’s “simplicity,”
comparing his “old things are gone” to the KJB’s metrical “the former things are
passed away” (Rev. 21:4). Christians recognize why “sacred Scripture should always
be elevated above the common run.” Consequently, “It is also characteristic of
the Authorized Version to elevate ‘went into the ark’ to ‘entered into,’ ‘prayed’ to
‘besought,’ and ‘edge’ to ‘border’” (David Daniell, transl., Tyndale’s New Testament,
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, pp. xxvi, xxvii, xxviii).
Tyndale took God’s “iron pen” to the Old Testament (Job 19:24), first translating
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (1530) and Jonah (1531). He
suffered shipwreck while carrying this precious cargo as, “The serpent cast out of his
mouth water as a flood” (Rev. 12:15). Yet God would “preserve them” and polish the
Old Testament further with the aid of Miles Coverdale (Foxe, vol. 5, p. 120). Tyndale’s
later imprisonment provided focused time to translate a revision of Genesis, plus his
translation of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 Chronicles.
This portion was not printed until the publication of the Matthew’s Bible (McGrath,
p. 34). Although Coverdale is generally credited with the work from Ezra through
Malachi for this edition, the letters, “W.T.,” over two inches in height, close the Old
Testament.
Tyndale’s work was dangerous to own because of the “Constitutions of Oxford”
which prohibited the translation or ownership of the English Bible. Tyndale himself
was burned at the stake in October, 1536. As the flames rise, before Tyndale dies,
he sighs, ‘Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.’ And God answered his cries. The
very year of his death, his New Testament was printed in England (Dore, 1st ed., p.
22). Its second edition of 1537 was “set forth with the King’s most gracious license”
(H. Guppy, Miles Coverdale and the English Bible, Manchester: The Manchester
University Press, vol. 19, No. 2, July 1935, p. 17). This brings to mind Jesus’ promise
to the apostles and martyrs. “But when they deliver you up, take no thought how
or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall
speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you”
(Matt. 10: 19, 20). If God could give, through his Spirit, the dying words of martyred
apostles and saints, speaking in a vernacular tongue, how much more would “the
Spirit” speak, and “not ye,” the words of vernacular Bibles, which claim to be the
word of God. Tyndale realized the Bible was God’s words, not his. He said, “God hath
made me...speechless and rude, dull and slow witted...” (Foxe, vol. 5, p. 134). He
said, “It is the grace of God that does everything; without him we can do nothing; it
is God that works; we are but the instruments, we deserve no reward for what God
does by us, and can claim no merit for it” (Bobrick, p. 135). He said, “...God gave me
the gift of knowledge and understanding” (Dore, 2nd edition, p. 24).
Coverdale
Miles Coverdale (1488-1568) and Tyndale were “labourers together with God” (1
Cor. 3:9). Much like Tyndale, Coverdale “left the monastery in order to give himself
entirely to evangelical preaching.” “Coverdale was in hearty accord with Tindale and
others in the defiance of the Romanist...” (Guppy, pp. 5, 17). Coverdale “began to
preach against confession and the worship of images” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910
ed., s.v. Coverdale, Miles, p. 343). “All accounts agree in his remarkable popularity
as a preacher” (Schaff-Herzog, s.v. Coverdale, Miles, p. 291). Due to persecution
he left England for Europe, and according to Foxe, began polishing the English Old
Testament with Tyndale in Hamburg. Having come out of the corrupt Catholic church,
like Tyndale, he could discern the theological differences between the pure Bible and
corrupt Catholic editions. Although Coverdale helped and improved upon Tyndale’s
work, he generally relied on Tyndale. In the Epistle of James, for example, Coverdale
changed Tyndale’s 1534 edition in only three words, and those three words go back
to Tyndale’s 1525 edition.
Coverdale’s edition of 1535 was the first complete English Bible to be printed. For
this first printed English Bible, God chose “a version derived from other versions,” not
from ‘the Greek and Hebrew’ (Guppy, p. 14). Wisely, “Coverdale appears simply to
have put together an amalgam of existing translations.” Coverdale knew, “...German
and Latin well, some Greek and Hebrew, and a little French” (Schaff- Herzog, s.v.
Coverdale, Miles, p. 291). In his Prologue Coverdale said, “[T]o help me herein I have
had sundry translations...in other languages...lowly and faithfully I have followed
mine interpreters” (Dore, 2nd ed., p. 107). He used what he called “five sundry
interpreters” (McGrath, pp. 89, 90). He followed closely, but not precisely, Tyndale’s
New Testament (1525), Pentateuch (1529-30), and Jonah. The text of Zwingli’s Zurich
German-Swiss Bible of 1524-34 was the “genesis of the translation,” along with
the German Bible of Luther (Guppy, p. 15). Since English is a marriage of Germanic
(Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, etc.) and Latin words, Coverdale also worked with the Latin of
Erasmus, Sebastian Munster of 1534-35, and Pagninus of 1528 (McGrath, pp. 89, 90;
Scott, pp. 142-145). Coverdale’s brother-in-law, Dr. Joannes MacAlpinus, was chaplain
to Christian III, King of Denmark, and had helped to produce the first Danish Bible.
Coverdale did not use Tyndale’s Joshua to 2 Chronicles. For Joshua through Esther he
followed the German; for Job he followed the Zurich Swiss (Cambridge History of the
Bible, ed. S.L. Greenslade, Cambridge: University Press, 1963, vol. 3, pp. 148-149).
His Psalms follow Luther closely; his Malachi shows the influence of the Swiss Bible.
Coverdale said that God had given him the “gift” of interpretation. His Bible’s
Prologue described his part in the translation as “my simple and rude labor herein”
(Dore, 2nd ed., p. 106). Of the “exquisitely melodic ear” ascribed to him by scholars,
he admits only the ear is his (Bobrick, p. 145). The ‘exquisite melody’ is God’s.
Coverdale said, “...pondering also mine own insufficiency therein, and how weak
I am to perform the office of a translator...Yea we ought rather to give God high
thanks therefore, which through his spirit stirreth up men’s minds, so to exercise
themselves therein...[W]e have great occasion to give thanks unto God, that he hath
opened unto his church the gift of interpretation and of printing...” (Coverdale Bible
1535, digitized Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1997, pp. 5, 6, 7).

Matthew’s Bible
In 1538 there were two printings of the English Bible in state-approved circulation
― Coverdale’s 1535-1537 and Matthew’s 1537 edition. The latter was printed by
Grafton and Whitchurch in Hapsburg. Although it contained the translation work
of Tyndale and Coverdale, it was printed with the pseudonym, Thomas Matthew’s
Bible, because Tyndale’s name was ill-favored with King Henry VIII at that time. John
Rogers, who would soon be burned at the stake, produced this Bible. He said, “I also
granted mine ignorance to be greater than I could express, or than he took it: but yet
that I feared not, by God’s assistance and strength, to be able by writing to perform
my word...but all was of God, to whom be thanks rendered therefore” (Foxe, vol. 6,
p. 597).
Because God had preserved his word to all nations, he led Rogers, as he had
Coverdale, to compare the English text with other easily read and readily available
vernacular Bibles, instead of Greek and Hebrew. Therefore, Rogers used Tyndale’s
Bible and compared it again to the German (Scott, p. 145). He said, “‘To speak with
tongue,’ said I, ‘is to speak with a strange tongue, as Latin or Greek’ etc., and so to
speak, is not to speak unto men...[it is] ‘to speak unto the wind’” (Foxe, vol. 6, p.
595). History Professor James Froude admits that in more conservative times (1497),
there were “no grammars or dictionaries yet within reach, under much opposition
and obloquy from old fashioned conservatism.” Christians would “call those who
study Greek heretics. The teachers of Greek...are full grown devils, and the learners
of Greek are little devils...” (J.A. Froude, The Life and Letters of Erasmus, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1984, pp. 38, 141). “With their tongues they torment the word of
God because they can no more torture the Word of God with their hands.” Because
of this, one sermon in the 1520s even warned of “Greek, of which people should
beware, since it was that which produced all the heresies” (Smyth, p. 93).
Tyndale agreed, saying of one heretic, “[I]f it were lawful after his example to
every man to play boo pepe with the translations that are before him, and to put out
the words of the text at his pleasure and to put in every where his meaning: or what
he thought the meaning were, that were the next way to stablish all heresies and
to destroy the ground wherewith we should improve them [heretics]...” (Tyndale
Bible, New Testament, Chadwyck, pp. 10, 11). Of the practice of burning the Bible
word by word, by questioning the English translation, the Lord Protector of England
wrote in 1547, “[W]e see every day [it] done, and sometimes commanded, because
the translator displeaseth us; and yet herein no man exclaimeth of a terrible and
detestable fact done. But let one image...be burnt or abolished, by and by some
men are in exceeding rage...which thing hath seldom been seen done to the gospel
of God, or the very true Bible...Nor do we now speak of false bibles, nor false gospel,
but of the very true gospel, either in Latin, Greek or English...” (Foxe, vol. 6, pp. 28,
29, 28). “[I]t were more hardly done, if that you, or a few which can read in one or
two languages (as Greek and Latin), the word of God,...should pull away the English
books from the rest which only understand English; and would have only your letters
of Greek and Latin in estimation, and blind all them which understand not these
languages, from the knowledge of God’s word. And indeed, my lord, by your saying
they have just occasion to suspect what is meant” (Foxe, v. 6, p. 29).

The Great Bible

In 1536 King Henry VIII said that the “English” Bible is the very words of God
(Foxe, vol. 5, p. 167). Coverdale was asked by King Henry VIII’s representatives,
Thomas Cromwell (who bore the expense) and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (who
was later to be martyred), to compile and fine tune an English Bible without the
anti-Catholic notes used in the Matthew’s Bible. When King Henry VIII closed all
Catholic monasteries, hidden ancient Gothic and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts came
rushing forward to guide the translation of the Tyndale, Coverdale, and Great Bibles.
The Great Bible was not a slavish re-printing of earlier Coverdale editions, nor was it
entirely Tyndale’s edition; it shows more polishing by Coverdale. The second edition
of the Great Bible was often called Cranmer’s Bible because he wrote its excellent
Prologue. This Prologue indicates that the common man had access to the scriptures
in his home in 1540. Quoting in part from a second century writer, it exhorts, “[E]
very man should read by himself at home in the mean days and time, between
sermon and sermon...” (The Holy Bible [The Great Bible], 1540, digitized Cambridge:
Chadwyck-Healy, p. 8).
Cranmer’s Prologue and these early translators assert that when 2 Tim. 3:16
states, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God,” the ‘all’ includes the English
Bible. The Great Bible’s Prologue said, “Yet in the meantime, refuse not the gifts
of God, which are offered unto thee by the labours of other men whom God hath
endued with the most excellent gift of interpreting...” (Dore, 2nd edition, pp. 176-
177). The New Testament uses the word ‘interpretation’ to describe translation from
one language to another (e.g. John 1:42, 9:7, Acts 9:36, 13:8; Heb. 7:2). Therefore, the
“private interpretation,” forbidden in 2 Peter 1:20, includes private translation (e.g.
new versions and lexicons). The preservation promised in Psalm 12 is accomplished
as “the scriptures…to all nations” “is given by” the Spirit of God (Rom. 16:26). Tyndale
and Coverdale, to whom God entrusted the preservation of the English Bible, believed
the English interpretation (translation) came through the Spirit of God leading them.
Since these men had experienced it, their views carry more weight than the critics
of today who say, “God did not do it — man did it.” Coverdale said, “No, the Holy
Ghost is as much the author of it in Hebrew, Greek, French, Dutch, and English, as
in Latin…” (W. Kenneth Connolly, The Indestructible Book, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Books, 1996, p. 148). The Great Bible’s Prologue said that it was “given” by the “holy
spirit.” “To the intent that we should know this, by the goodness of God working by
his holy spirit, are the holy writings of the Bible given us” (The Holy Bible, 1540, p.
4). Throughout the entire Reformation, its leaders, translators, and Bible Prologue
authors describe their vernacular translations as “scripture,” whose author is God.
The Prologue often refers to the Great Bible itself as “scriptures.” For example, it
says, “...[B]uy and provide us the Bible, that is to say, the books of holy scripture...”
The Prologue to the 1535 Coverdale Bible referred to the English text as “scripture”
saying, “Finally, who so ever thou be, take these words of scripture in to thy heart...
and have ever an eye to the words of scripture...that the holy scripture may have
free passage, and be had in reputation, to the worship of the author thereof, which
is even God himself: to whom for his most blessed word be glory and dominion
now and ever. Amen” (The Holy Bible [Coverdale], 1535, Cambridge: Chadwyck-
Healy, pp. 11, 12). The title of the second edition of the Great Bible, no doubt written
by Coverdale, reads, “The Bible in English, that is to say the content of all the holy
scripture, both of the Old and New Testament...” (Dore, 2nd ed. p. 164).

The Bishops’ Bible

The tide was to turn, as fickle King Henry VIII suddenly set forth a proclamation,
to go into effect on September 1, 1546, rescinding altogether the private use of the
Bible and forbidding that anyone should read or own one. All Bibles were “to be
openly burned,” along with a long list of Christian books (Foxe, vol. 5, pp. 565, 566).
When Henry penned his name on that proclamation, he was signing his own death
certificate. After the passing of a dozen weeks, he would become gravely ill and pass
away on January 28, 1547.
His heir, nine-year-old Prince Edward VI, brought six years of peace and the
printing of Bibles once again to England. When crowned King, Edward was given
three swords, symbolizing the three countries he ruled. He asked where the fourth
sword was: “The Bible, the sword of the Spirit, and to be preferred before these
swords” (Connolly, p. 154). Thirty-one printers in England set about printing only
Bibles (Guppy, p. 24). Edward died at the age of 15. The authentic Chronicles of that
period report: “And he was poisoned, as everybody says” (Chronicles of the Tudor
Kings, David Loades, ed., Godalming, Surrey: CLB International, 1997, p. 245).
Queen Mary’s bloody reign of terror then plagued England from 1553 to 1558.
Foxe said, “[T]he manifold iniquities of Englishmen deserved another plague...” in
the reign of Queen Mary (Foxe, vol. 5, p. 699). He adds, “Alas! You know the cause
of all these plagues fallen upon us and of the success which God’s adversaries have
daily, is for our not loving God’s word. You know how that we were but gospellers
in lips, and not in life” (Foxe, vol. 7, p. 209). In 1554 the reading of scripture was by
Act of Parliament placed under severe restrictions. To get rid of what the Catholics
called, the “heretically translated Bible,” Mary banished every “preacher, printer,
bookseller” in 1554 (Foxe, vol. 6, pp. 504, 430).
Mary’s early death brought Queen Elizabeth to the throne and freedom once
again reigned for the Holy Bible. The Bishops’ Bible, which was printed from 1568
until even as late as 1619, changed little and generally kept the wording of the Great
Bible, “to which the people had become accustomed.” They did change the notes
and tried to “make them free from party spirit.” In Psa. 45:9 they noted, “Ophir is
thought to be the Ilande in the west coast, of late founde by Christopher Columbo…”
(Dore, 1st ed., p. 77, 2nd ed., pp. 237, 250).

The King James Bible of 1611

Kings whose hearts are open to the Lord recognize the true word of God. In
2 Chron. 34, “The scribe” said, “the priest hath given me a book...” “[W]hen the
king had heard the words,” he called it “the book” (v. 18, 21). When a king “made
a decree” in the Old Testament his words could not be changed. Ezra 6:11 says, “...
whosoever shall alter this word, let timber be pulled down from his house, and being
set up, let him be hanged thereon; and let his house be made a dunghill for this.” “[K]
ing Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth”
(Dan. 6:25). Would “the King of kings” do less (1 Tim. 6:15)? Even pagan kings, like
Nebuchadnezzar look for things which have “no blemish” (Dan. 1:3, 4). Therefore,
not surprisingly, many of the premier vernacular Bibles were produced under the
“authority” of kings, such as: Alfred the Great of England (c. 899), King Alfonso of
Spain (from vernacular French into Spanish around 1223), King Jean II of France
(1333), King Francis I and son Henry (Stephanus text of 1550), King Christian III of
Denmark (c. 1550), and finally King James I of England (Authorized Version 1611).
King James VI (June 19, 1566-1625) had been crowned king of Scotland as an
infant in 1567, with a coronation sermon preached by John Knox. He reigned as
the Scottish king for thirty-six years. He could quote Bible “chapters from a book
from memory” (B. Bevan, King James VI of Scotland & I of England, London: The
Rubicon Press, 1996, pp. 13, 14; C. Bingham, The Stewart Kingdom of Scotland 1371-
1603, NY: Barnes & Noble Books, 1974, p. 234). When Sir Henry Killigrew, the English
Ambassador, was permitted to see King James at the age of eight, he said, “He [King
James] speaketh the French tongue marvelous well; and that which seems strange
to me, he was able extempore (which he did before me) to read a chapter of the
Bible out of Latin into French, and out of French after into English, so well, as few
men could have added anything to his translation. His school-masters, Mr. George
Buchanan and Mr. Peter Young, rare men, caused me to appoint what chapter I
would; and so did I, whereby I perceive that it was not studied for” (Bingham, p.
233). A contemporary said of James at the age of eighteen, “He is learned in many
tongues, sciences and affairs of state, more so I dare say than any others of his
realm” (Bingham, p. 233).
Upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I in July of 1603, King James I, at the age
of 36, ascended to the throne of England. Almost immediately, on January 14 of
1604, he called for the final polishing of the English Bible. He read from the Bible
at this Hampton Court Conference. King James I had written earlier that it is the
“Scriptures which must be an infallible ground to all true Christians...” (King James
VI, Daemonologie, Edinburgh, 1597). He stated that, “The whole scripture is dictated
by God’s spirit....” He said “[A]ll that is necessary for salvation is contained in the
scripture.” He felt so strongly about the Bible translation project that he said he
would pay for it “from his own princely disposition [salary].” The translators too felt
a love for their project and “struggled along on their own means.” The King’s love for
the Bible was evidenced when he visited Oxford in 1605. He asked that Bible “verses”
be placed all over town, in homes, churches, schools and on buildings. (Stephen
A. Coston, King James The VI of Scotland & The I of England: Unjustly Accused, St.
Petersburg, FL: Konigs Wort, 1996, pp. 47-48; Robert Chambers, The Life of King
James The First, Edinburgh: Constable & Co., 1830, cited in Coston, p. 309; Gustavus
Paine, The Men Behind the KJB, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1989, pp. 13, 14, 81;
G.A. Riplinger, King James and His Translators and In Awe of Thy Word, Ararat, VA:
A.V. Publications, 2010).
King James: A Godly Christian
King James was an evangelical Christian. He wrote a book for his son entitled,
Basilikon Doron (which became an international best seller). In it the King stated
that he was, “Praying God that as you are regenerated and born in him anew, so you
may rise to him and be sanctified in him forever” with “white garments washen the
blood of the lamb....” He adds, “Now faith...is the free gift of God (as Paul sayeth).”
In March of 1604 while King of England, James urged ministers to be more “...careful,
vigilant, and diligent than you have been to win souls to God...[W]here you have been
in any way sluggish before, now waken yourselves up again with a new diligence at
this point...” (Antonia Fraser, Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot,
NY: Nan A. Talese Doubleday, 1996, p. 89). In Basilikon Doron, the King told his son
not only to be born again in Christ, but also to live the Christian life. He wrote of
“Holiness being the first and most requisite quality of a Christian, (as proceeding
from true fear and knowledge of God).” He admonished him further to “[C]ount
every sin and breach of God’s law, not according as the vain world esteems of it, but
as God, judge and maker of the law, accounts of the same….”
The Dictionary of National Biography states that James was “decidedly pure.” A
contemporary wrote in 1602, “[A]mong his good qualities none shines more brightly
than the chasteness of his life, which he has preserved without stain down to the
present time, contrary to the example of almost all his ancestors...” (Coston, pp. 55,
44, 284, 39). One Italian visitor described his “chastity” and added, “In his eyes and
in his outward appearance there is a certain natural kindness bordering on modesty.
He wears his hair short...About food and clothing he does not care.” Regarding
wealth, King James said, “I wish, therefore, that some may have single coats, or
one living, before others have doublets, or pluralities.” Unlike B.F. Westcott, F. H.
A. Hort, and J. B. Phillips, corrupt new version editors who engaged in necromancy,
King James wrote a book against such things, entitled Daemonologie. He warned,
“Consult therefore with no necromancer” (Coston, p. 52).
Proving wrong the charges that King James persecuted Baptists, he said, “I will
never allow in my conscience that the blood of any man shall be shed for diversity
of opinions in religion, but I should be sorry that Catholics should so multiply as they
might be able to practice their old principles upon us.” “I would be sorry to punish
their bodies for the error of their mind” (Fraser, pp. 38, 88). King James wrote, “I did
ever hold persecution as one of the infallible notes of a false church” (Bevan p. 69,
48). Jesuit terrorists began plotting his death and the total destruction of his entire
anti-papal Parliament government. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, about 6,000
pounds, were smuggled through secret tunnels and buried beneath the Parliament
by 13 accomplices. On Nov. 5, 1605, just hours before the gunpowder was set to
explode and destroy the entire Parliament building, God intervened and the plot
was discovered.
Harvard University Press’ Jacobean Pagent (1963) states that James, like all
who live godly, was the subject of, “slanders spread by defeated rivals....” Benjamin
Disraeli said such rivals, “filled their works with Libel and Invective, instead of
History...This is the style which passes for history with some readers.” “Historians
can and should ignore the venomous caricature of the king’s person and behavior,”
notes Maurice Lee, author of Great Britain’s Solomon: James VI. Author Stephen
A. Coston cites a personal letter to himself from Roger Magnuson, author and trial
lawyer, graduate of Stanford University, Oxford University, and Harvard Law School.
Magnuson wrote, “I find no evidence” to prove the unkind accusations leveled at
King James (Coston, pp. 225, 234, 215, 324, 329, 258 n. 1). William Sanderson said,
“The King knew no better means to suppress the credit of false rumors, than by his
own pious practice in religion, by outward frequency in the exercises of prayer and
preaching, duly performing and executing his justice and mercy, with such wisdom,
and piety, as made his virtues thereby more transparent to the common view and
sense of all men” (Coston, p. 291). At his funeral he was described as “a miracle of
kings and a king of miracles.” It was under King James that England was first called
‘Great Britain’ (Bevan, pp. 12, 79, 201).
Sequence of translation
In January of 1604 King James had commissioned a Bible to replace the Bishops’
Bible. By June of the same year the translators had been chosen. They were divided
into six different groups, two each located at Westminster, Cambridge, and Oxford.
It appears that the translators began working in the fall of 1604. A list of rules was
established. Each individual translator wrote down his own suggestions (chapter by
chapter) for the books assigned to his committee, as required by rule eight. Translators
met once each week to share their personal work with their committee. Each group
molded one common translation by merging these individual translations. Rule nine
stated that when a committee finished a book (c. 1607), it should be reviewed by
all of the members of all of the other companies. Rule ten called for the resulting
suggestions by the other committees, accompanied by reasons, to be reviewed by
the original committee and either adopted, or if unresolved, brought to the final
‘general committee.’ With this plan, each word was reviewed fourteen times.
Unlike any English Bible translation, either before or since, the translation was
opened to all Christians, according to rules eleven, twelve, and thirteen. Men
“throughout the kingdom,” from pastors, to deans, to professors, to learned men,
to Bishops, to “any” spiritual plowmen, who “have taken pains” in their private
studies of the scriptures, were asked to study the translation and “send such
their observations...so that our said intended translation may have the help and
furtherance of all....” “[A]ny...man in the land” could review the work. “To accomplish
this review, each company made and passed about copies of its work.” “Manuscripts
were prepared and sent out for the scrutiny” of men “throughout the kingdom.”
This participation of all “men within this our kingdom” from “far and wide for
general scrutiny” is unique. The KJB is the only translation to be screened before its
publication by the body of Christ, not just by translators. Suggestions which ensued
from the body of Christ at large from the “general circulation” were examined and
incorporated by the original committee. “[T]he Bps. [Bishops] altered very many
places that the translators had agreed upon...,” noted Dr. Brett of the Old Testament
Oxford Committee. In December of 1608 King James requested that “the translation
of the Bible shalbe finished & printed so soone as may be” (Ward Allen and E. Jacobs,
The Coming of the King James Gospels, Fayetteville, AR: The University of Arkansas
Press, 1995, p. 4; Bishop Bancroft cited in Alfred Pollard, Records of the English Bible,
London: Henry Frowde by Oxford University Press, 1911, pp. 332-333, 53-55 et al.;
Ward Allen, Translating the New Testament Epistles 1604-1611: A Manuscript From
King James’s Company, Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, Vanderbilt
University Press, 1977, pp. xxii, lxxxiv, xxiii, xii, xxvii et al.; EB, s.v. Bible, English, pp.
902-903 et al.).
Representatives from each of the six committees examined together the three
final annotated Bishops’ Bibles that were the final products of the committees.
These men ironed out those issues which could not be agreed upon by the lower
committees. The names and exact number of participants in these final meetings,
which took place during the first nine months of 1610, are uncertain. Of this group
the only certain participates were Andrew Downes and John Bois. This ‘General’
committee introduced some new refinements. Finally, Bishop Thomas Bilson and Dr.
Miles Smith were charged with making the final edits and preparing the Bible for the
printers. The KJB bears the printing date of 1611; two printings were done in Oxford.
Like earlier English Bibles, it was entitled, the Holy Bible (not the King James or the
Authorized Version).

The King James Bible Translators

The KJB translators were nursed by parents who had hidden their Bibles and
bodies from the torch-bearing henchmen of Queen Mary (reigned 1553-1558) and
the unpredictable Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547). They knew first hand that Rome
and its rulers could tolerate the Bible bound “in the letters of Hebrew, and Greek,
and Latin,” the classical languages which Pilate placed above Christ’s cross (John
19:20, Luke 23:38). But Romish rulers would burn, book-by-book, and word-by-
word, an English Bible by which the Holy Ghost could speak directly to a man, with
no mediator except Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:5).
The King James Bible and its 400 years of spiritual fruit show forth what the
translators bore of the Spirit unquenched (Gal. 5:22). The translators were the
top achievers in England at that time, academically, and it appears, spiritually as
well. They had risen to positions as college presidents or deans, heads of schools
or departments of the Greek or Hebrew language. They were not only preachers,
pastors, doctors, scholars, and linguists, but they had surpassed thousands of
men with similar training, during a time when speaking Greek, Latin, Hebrew and
foreign languages was common for university students. Their exceptional God-given
abilities, coupled with their diligence and an abiding walk with the Lord, set them at
the pinnacle of an academic environment where school children were educated at a
level above that of many of today’s university students.
The King appointed 54 men; an official list of 47 names is extant. The larger
number may have included “three or four of the most ancient” scholars, required
by rule fifteen, but not actual members of the committee. Bilson and Bancroft, who
did serve on the project, would bring the number to fifty-three. Perhaps the missing
fifty “fourth is like the Son of God” (Dan 3:25). The following forty-eight names are
listed as “Translators” by the British Museum. They add the name of Thomas Bilson
to the list of forty-seven translators, because although he was not a member of any
committees, he and Miles Smith did the final editing. These include: 1.) Westminster:
Lancelot Andrews, William Bedwell, Francis Burleigh, Richard Clarke, Jeffrey King,
John Layfield, John Overall, Hadrian Saravia, Robert Tigue, Richard Thomson, William
Barlow, William Dakins, Roger Fenton, Ralph Hutchinson, Michael Rabbett, Thomas
Sanderson, John Spenser; 2.) Oxford: Richard Brett, Daniel Featley, John Harding,
Thomas Holland, Richard Kilby, John Rainolds, Miles Smith, George Abbot, John
Aglionby, John Harmer, Leonard Hutten, John Perin, Thomas Ravis, Henry Saville, Giles
Thomson; 3.) Cambridge: Roger Andrews, Andrew Bing, Laurence Chaderton, Francis
Dillingham, Thomas Harrison, Edward Lively, John Richardson, Robert Spalding, John
Bois, William Branthwait, Andrew Downes, John Duport, Jeremy Radcliffe, Samuel
Ward, Robert Ward (EB, vol. 3, p. 902 et al.). Although not on the original list, John
Aglionby, Leonard Hutten, and William Thorne replaced men who died during the
translation (Richard Edes, Edward Lively, Ralph Hutchinson, William Dakins, John
Rainolds, Thomas Ravis). The names of Daniel Featley (on the British Museum’s list of
translators), Arthur Lake, James Montague, Thomas Sparke, Nicholas Love, George
Ryves, Ralph Ravens, and William Eyre have been suggested as later participants.
Contrary to contemporary myths, Shakespeare and Flood did not participate.
One KJB translator engraved on his seal, “And who is sufficient for these things!”
Although the KJB translators were gifted with greater linguistic skills than today’s
typical new version editors, they did not credit their own abilities. They said, “[T]here
were many chosen, that were greater in other men’s eyes than in their own, and that
sought the truth rather than their own praise...And in what sort did these assemble?
In the truth of their own knowledge, or of their sharpness of wit, or deepness of
judgment, as it were in an arm of flesh? At no hand. They trusted in him that hath the
key of David, opening and no man shutting; they prayed to the Lord the Father of our
Lord...In this confidence and with this devotion did they assemble together...” (The
Translators). The translators, in utmost humility, did “crave the assistance of God’s
spirit by prayer....” Translator Lancelot Andrews spent five hours a day in prayer
(The Learned Men, London: Trinitarian Bible Society, no. 25). They wrote, “If we will
be sons of the truth, we must...trample upon our own credit….” “[W]e have at the
length, through the good hand of the Lord upon us, brought the work to that pass
that you now see” (The Translators). A few marginal notes were added to the Bible,
not to cast doubt upon the text but, “to resolve upon modesty” (The Translators).
William Barlow, a member of the New Testament committee, chose as the motto
for his seal: “sit down in the lowest room” (Luke 14:10), showing the meekness of
yet another committee member. Samuel Ward was described as “Meek, modest”
(McClure, p. 151).
The translators were soul winners. John Overall’s burden for the souls of men
ushered him to the side of ‘Father’ Henry Garnet, just as this murderer was about to
be hanged for his part in the Gunpowder Plot. Overall begged him to receive Jesus
Christ as Saviour and express “a true and lively faith to God-ward.” Hadrian Saravia
was a missionary to the islands of Guernsey and Jersey. “[T]he preaching of God’s
word was planted there” through his efforts. John Rainolds had been a convert from
Romanism to Christianity and successfully won public debates with Romanists who
publicly challenged orthodoxy. An “arrow whether shot purposely by some Jesuited
papist” or someone else, struck him, but did no real injury. Many years later on his
death bed, he wrote his testimony of faith saying, “These are to testify to all the
world, that I die in the possession of that faith which I have taught all my life, both in
my preaching and in my writings, with an assured hope of my salvation, only by the
merits of Christ my Saviour” (Paine, pp. 23, 25; McClure, pp. 98-102). Richard Kilby
said, “Consider well what he hath done for you...when you were by sin made like the
devil, and must therefore have been condemned to hell torments, God sent his only
Son, who taking unto him a body and soul, was a man and suffered great wrong and
shameful death, to secure your pardon, and to buy you out of the devil’s bondage,
that ye might be renewed to the likeness of God...to the end ye might be fit to keep
company with all saints in the joys of heaven...” (Paine, p. 48).
The translators’ note on 1 Peter 3:21 proves they did not believe in baptismal
regeneration, like many of today’s baby-sprinkling Church of England Anglicans
or Episcopalians: “The soul is not sanctified in the washing, but in the vow,” they
write (Ward Allen, Translating For King James: Notes Made By A Translator of King
James’s Bible, Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1969, p. 93). The Thirty-
Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England (e.g. 1563, 1571) were unique in
that they did not prescribe “infant” baptism, as did other confessions of faith at that
time (e.g. Heidelberg Catechism, 1563). They called baptism merely a “sign” whereby
“Christian men” evidenced their “faith” (Article 26). Like Baptists today, they allowed
the baptism of “young children,” but infants were no where mentioned. In fact, R.
Jeremy Brooks of the British Protestant Truth Society confirms that “in those days
it was normally by dipping (immersion), whereas today it is usually by sprinkling
(effusion)” (letter to Alan O’Reilly on file).
The translators’ faith produced works. Bois “seldom went to church to beg a
blessing of God, but he gave a blessing to some poor body before he came home.”
Bois was like Erasmus, who stood to study, read or translate the scriptures, in
reverence for the word of God. Contrary to the false impression we are given that
the Bible remained chained to the church’s pulpit, Bois’ mother “had read the Bible
over twelve times.” In turn, John Bois had “read the Bible over by the time he was
five years old.” He went to college with a friend whose father had been Erasmus’
personal assistant (Translating For King James, pp. 129, 130, 131). Lawrence
Chaderton was well conversant in Spanish, French, and Italian, yet this Doctor of
Divinity was described as quite “modest.” He was called an “excellent preacher.”
He lived to the ripe age of 103, a longevity perhaps attributed to “a living affection
for the poor,” as one biographer notes (Psa. 41:1, 2). Of Thomas Holland it was
said, “Even while he labored on the Bible, he gave much time to fervent prayers....”
“[He] had a wonderful knowledge of all the learned languages, and of all arts and
sciences...He was mighty in the Scriptures...” (McClure, p. 105; Paine, p. 47). Space
limitations prevent a discussion of all of the men.
The KJB translators produced numerous other works, but few have heard of
them and none are classics. These translators would readily admit that they were
not, without the inspiration of God, capable of creating a volume such as the King
James Bible. For the last 400 years, the English-speaking people wisely have loved
this Bible and “received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of
God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (1 Thes. 2:13).

Sources and Methods of the KJB Translators

Generally speaking, the early English Bibles are the same. The Bible had become
“fixed” in the “ear” of the people, writes Professor Ward Allen. “The changes in the
text of the A.V. [KJB] from earlier Protestant translations are slight” (Allen, Translating
For King James, pp. 16, 20). Most of the changes take the form of minor surface
polishing applied to a firmly established, long standing structure. The King James
translators wrote in their preface to the readers, “...[W]hatsoever is sound already,
(and all is sound for substance in one or other of our editions...) the same will shine
as gold more brightly, being rubbed and polished...” (cited in Allen, Translating the
New, p. lx). “[T]he furnace for gold” was a “furnace of earth” where the English Bible
was “purified seven times.” The KJB is its seventh and final purification (Prov. 17:3,
Psa. 12:6). It followed the six previous stages: 1.) Gothic, 2.) Anglo-Saxon, 3.) Pre-
Wycliffe (Anglo-Norman), 4.) Wycliffe, 5.) Tyndale-Coverdale-Great-Geneva, and 6.)
Bishops.’
Translator Henry Saville was an expert on the earliest English Bible manuscripts.
This helped provide consistency with the earlier texts. He also published from
original manuscripts the written histories of England before Bede. The KJB translators
generally followed the grammatical elements and word order (syntax) of the Bishops’
Bible. This was their foundation and they seldom varied from it. The changes they
did make were small changes involving words or phrases. These changed words were
usually not original, but were taken from earlier English Bibles, such as the Tyndale,
Coverdale, Geneva, and the Great Bible.
The following example from 1 Thes. 2:13 shows one of the few instances in which
the KJB translators did slightly alter the word order of the Bishops’ Bible. When they
altered the word order, they generally were copying the word order of another
early English Bible. In this example they followed the Geneva. On occasion they
introduced words of their own. In the example to follow they introduced only one of
their own words. (The dates shown are those of the printing cited, not necessarily
the date of the first edition.) Wycliffe 1395: Therfor we doon thankingis to God
with outen ceessyng. For whanne ye hadden take of vs the word of the heryng of
God, ye token it not as the word of men, but as it is verili, the word of God, that
worchith in you that han bileued. Tyndale 1530-1534: For this cause thanke we God
with out ceasynge because that when ye receaved of vs the worde wherwith God
was preached ye receaved it not as the worde of man: but even as it was in dede
the worde of God which worketh in you that beleve. Coverdale 1535: For this cause
thanke we God without ceassynge, because that when ye receaued of vs the worde
of the preachinge of God, ye receaued it not as the worde of men, but (eue as it is
of a trueth) the worde of God, which worketh in you that beleue. Bishops’ 1568: For
this cause thanke we God also without ceassyng, because ye receauyng the worde
which ye hearde of vs concerning God, ye receaued it not as the worde of man,
(but as it is in dede) the worde of God, which effectuously worketh also in you that
beleue. Geneva 1599: For this cause also thanke wee God without ceasing, because
when yee receiued the word of God, which yee heard of vs, yee receiued it not
as the worde of men, but as it is in deede the word of God, which also worketh
in you that beleeue. King James Bible 1611: For this cause also thanke wee God
without ceasing, because [Tyndale] [KJB] when yee receiued [Tyndale] the word of
God, which yee heard of vs, yee receiued it not as the word of men, but (as it is in
[Geneva] trueth), [Coverdale] the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you
that beleeue [Bishops’].
For hundreds of years, the methods and thoughts of the KJB translators remained
lost, until our generation, when every attack possible has buffeted the KJB. “But
where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20). The revealing
translation notes of the King James Bible committee have been found. Four primary
records, some recently discovered, document the thoughts of the KJB translators: 1.)
Forty copies of the 1602 printing of the Bishops’ Bible were given to the translators.
Only one remains. It is held in the Bodleian Library in England, catalogued as The
Annotated Bishops’ Bible “Bib. Eng. 1602 b.I..” The Annotated Bishops’ Bible shows
the text of the Bishops’ Bible, with words crossed out and changes placed either
between the lines or in the margin, 2.) Manuscript 98 is a trial translation of the
Epistles (1607-1608) by the Westminster committee, 3.) The handwritten English,
Latin, and Greek notes of KJB translator John Bois, showing the final work on the
Epistles and Revelation by the General Meeting of 1610, and 4.) The Translators
to the Reader, the Preface to the King James Bible of 1611 by Miles Smith. These
documents demonstrate that the KJB translators considered and rejected words
used in today’s new versions. These documents also reveal the translators’ use of
a treasure trove of ancient Greek codices and vernacular translations that may not
even be available to today’s translators.
KJB translator, John Bois, wrote thirty-nine pages of notes regarding the thinking
of the final general committee, of which he was a member. This handful of KJB
translators met for nine months between 1610 and 1611. According to Bois’ notes,
a few of the translators’ sources include the following: 1.) The Greek of “Beza, and
the Gr. [Greek] Codices....” (From this it is clear that they used, not only the 1598
Greek printed edition of Theodore Beza (Beza, Iesu Christi Domini Nostri Novum
Testamentum, Geneva: Sumptibus Haered. E. Vignon, 1598 et al.), but also ancient
handwritten Greek New Testament codices. For example, their note on Rev. 13:5
states, “In another manuscript...” (Translating For King James, pp. 89, 20, 101), 2.)
The Greek New Testament of “Erasmus” (e.g. I Tim. 4:6) (Novum Instrumentu omne,
diligenter ab Erasmo Roterodamo recognitum & emen-datum...Basileae, in aedibus
I. Frobeniji, Mense Februario, 1516; Translating For King James, p. 119), and 3.) The
best primary sources written by Christians. The KJB translators had the entire original
works of ancient authors. They could read any word in question in its entire context,
unlike contemporary translators, who by their own admission are distanced from
the entire works of the ancient writers, and do not study words in the contexts of
the original editions, but rely on English interpretations in modern lexicons.
Bois’ bibliographer writes, “When he left the college, he knew of but few
Greek authors, great or small, extant, which he had not in his own private library”
(Translating For King James, p. 138). In spite of Bois’ vast grasp of Greek, he avoided
its use in the pulpit, lest he should indirectly disparage the English Bible in the eyes
of the young, writes his biographer. He said that “in the church, [he] had rather
speak five words with his, to their, understanding (that, by his voice, he might teach
others), than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue...” (Translating For King
James, pp. 150, 151). Because the KJB translators had access to these primary
sources, many of them wrote their own lexicons. William Bedwell was the author
of Lexicon Heptaglotten, a seven volume lexicon which included Hebrew, Syriac,
Chaldee, and Arabic. The translators “gathered together the chief manuscripts of
Chrysostom [the most devout early Greek Christian pastor and writer] which could
be found in the best libraries of Christendom...[and] read over the greatest part
of that voluminous father in the MSS...[T]he payment of certain scholars beyond
the sea for the obtaining of the best exemplars of that author, cost him [Saville]
more than 8000l....” (Translating For King James, pp. 141, 142). One writer in the
1600s spoke of Saville’s “cost and pains [and] Herculean labour...” in his effort to
gather and study the original writings of ancient Greek Christians (Translating For
King James, p. 141). Saville compiled the writings of Chrysostom into 8 volumes
entitled, S. Johannis Chrysostomi Opera, Graece. They were printed by Eaton College
in 1613. In addition to helping the translators determine the usage of Greek words,
Chrysostom’s manuscripts, which contain many scripture citations, document true
ancient Greek New Testament readings. Chrysostom lived during the same century
that the new versions’ corrupt Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts were written.
Because of his orthodoxy, his scripture citations are of equal antiquity and of better
authority than those two corrupt manuscripts underlying new versions.
 The translators’ sources, like old covered bridges, paved the way for those early
explorers, traveling from Greek, Hebrew, Gothic, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon to English.
Their meticulous efforts need not be retraced. We have now arrived and rest in
the King James Bible, the glorious seventh and final “perfected” English Bible. Like
wisdom, which “crieth upon the highest places of the city,” the November, 1921
issue of the secular magazine, Ladies Home Journal, published an article entitled,
“Human Nature in the Bible,” by Yale professor William Lyon Phelps. His article
expressed the popular view, saying, “[O]ur English translation is even better than the
Hebrew and Greek. There is only one way to explain this; I have no theory to account
for the so-called ‘inspiration of the Bible,’ but I am confident that the Authorized
Version [KJB] was inspired...all others are inferior” (pp. 8, 166, 167).
According to the rules of translation, the translators’ final authority was early
English Bibles, particularly the Bishops.’ Therefore they introduced no novelties or
lexical “private interpretation,” as do modern translators. The KJB translators looked
at all pure scriptures, Greek, Hebrew and vernacular. In addition to the ancient
languages, they did their work, “comparing of the labours, both in our own, and
other foreign Languages, of many worthy men who went before us...” (Holy Bible,
1611, London: Barker, “The Epistle Dedicatory”). They recognize that Holy Bibles
used by all language groups, sometimes preserve readings which the codices of the
sometimes unorthodox Greek Orthodox church omit in order to perpetuate one of
their doctrinal errors (e.g. Acts 8:37, 1 John 5:7 et al.). The translators stated that if
one Greek source seemed out of joint at a point, they looked at other manuscripts,
verses, and vernacular translations. In Romans 12:10, based on a “collation” of
Andrew Downes, their notes suggest that a verse should be interpreted “...as if it
had been written” in Greek another way (Translating For King James, p. 43).
The libraries of Great Britain, King James I, and the translators brought a wealth
of ancient and medieval Bibles from all over the world to the fingertips of the KJB
translators. No translator today has access to such authentic volumes; instead today’s
translators use printed ‘critical editions’ (e.g. Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, and Latin et al.),
which often follow no one manuscript on earth). In The Translators to the Reader,
numerous available scriptures are listed, such as a “Dutch-rhyme yet extant” from
the 900s, the French Bible from the 1300s “of which translation there be many copies
yet extant,” as well as “many English Bibles in written hand...translated” in the 1300s.
This treasury of texts, along with previous English Bibles, gave the KJB translators a
breadth of authoritative world-wide witnesses, whose agreement on the readings
of the Bible, brought to light microscopic errors in some Greek and Hebrew printed
editions or codices. To determine the meaning and translation of a verse, they did a
“collation” with other verses in the Bible, and a comparison with other Bibles. The
readings from many Bibles, used and agreed upon by the priesthood of believers,
in many language groups, throughout many centuries, are to be preferred to the
readings of one language (e.g. Greek), or one edition by one Greek editor (e.g. UBS,
Scrivener [TBS], Stephanus), or one ‘church’ body (e.g. Greek Orthodox). The KJB
committee had many old editions of Bibles in foreign languages, the most recent
being the Geneva French (1587/88), Olivetan (1535), Passors (1588), the Spanish
Valencia (1478), Pinel (1553), de Reynas (1569), de Valera (1602), and Bruccioli or
Diodati’s Italian (1607). Also available to the translators were the Antwerp Polyglot
of 1572 and the twelve-language Nuremberg Polyglot of 1599, which includes the
Gospels and Epistles in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, English,
German, Danish, Bohemian, and Polish. Latin was spoken by all of the translators;
Beza’s Latin text, preserving the pure old Itala, was sometimes helpful in identifying
the most ancient readings. John Selden said in his Table Talk, “The translation in
King James’ time took an excellent way. That part of the Bible was given to him who
was most excellent in such a tongue and then they met together, and one read that
translation, the rest holding in their hands some Bible, either of the learned tongues
[Greek, Hebrew, Latin], or French, Italian, Spanish &c [and other languages]. If they
found any fault, they spoke; if not he read on” (Paine, p. 77.) The Translators to the
Reader states, “If you ask what they had before them, truly it was the Hebrew text of
the Old Testament, the Greek of the New...Neither did we think much to consult the
translators or Commentators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, or Latin, no nor the
Spanish, French, Italian, or Dutch...” (The Translators). Most of the translators were
multi-lingual. For example, Hadrian Saravia, a KJB translator of Spanish descent,
pastored a French-speaking church, and spoke Dutch as a resident of Holland. The
translators of the King James Bible stated on the title page that the New Testament
was also “translated out of the Originall Greeke.” The translators would not have
made this claim if they had not had documentary proof. Time and recent discoveries
have verified this. The most recent discovery of the Magdalene papyrus, the oldest
Greek New Testament fragment, matches the KJB and none of the new versions.
The King James Bible mirrors the manuscripts and printed Bibles which for millennia
were the mainstay of Europe: the Old Itala, the Italian, the Gothic, the Anglo-Saxon,
the Dutch, the German, the French, the Spanish, the Greek and the Hebrew. These
ancient and medieval vernacular Bibles can provide evidence for the readings in the
KJB, particularly wrongly disputed ones in the book of Revelation. Hands-on access
to these ancient Bibles makes the KJB unsurpassable by today’s critical ‘scholars.’
The translators’ use of vernacular Bibles follows the pattern of Coverdale (German,
Swiss, et al.), Rogers (German), and Theodore Beza, whose Greek New Testament was
compiled using a collation of Greek and vernacular editions, particularly Latin editions
of the Syriac and Aramaic. In countries where paper was precious, people were poor,
and persecution was plenty, the scriptures had been preserved by Christians who
memorized huge portions of the Bible. The translators easily reproduced the type of
Holy Bible the world had had since the “scriptures” were given to “all nations.”
 Unlike the KJB, the modern versions do not faithfully reproduce “The word of the
truth of the gospel; Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world” (Col. 1:5, 6). For
example, the KJB includes the word “Christ” in John 4:42, as does the Nuremberg
Polyglot of 1599 in Greek (Christos), Old Latin (Christum), German (Christus), Danish
(Christus), Spanish (Christo), French (Christ), Italian (Christo), and other languages. In
this verse, as in too many other verses, the word ‘Christ’ is omitted in the NIV, TNIV,
NASB, HCSB, ESV, NRSV, RSV, Roman Catholic, and Jehovah Witness versions, as well
as the suggested note in the NKJV. “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the
Christ? He is antichrist…” (1 John 2:22).
The KJB includes prayer “and fasting” in Mark 9:29, as does the Polyglots’ ancient
languages, such as Greek and Latin (& ieiunio), and its more modern languages,
such as French (& par iufne), German (und faften), Italian (e digiuno), and Spanish (y
ayuno). The words “and fasting” are omitted in the new versions, which so often do
not follow the scriptures given to all nations.
The KJB followed pure editions which included God’s words now omitted by most
new versions. These include things such as: 1.) the deity of Christ (1 Tim. 3:16, Eph.
3:9, 1 John 4:3), the Trinity (1 John 5:7), the blood atonement (Col. 1:14), salvation by
faith in Jesus Christ (Mark 10:24, Acts 8:37, John 6:47), and seventeen entire verses
(i.e. Matt. 17:21, 18:11, 23:14, Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:46, 11:26, 15:28, Luke 17:36, 23:17,
John 5:4, Acts 8:37, 15:34, 24:7, 28:29, Romans 16:24, and 1 John 5:7).
The KJB retains words which also appeared in all earlier English Bibles, unlike the
NKJV which omits the word “Lord” 66 times, “God” 51 times, “heaven” 50 times,
“repent” 44 times, “blood” 23 times, and “hell” 22 times. The NKJV entirely omits the
words “JEHOVAH,” “new testament,” damnation,” and “devils.” The KJB is translated
with doctrinal accuracy, unlike the NKJV which demotes Jesus Christ from God’s
“Son” to a mere “servant” (Acts 3:13, 26, 4:27, 30), mistranslates and denies the pre-
incarnate Christ (Heb. 4:8, Acts 7:45), and teaches salvation by works (Rev. 19:8, 1
Cor. 1:18, 2 Cor. 2:15, Rom. 11:30, 32 etc.). (These are just of few of the thousands of
errors in modern versions. For many more examples and a thorough discussion see
New Age Bible Versions, Which Bible Is God’s Word, and Hazardous Materials: Greek
and Hebrew Study Dangers (G.A. Riplinger, Ararat, VA: AV Publications).
The KJB translators believed men could “hear Christ speaking unto them in their
mother tongue...by the written word translated.” The translators equate Greek and
Hebrew (and Aramaic) texts with an impenetrable barrier, like frozen ice, a shell,
a windowpane, a stone cover and a curtain. “But how shall men meditate in that
which they cannot understand? How shall they understand that which is kept
closed in an unknown tongue?...The Apostles excepteth no tongue; not Hebrew the
ancientest, not Greek the most copious...[A]ll of us in those tongues which we do not
understand, are plainly deaf...” (The Translators). On the other hand, they equate the
English translation with “Thy word” which is a “light” (Psa. 119:105), “holy scriptures”
(2 Tim. 3:15), and the “water” of “the word” (Eph. 5:26). “Translation is that [which]
openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the
kernel; that putteth aside the curtain that we may look into the most Holy place, that
removeth the cover of the well that we may come by the water...” (The Translators).
“Therefore blessed be they, and most honored be their name, that break the ice,
and give...that which helpeth forward the saving of souls. Now what can be more
available thereto, than to deliver God’s book to God’s people in a tongue which they
understand?” (The Translators).
Jesus said, “...the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit...” (John 6:63). Bible
words are not what men think, in ink, they are the “Spirit” of God bearing “witness
in earth.” 1 John 5:8 says, “And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit,
and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” The Bible’s words are
inspired, that is, spirit. (Even the Bishops’ Bible said, “he came by inspiration [by the
Spirit] into the temple” (Luke 2:27). Bible inspiration, preservation and translation
are one: “...a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Eccl. 4:12). Translation brings
life and prevents death. Enoch was “translated that he should not see death,” and
so are God’s words (Heb. 11:5). Through Bible translation, Christ and his words can
be made known to all nations. The since-dissolved ‘original’ manuscripts and the
library-scarce critical editions are like an arrow through the air with no destination
(1 Cor. 14:9). Only when its shell dissolves, as the original manuscripts no doubt did,
can the generating and life-giving germ bear fruitful and “profitable” food (2 Tim.
3:16). When it bears fruit, the fruit retains its own life-giving seeds. These seeds in
turn can give life once again. Translation keeps God’s words alive.
John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, carried the translators’ torch for the
translated word. “[B]eing upon the road near Cambridge he was overtaken by a
scholar who said, ‘How dare you preach from the Bible, seeing you have not the
original, not being a scholar?’ Then said Mr. Bunyan, ‘Have you the original?’ ‘Yes,
said the scholar…we believe what we have is a true copy of the original.’ ‘Then,’ said
Mr. Bunyan, ‘so do I believe our English Bible is a true copy of the original.’” Bunyan
wrote, “The Lazaruses are not allowed to warn them of the wrath to come…because
they cannot with Pontius Pilate speak Hebrew, Greek, and Latin” (A Few Sighs From
Hell). Like the KJB translators, who were the subject of “uncharitable imputations,”
the scholars “started all kinds of slanders about the tinker preacher. They called
him a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman, and the like. They said he was guilty of gross
immoralities, that he had two wives at once, etc.” (W. B. Creary, John Bunyan the
Immortal Dreamer, Anderson, IN: Gospel Trumpet Company, 1928; Works of John
Bunyan, Vol. 1, Part A, BiblioBazaar, 2008, p. 101 et al.).
Richard Kilby, one of the KJB translators, visited a country church and “found the
young preacher to have no more discretion, than to waste a great part of the hour
allotted for his sermon,” describing “three reasons why a particular word should have
been otherwise translated” in the King James Bible. Kilby went to the pastor’s home
and explained kindly to him that “he might have preached more useful doctrine, and
not have filled his auditors’ ears with needless exceptions against the late translation
and for that word which he offered to that poor congregation three reasons why it
ought to have been translated as he said, he and others had considered all them, and
found thirteen more considerable reasons why it was translated as now printed”
(Reported in Walton’s biography of Bishop Sanderson; McClure, pp. 107, 108).
The effect of Bible criticism is to increase the hearers’ faith in the words of men
and decrease their faith in the words of God, in which “every word” is “perfect”
and “very pure” (Psa. 19:7, 119:140, Prov. 30:5). The KJB translators called it a
Romish practice to burn whole English Bibles piece-by-piece through criticism. They
saw such lack of faith in the “translated” English Bible, as despising the Holy Spirit
and denying God’s preserving inspiration. They wrote of “Romanists” and others
who: “[R]efusing to hear, and daring to burn the Word translated, did no less than
despite the Spirit of grace...vilifying and abusing of the English Bible, or some pieces
of them...” (The Translators). The translators’ notes reveal why they translated the
same Greek words differently (as in 1 Peter 1:23-25) or why the same English word
was sometimes used to translate more than one Greek word. For example, in 1 Cor.
10:11 an interpretation was rejected because “...the scope of the passage does not
seem to admit this interpretation” (Translating For King James, p. 47).
Like Wycliffe, the translators said that the definition of a word can usually be
found in the Bible’s own built-in dictionary of synonyms by “conference of places,”
followed by looking for its “brother” or “neighbor...” (The Translators). The rules for
translating note the importance of comparing, as King James I said, “one scripture
to another” (Translating For King James, p. 140). Tyndale’s Prologue agreed,
advising: “And in many places, where the text seemeth at the first chop hard to be
understood, yet the circustaces [surrounding words and verses] before and after,
and often reading together, make it plain enough” (Tyndale, New Testament, 1530-
1534, digitized Chadwyck-Healy, pp. 1, 2). Coverdale echoed saying, “[L]et one text
expound another unto thee...[L]et the plain text be thy guide, and the spirit of God
(which is the author thereof) shall lead thee in all truth” (Dore, 2nd ed.). He added,
“For that one [scripture] interpreteth [translates] something obscurely one place,
the same translateth another [place] more manifestly by a more plain vocable [word]
of the same meaning in another place...[T]he interpreters have done so before
me...Only our heart’s desire unto God, is, that his people be not blinded in their
understanding...” “Again, it shall greatly help thee to understand scripture, if thou
mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, and unto whom, with what
words, at what time where, to what intent, with what circumstance, considering
what goeth before, and what followeth after” (The Holy Bible, 1535, Chadwyck, pp.
10, 7).
“Purified Seven Times” Not Eight
The KJB translators would not approve of further tampering with the English
Bible. The “chief overseer” of the translation said, “If every man’s humor should be
followed, there would be no end of translating” (Cambridge History of the Bible, vol.
3, p. 164). “[O]ur adversaries do make so many and so various editions themselves
and do error so much about the worth and authority of them...” (The Translators).
The KJB translators did not see their translation as one in the midst of a chain of
ever evolving English translations. They wanted their Bible to be one of which no
one could justly say, ‘It is good, except this word or that word....’ They planned: “to
make...out of many good ones [Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale, Great, Geneva, and
the Bishops’] one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath
been our endeavor, that our mark” (The Translators). The translators said that their
translation was “perfected” (The Translators). Yet, the Thomas Nelson edition of
The Translators to the Reader, published in the KJV/NKJV Parallel Reference Bible,
falsified their work, changing the translators’ word “perfected” (a qualitative trait)
to “completed” (a quantitative trait). The KJB translators’ assertion that their edition
was “perfected” leaves no work left for the new version translators (Nashville, TN:
Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1991, p. xiv). The enemy is at war with the word of God.
Such spiritually starving men can hardly re-do the Holy Bible to suit the fully fed.
After its publication in 1611, two of the KJB translators, John Bois and Samuel
Ward, and a few other men, were involved in the ongoing proofreading of the KJB
text, with the most thorough reviews being published in 1629 and 1638. The only
changes to the KJB since 1611 are of three types: 1.) 1612: Typography (from Gothic
to Roman type), 2.) 1629 and 1638: Correction of typographical errors and updating
of orthography (capitalization and spelling), and 3). 1762 and 1769: Standardization
of spelling. The first change involved the look of the type. The original 1611 was
printed using an old ornate typestyle meant to imitate the hand drawn manuscripts
of the Middle Ages. Some of the letters in the 1611 printing looked (not sounded)
different from the Roman type used in the 1612 printing. For instance, in the 1611
edition, when the lower case letter ‘s’ was used at the beginning or middle of a
word, the form looked like our Roman letter ‘f’; the ‘v’ looked like today’s Roman ‘u’,
while the ‘u’ looked like today’s ‘v’ (e.g. “the fame fhall be faued,” sounded just like
today’s “the same shall be saved”). It simply looked different. The second changes
generally involved the correction of typographical errors. In 1629 and 1638 Samuel
Ward and fellow translator John Bois, proofread the KJB for typographical errors for
Cambridge University Press to find any typos which had not been corrected since
1611. Since Ward and Bois had been on the original committee, they could find the
printer’s slips. The total misprints of both of the two 1611 printings combined exhibit
well over 100 misprints from the intended text of the KJB translators. When matched
against a current KJB, one might wrongly conclude that “the” 1611 KJB was different
in 136 places from today’s KJB, not realizing that the differences were typographical
errors brought about during the typesetting of the two 1611 editions. The total
number of typographical errors is small, considering the fact that each letter was
set by hand, during an era when lighting was poor and custom eye glasses had not
yet been invented. The Germanic tendency to capitalize substantives was still seen
in a few places in the 1611 printings. This was conformed in several places to English
orthographic style in 1629 and in editions which followed. The third and last changes
involve the standardization of spelling. English spelling was not uniform until the
late 1700’s. Before that time the same word was even spelled differently within the
same sentence. Letters were sometimes added to justify and ‘even out’ columns of
type. Letters were doubled and ‘e’ was often added (e.g. ‘fhewe’ for ‘shew,’ ‘dayes’
for ‘days,’ and ‘Sonne,’ for ‘Son’). The spelling of the KJB was standardized and made
uniform beginning in 1762 by Dr. Thomas Paris of Cambridge, and finally in 1769, by
Dr. Benjamin Blayney of Oxford. These typo-corrected editions of 1629 and 1638
and standardized spelling editions of 1762 and 1769 are wrongly called ‘revisions’
of the KJB by those who would like to pretend that the KJB has undergone “several
revisions” correcting “slight inaccuracies” and “its English form.” There have never
been any ‘revisions’ of the KJB text. The ‘Board of Managers’ of the American Bible
Society in 1852 thoroughly examined the text of the KJB and determined that: “The
English Bible as left by the translators has come down to us unaltered in respect to
its text...With the exception of typographical errors and changes required by the
progress of orthography [capitalization and spelling] in the English language, the text
of our present Bibles remains unchanged, and without variations from the original
copy as left by the translators (Report of the Committee on Versions to the Board of
Managers of the American Bible Society, 1852, pp. 7, 11).
Why has God continued to use the King James Bible, in spite of hundreds of
attempts to change it? The following characteristics distinguish the King James Bible
from man-made modern counterfeits: 1.) The KJB was the seventh polishing of the
English Bible, made unique among all English Bibles because it was and still is the only
one whose translators invited the input of all interested English-speaking Christians
before it was published (Psa. 12:6). It was not done by just one man, nor was it done
by a paid committee of ‘hirelings’ (Job 7:2). 2.) The KJB is the only current English Bible
which enhances meaning and memorization with carefully pointed synchronization
of the following: letter sounds, syllabication, words, parts of speech, and word order.
3.) Like Jesus Christ, the living Word, the KJB is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate
from sinners, and made higher...” (Heb. 7:26). It is the only English Bible which retains
a “pure language” (Zeph. 3:9) which identifies it as the voice of Jesus Christ, the living
Word, who is also “separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26). 4.) It perfectly balances this
special vocabulary with a unique brevity, affording easy memorization. For example,
the KJB took the Bishops’ Bible’s phrase ‘good tidings’ and changed it to “gospel.” It
is shorter than “good tidings” and therefore easier to memorize. ‘Gospel’ is a Holy
Bible word, not a word heard on the ‘news.’

Bishops’ Bible to King James Bible: Separate From Sinners

It is often assumed that the KJB was one of a series of English Bibles, each one
updating a more primitive or earlier type of English. Some have wrongly integrated
the progressive history of the English language (Early, Middle, and Late English) with
the names publicly associated with the printed English Bible (Wycliffe, Tyndale, and
the KJB). We cannot assume, as some have, who have not actually collated them
word-for-word, that the language of the KJB reflects updating of the language of the
Bishops’ and earlier Bibles. On the contrary, the evidence proves that the Bishops’
and earlier Bibles had a pedestrian, that is, a very easy and common vocabulary.
They actually had a simpler vocabulary than the KJB. Only rarely does the KJB
change an ‘archaic’ phrase, like the Bishops’ “forged cavillation” in Luke 19:8, to
the easier “false accusation,” or the Bishops’ “they wote not” to the KJB’s “they
know not” in Luke 23:34. A word-for-word analysis of the English Bibles before
the KJB destroys the myth that its words are ‘archaic’ English. (See In Awe of Thy
Word.) Earlier English Bibles were written in a simpler language. If God had wanted
the Bible of today jotted in the vocabulary of a memo, he would have retained the
Tyndale or the Bishops’ Bible. Most of the words in the Bishops’ Bible are common
language today. The words in the KJB are not always common. They are “harmless,
undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher...” just like the Word, Jesus Christ.
One might need to respond to the question, ‘Could we ‘update’ some of those KJB
words?’. Remind them that God replaced a Bible just like that with the KJB. For
example, in 1611 the Bishops’ simple word “appeared” became “appeareth” (Matt.
2:13), “put” became “layd” (Matt. 3:10), “lift” became “beare” (Matt. 4:6), “hurt”
became “despitefully use” (Matt. 5:44), “pull out” became “cast out” (Matt. 7:5),
“And saying” became “beseeching him” (Matt. 8:5), “sorrowed” became “lamented”
(Matt. 11:17), “easier” became “more tolerable” (Matt. 11:22), and “given” became
“delivered” (Matt. 11:27). The Bishops’ Bible, like all of the early English Bibles, was
truly an unelevated Bible. But as men waxed “worse and worse” God selected a holy
“separate from sinners” vocabulary for the KJB. Manuscript 98 shows that the KJB
translators considered and rejected words seen in today’s new versions. It shows
that they elevated the Bishops’ “clothes,” now used in the NIV, to “apparel” (1 Peter
3:3). The Bishops’ “For truly,” used today in the ESV and NASB, was elevated to “For
verily” (Mar. 5:18). The Bishops’ “the lowly,” seen in today’s NKJV and HCSB, was
elevated to “them of low degree” (Luke 1:52). In Luke 1:54 the KJB changed the
Bishops’ “helped” to “holpen,” a word generally only used in the Bible. Contrary to
our preconceived ideas, the word ‘helped’ is not the modern counterpart of ‘holpen.’
The word ‘help’ is the older of the two words, dating back to the 800s. In fact, in A.D.
950 the Lindisfarne Gospels said, “milsa us vel help...” (Matt. 20:30) (Charles Hardwick
[Skeat], The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Cambridge: University Press, 1858,
p. 157 et al.). The KJB does use the word ‘help’ and ‘helped’ more frequently than
‘holpen,’ but its expanded vocabulary occasionally includes “holpen.” Of course, the
KJB defines ‘holpen’ in its built-in dictionary in Daniel 11:34 as “holpen with a little
help.” Its international English finds “holpen” matching the German ‘helfen,’ the
Dutch and Low German, ‘helpen,’ and the Yiddish ‘helfn.’ When a two-syllable word
is needed for meter, such as in Luke 1:54, the use of the two-syllable ‘holpen’ allows
alliteration of ‘h,’ ‘i,’ and ‘is,’ as well as rhythmic second syllable accents in “hath
hol’-pen his ser’-vant.”
Jesus Christ is the Word (John 1:1) “and his name is called The Word of God”
(Rev. 19:13). The true word of God will be like him. He is “holy” (Acts 4:27); so are
the “holy scriptures” (Rom. 1:2, 2 Tim. 3:15). Jesus was likened to a “King” who gave
us a “better testament” (Heb. 7:22). The King James Bible is a “better testament.”
Its longevity is a portrait of the “unchangeable” and “endless life” of Jesus Christ.
Jesus is called “undefiled, separate from sinners” (Heb. 7). His “holy scriptures”
must likewise be “separate from sinners.” Their “pure words” will not be polluted by
worldly use. They will remain “separate.” The vocabulary of the King James Bible was
not common, even in the 1500s and 1600s. The KJB is not the language of earth. It
has no unnecessary steeples, but is “garnished with all manner of precious,” “pure,”
“wholesome,” and “undefiled” words, clearly having come “down from God out of
heaven” “polished after the similitude of a palace” (Psa. 144:12).
It is critical that reading the word of God does not bring to mind foolish and sinful
ideas. It is through the spotless silvered glass of the scriptures that man sees his
sin-stained soul (James 1:21-25). The scripture must be polished, pure and clear. It
cannot be spattered with man’s words, which, like the “thoughts of his heart,” are
“only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). Why does the KJB use words such as “wist” instead
of ‘know,’ or “ye” instead of ‘you’? Isn’t this ‘archaic’? As men “wax worse and
worse” and sin’s entangling thicket snared, the sword was given a final sharpening
and became the King James Bible, “sharper than any twoedged sword...dividing”
the tainted words of men from the pure words of God. Only the KJB’s words are
“wholesome words” (1 Tim. 6:3), according to databases such as Oxford University’s
Psycholinguistic Database, Princeton University’s Cognitive Science Laboratory, and
Edinburgh University’s Associative Thesaurus. These databases define words as the
mind defines them. The depraved words in new versions are shown by Edinburgh
University’s Associative Thesaurus to be unholy, harmful, defiled, and anything but
separate from sinners (See In Awe of Thy Word for documentation). Ian Paisley,
member of the British Parliament, states that the KJB is “English undefiled” (Ian
Paisley, My Plea for the Old Sword, Belfast, Ambassador, 1997, p. 61). The KJB fulfills
Tyndale’s wish that the final English Bible “seek in certain places more proper English”
(Dore, 2nd ed, pp. 23-24). Tyndale scholar, David Daniell agrees that “the Authorized
Version’s scholars tended to remove the Bible safely away from daily life” (Daniell,
p. xiii).
New bibles are all done under the premise that God wants us to have a bible
that reads like the morning newspaper. He had an easy-reading Bible in the Bishops’
Bible (and the Tyndale, Coverdale, and the Great Bibles) which preceded the KJB.
God permanently replaced the old simple Bishops’ Bible to give the English-speaking
world a Bible that is memorizable and melodic, that aids missionaries in bridging the
language gap, and most importantly, whose vocabulary clearly distinguishes it from
the voice of man. The words in the King James Bible often have only Biblical usage.
Words such as “fornication” and “propitiation” are mouth-filling words which are
meant to be mind-filling too. Words have a speed of their own, that is, each takes
its own amount of time to be said. Longer words are like safety ‘speed bumps.’ They
slow down the reader causing him to stop, pause and think at that bumpy juncture
in the road. These longer words stand in sharp contrast to most of the words in the
KJB, which are simple one or two syllable words.
To fulfill God’s requirement that man, “trembleth at my word,” it must be
recognizable as his word (Isa. 66:2). To be recognizable as his word it must be unique.
When the wind whipped through the window, one could say, the “curtain...was torn
in two” (TNIV, NIV and ESV). When the God of all glory died for our sins on the
cross, “the veil...was rent in twain” (KJB) (Mark 15:38). Special moment – special
language. The KJB substitutes the poetic word ‘twain’ for the Bishops’ simple, yet
more cumbersome two-word phrase “into two pieces” or “parts.” Now the long ‘a’ in
‘twain’ matches precisely the long ‘a’ sound in ‘veil.’ The KJB words are ‘Bible’ words,
powerful, yet sharper than any twoedged sword. For example, someone can say,
‘My keys are ‘lost’ and the vase broke into ‘pieces.’ The commonality of those words
bring with them no jolt or sense of urgency. However, those who do not believe in
Jesus Christ will “perish,” a special word for an eternal decision. The unbeliever will
be cut “asunder.” These are blood pressure words, piercing and dividing asunder
even to the soul and spirit.
The KJB translators often considered and rejected so-called simple words, seen
in today’s new versions, in their effort to produce a “separate from sinners” Bible.
The Annotated Bishops’ Bible (1603-1611) contains notes which show that the KJB
translators rejected the NKJV’s “worthy” for “meete for” (Matt. 3:8) and “what shall
we put on?” for “Wherewithall shall we be clothed” (Matt. 6:31). They rejected the
new versions’ “teaching” for “doctrine” in Mark 4:2.
Even USA TODAY quotes “linguistic experts” who state that, “We have always
implicitly taught our children different language structures and how they function in
different arenas...We use a different language structure watching a baseball game
than in our place of worship. Most children will understand the difference” (April, 1,
2003, p. 8D). The KJB contains both the “elevated” word, as Stanford Professor Lerer
calls them, and the simpler word. They are placed in parallelism near each other so
that the definition of the harder word is clearly understood. The easy word usually
comes from an Anglo-Saxon root, while the more difficult word is sometimes of
Latin origin. This makes the KJB an internationally readable book. Those who read
Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and Italian will recognize the Latin word.
Those who read German, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish will recognize
the Anglo-Saxon word. For example, in Heb. 7:2-6, the KJB translators introduced a
built-in definition for the “elevated” and special word ‘tithe’ as “a tenth part.” The
Bishops’ Bible said, “Abraham gave tithe of all...received tyth.” The KJB changed it to,
“Abraham gave a tenth part of all...received tithe.”
The Holy Bible is thousands of years old. It is not a passing fancy or current
craze. It must communicate its antiquity and longevity to the reader. Its seasoned
sentences must communicate to their reader the sense that it is a book which has
withstood the test of time and is still in print. The special words tell the reader that
the book has time-honored thoughts and timeless wisdom. They tell the reader not
to approach this book as they do any other book.

“Ye May Understand”

In 1611 the KJB served only 5 million English-speaking people. Today it can be
used to bring this century’s nearly 2 billion English-speakers to a saving knowledge
of Jesus Christ (49% of these are native speakers of English; 51% of these can speak
English as their second language). This is nearly 33% of the world’s population, which
is 16% of the people who have ever lived. This is why the devil battles against the
King James Bible. The teaching of English is now required in most nations of the
world. English Professor Lerer feels that ‘in many ways, the central feature of 20th
century English is its status as a global language’ (See David Crystal’s The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of the English Language and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language;
H.L. Mencken, The American Language, NYC: Alfred Knopf, 1937, pp. 590-615; The
Teaching Company newsletter re: The History of the English Language, n.d.).
Now in the 21st century, English wins, not by mere force of numbers, but by
weight of its intrinsic character, which linguist H.L. Mencken calls, “The prevalence
of very short words in English...[a] succinct, straightforward and simple tongue –
in some of its aspects, in fact almost as a kind of baby-talk” (Mencken, pp. 600,
602). The KJB is generally made up of short Anglo-Saxon words, not lumpy Latin
words used by new versions to conform to the Derivative Copyright Law (which
forces them to make “substantial” changes in order to secure a copyright). When
possible, the KJB translators tapered the words “like a sharp sword...a polished
shaft” (Isa. 49:2). Although the KJB has a few big or special words, most of its words
and translations are shorter than those in new versions. The King James Bible is “a
little book.” The translators forged the shortest, ‘quickest’ and most piercing path
to man’s soul. New versions crowd Latinized and paraphrased words, bumper to
bumper, slowing down reading and blocking from view God’s billboard words, such
as ‘atonement’ and ‘remission.’ Those who “run in a race” need a ‘run and read’
Bible (1 Cor. 9:24). “Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run
that readeth it” (Hab. 2:2). For example, the KJB changed the Bishops’ “followed” to
“was” (Matt. 8:26), “howbeit” to “but” (Matt. 15:8), and “fulfilled” to “done” (Matt.
26:42). God’s polishing grindstone honed away at the sword of the Spirit so that it
remained “purified” and “sharper.” The razor-edged pen-points of the translators
trimmed off any unnecessary “weight,” so that the words ‘come right to the point’
and are penetrating and pointed. Like Paul, who said, “...I wrote afore in few words,
Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand...” (Eph. 3:3, 4).
The KJB’s built-in ‘English teacher’ provides eleven different forms to
communicate eleven different parts of speech. New versions jumble all eleven into
five forms, making Bible comprehension very difficult. The KJB simplifies grammatical
comprehension because it retains the words which automatically identify parts
of speech: 1.) thou (singular nominative), 2.) thee (singular objective), 3.) thine
(singular possessive pronoun), 4.) thy (singular possessive adjective), 5.) ye (plural
nominative), 6.) you (plural objective), 7.) your (plural possessive adjective), 8.) yours
(plural possessive pronoun), 9.) write (first person: I), 10.) writest (second person:
thou), and 11.) writeth (third person: he, she, or it). Words that are singular have one
t-stick: thou, thee, thine, and thy. Words that are plural have a y-stick whose top is
broken into two branches: ye, you, your, yours. Most languages, including Hebrew
and Greek, are what linguists call ‘synthetic.’ A single word (love) blends its meaning
with an ending (called an inflected ending, e.g. lovest) which indicates that it is a verb
(an action or being word) and identifies the verb’s subject. The first person is I love;
the second person is thou lovest (‘s’ for second person); and the third person is he,
she, or it loveth (‘t’ for third person). It is all as easy as A, B, C.
Modern English and new English bibles are not ‘synthetic.’ They are what
linguists call ‘analytical.’ The reader must analyze them, hoping for clues from the
word order, to determine what part of speech a word is and what word it modifies
(e.g. first person: I love; second person: you love; third person: he loves). Who does
‘love,’ you or I? Such subjective conclusions do not suit the Bible, where “private
interpretation” is forbidden (2 Peter 1:20). The word of God is a legal document.
Jesus said, “...the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day”
(John 12:48). Modern language substitutes are not precise enough. It is imperative
that these endings be retained because a verb is sometimes separated from its
subject. The endings make vital theological distinctions.
The KJB is the only English Bible that speaks and spells like most of the languages
in the world. It is international English and is God’s bridge to reach a world now
clamoring to learn English. Retaining the ‘-est’ and ‘-eth’ endings is the only way
to show important grammatical and theological distinctions, clearly seen in Greek,
Hebrew, and many foreign Bibles. Missionaries love the KJB because its ‘-est’ and
‘-eth’ verb endings match those of many of the world’s languages. These too have
an ‘s’ in the second person and a ‘t’ in the third person verb endings. The KJB’s
“becamest” is ‘wurdest’ in Modern German. Those who speak Greek, German,
Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Yiddish, and many other languages know that
an ‘s’ in the ending means second person singular. The use of a ‘t’ in the ending also
signals the third person to many.
In addition to the matching ending letters, the word for ‘thou’ in many languages
is a ‘t’ or ‘d’ word like tu or du. These match the KJB’s ‘t’ in ‘thou;’ the ‘you’ in
modern bibles will not communicate to non-English speakers at all. For example,
the KJB’s “thou givest” mirrors the German “du gibst.” The new versions’ “you give”
will be unrecognizable. Likewise, the KJB’s “thou findest” matches the German “du
findest.” Its “thou redeemedst” matches the Italian “tu redimésti” and its “thou
lovedst” matches the Spanish “tu amaste,” not the new versions’ “you loved.” The
edge of a sword and the edges of words are critical; they sever the true from the
false. Jesus is the beginning and the ending, even in his word. “I am…the ending,
saith the Lord” (Rev. 1:8).
The KJB is Biblical English, not 17th century style. Shakespeare’s plays, written
during the same period, did not use the ‘-eth’ and ‘-est’ endings. The ‘Preface to
the KJB,’ written before 1611 by the translators, does not sound like the King James
Bible. It says “your very name,” not ‘thy very name.’ The KJB translators used ‘thee,’
‘ye,’ ‘thy,’ ‘thine,’ ‘eth,’ and ‘est’ endings (on verbs) in the Bible because these are the
only way to show important grammatical and theological distinctions, clearly seen
in Greek, Hebrew, and most of the world’s Bibles. KJB English is Biblical English, not
archaic English.

“The Beauty of Holiness”

A peacock is no more perfect or beautiful than a swan. A peacock is simply
magnified in the beauty of its details. Beauty under a magnifying glass is magnified
beauty. When early English Bibles dawned, their simple lines were like the swan.
Now they pale with the magnified details of the beautiful King James Bible. The
previous Bibles, such as the Bishops’ (c. 1568-1611) were no less perfect, pure, and
true than the KJB. Their beauty was simply polished, as pure gold is polished, so that
the KJB magnifies and mirrors more finely the glorious reflection of our precious
Saviour, “Jesus the author” (Heb. 12:2). The God-designed ark of the covenant was
structural wood adorned with pure gold. Was the gold essential to the structure or
was it used to reflect the beauty of its contents, “the testimony,” which was the
word of God (Exod. 25:10-16)? The true “holy scriptures” will have “the beauty of
holiness.” They will be “...for glory and for beauty” (1 Chron. 16:29, 2 Chron. 20:21,
Psa. 29:2, Psa. 96:9, Exod. 28:2, 40). Through the scriptures, “Thine eyes shall see
the king in his beauty...” (Isa. 33:17) and “...how great is his beauty!” (Zech. 9:17).
The few changes the KJB made were not executed to update an evolving English
language or to represent the language of that day. The fine-tuning done by the
KJB translators was done to magnify the following qualities: 1.) intensify meter, 2.)
add alliteration, 3.) secure brevity, 4.) ensure continuity, 5.) introduce a separate-
from-sinners’ vocabulary, 6.) give a transparent view of the inflected and precise
language seen in Greek, Hebrew, and most of the world’s languages, 7.) polish
the synchronization of letter sounds, syllabication, and syntax, and 8.) enhance
memorization, comprehension, and parasympathetic rhythms. The KJB translators
took these elements into consideration and chose words (usually from earlier English
Bibles) which carried the greatest number of these qualities.
Auburn University Professor, Ward Allen writes of “[T]he miraculous perfection
of the Authorized Version” (Translating for King James, p. ix). The “miraculous”
phenomena are found in every line of the KJB. These represent, not special spots, but
the entire fabric of “holy scriptures.” Even secular writers can find reasons to “praise
his word” (Psa. 56:4, 10). Professor Allen experienced what he calls the “sense of
the miraculous” during his lifelong examination of the King James Bible. Vanderbilt
University Press says that the “King James Bible” is the “best-selling book of all time”
and “the most glorious document in the history of the English language” (Translating
For King James, ix, back cover, et al.). British Professor, David Daniell, praises the
“miraculous” sense of the KJB, noting that, “The Authorized Version became the
acme of achievable literary perfection...” (Daniell, pp. vii, ix, x et al.).
America’s pre-eminent linguist, H.L. Mencken, though an unbeliever, concludes
regarding the King James Bible: “It is the most beautiful of all the translations of the
Bible; indeed it is probably the most beautiful piece of writing in all the literature of
the world...[M]any learned but misguided men have sought to produce translations...
in the plain speech of everyday. But the Authorized Version has never yielded to
any of them, for it is palpably and overwhelmingly better than they are, just as
it is better than the Greek New Testament, or the Vulgate, or the Septuagint. Its
English is extraordinarily simple, pure, eloquent, and lovely. It is a mine of lordly and
incomparable poetry, at once the most stirring and the most touching ever heard
of” (Paine, p. viii).
Former President Ronald Reagan defends the beautiful King James Bible and
denounces the threadbare bibles woven by this generation. In his September 6, 1977
broadcast, as preserved in the audio series, Reagan in His Own Words, he criticizes
attempts to “improve” the “authorized version, the one that came into being when
the England of King James was scoured for translators and scholars. It was the time
when the English language had reached its peak of richness and beauty.” Reagan
questions new versions which, he said, “...boast that their bible is as readable as the
daily paper...But do readers of the daily news find themselves moved to wonder,
‘at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth’?” “[D]rudges,” he calls
them, “horsing around with the sacred text,” under the guise of trying to “make the
Bible more readable and understandable” and “taking religion to the people”...“I
can’t help feeling we should instead be taking the people to religion and lifting them
with the beauty of language that has outlived centuries...[I]t has already been gotten
right.”
The Boston Globe laments with Oxford’s Alister McGrath, “Our culture has been
enriched by...the King James Bible. Sadly, we shall never see its equal – or even its like
– again” (In the Beginning Details Bible’s Imprint on English, by Diego Ribadeneira,
July 9, 2001, p. B11). Although worldly wise men can sense the miraculous and
see a dim glimpse of the glory of God in the KJB, they cannot truly understand its
pages unless they have received Jesus Christ as their Saviour. The Holy Bible is about
him; only he, through the Spirit, can allow us to understand it. “...Did not our heart
burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the
scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). Even Christians whose hearts are “hardened in pride”
cannot understand the Bible with their minds. Christians can only “understand with
their heart.” To understand the Bible first, “set thine heart to understand.” “[T]hey
that seek the LORD understand all things.” (Prov. 8:5, 28:5, Dan. 5:20, 10:12, Mark
8:17, Matt. 13:15, Isa. 6:10, Acts 28:27).

The Heartbeat of God

The three things which make the KJB scriptures easy to understand and to “hide”
in the “heart” are: 1.) brevity, 2.) the use of matching letter sounds, and 3.) rhythm
and meter. The use of like-sounds with like-things is a basic tenet of comprehension.
God is good; the devil is evil and vile. The KJB does half of the thinking for the reader.
For example, Luke 3:17 says, “whose fan is in his hand, and he...will gather the wheat
into his garner….” The Bishops’ Bible used the simple word ‘barn’ instead of the more
poetic ‘garner.’ The KJB more wisely teaches the reader what a barn is by matching
the letters in ‘garner’ with its defining ‘gather.’ God often uses echoed letters to
amplify a thought, connect words in the mind, or to communicate the “beauty
of holiness.” The King James Bible pulls words from old Bibles, such as Tyndale’s,
Coverdale’s and Wycliffe’s, to bring these soothing alliterations to their apex and
take advantage of “the proper collocation of sounds” (Translating for King James, p.
26). Harvard’s Literary Guide to the Bible states that “modern versions” are “diluted
by deliberate variations,” “mask the techniques of repetition,” and even show a “real
desire to suppress them...” (R. Alter and F. Kermode, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 656, 654, 655).
 Get close to the King James Bible and hear the hidden heartbeat of God, just as
the apostle John did when he leaned on Jesus’ breast. The word of God “liveth” (1
Peter 1:23). Only in the “miraculous” KJB do accented syllables and matching letter
sounds pulse at equally proportioned intervals, echoing the rhythm of the life-giving
breath of a living, breathing speaker, the Spirit of the living God. Because of this
parasympathetic rhythm, the King James Bible comforts the Christian, just like the
rhythmic rocking chair and the mother’s pulsing heartbeat calms the nestled baby.
“As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you” (Isa. 66:13).
The KJB’s loud, accented syllables call attention to important words. The KJB calls
attention to parallel word definitions by means of matching syllable numbers. Even
Harvard’s Literary Guide to the Bible alerts readers to the “parallelism of stressed
syllables” also seen in the Hebrew Bible (p. 613). The KJB communicates the intended
tone by varying the type of meter, a technique copied by the worldly movie industry,
which changes the music when the villain enters. Professor Ward Allen states, “The
translators’ lifelong use of poetry has left its mark on the King’s Bible” (The Coming
of the King James Gospels, p. 48). The KJB’s syllabication communicates meaning.
The KJB’s rhythm allows scripture to be committed to memory more easily. In The
Story of English the author observes that the KJB “makes the sentence sing” (Robert
McCrum, NY: Penguin Books, 1987, p. 113). Children love its rhythms. They can
sing and say the King James. The KJB’s mathematical order conveys the precise and
masterful character of the Creator. Nobel Prize winning poet, T.S. Eliot, also observed
the fact that elevated writing, like that seen in the Bible, has a “...feeling for syllable
and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feelings,
invigorating every word” (Adam Nicolson, God’s Secretaries, NYC: HarperCollins,
2003, p. 223).
The rhythmic turns and metered refrains of our royal King James Bible have
encored in hearts since the 17th century. Its time-long vocabulary gives the Bible
deeper wells from which to draw when casting poetic effects. Its time-stretching
stream of words includes big words, little words, easy words, and “separate from
sinners” words. In the time-traveling KJB, we discover several synonyms to express
the same thought. Synonyms are different words which have much the same meaning.
But only one of them may have the correct letters, accented syllable, or number of
syllables to create the desired effect in a particular context. (Synonyms are also the
Bible’s built-in dictionary.) Observe Matt. 16:8, 9: “Which when Jesus perceived, he
said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye
have brought no bread? Do ye not understand, neither remember the five loaves of
the five thousand….” ‘Perceive’ and ‘understand’ are synonyms; they have the same
meaning. The KJB translators change the Bishops’ ‘perceive’ to ‘understand’ in verse
9 (to pair it with the word ‘thousand’). Conversely they changed ‘understoode’ to
‘perceived’ (and ‘you’ to ‘ye’) in verse 8 (to match the many strong ‘e’ sounds there).
In Luke 12:33 the KJB changed the Bishops’ “Sell that ye have…and prepare you
bagges” to “Sell that ye have...provide your selves bagges.” The echoed sounds now
include ‘sel’ (Sell + selves), ‘v’ (have, provide + selves), ‘y’ (ye + your), ‘a’ sound (have
+ bagges), and a closing soft ‘s’ (yourselves + bagges).
The reflecting sounds in the King James Bible shine, “as silver tried in a furnace of
earth, purified seven times” (Psa. 12:6). In Luke 19:21 the KJB changed the Bishops’
“because thou art a strait man” to “because thou art an austere man.” Now the
silver sword shines as ‘because’ and ‘austere’ share the sight-rhyme ‘aus.’ Sense-
rhyme chimes with the mutual ‘a’ ‘r’ and ‘t’ sounds in ‘art’ and ‘austere.’ In Gal. 2:6
the KJB changed the Bishops’ “them which seemed to be” to “these who seemed
to be.” The Bishops’ Bible rhymes in only two words. By changing two other words,
the KJB manages to alliterate all five words: ‘these,’ ‘seemed,’ and ‘be’ have the long
‘e’ sound; ‘who’ and ‘to’ have the same ‘o’ sound. In 1 Cor. 4:16 the KJB changed “I
desire you, be ye followers of me” to “I beseech you, be ye followers of me.” This
doubled the reflecting ‘e’ pattern by changing “desire” to “beseech.” Would you
want a real solid silver sword or a forged imitation, a real son of God or one who
imitates him? In this verse the new versions say such things as, “I urge you to imitate
me.” The imitative new versions’ only virtue is that their heresy-haunted texts are
unmelodic and hard to remember.
The rippling sound effects of the KJB are as, “a voice from heaven, as the voice
of many waters...” (Rev. 14:2). In Matt. 24:51 the KJB changed the Bishops’ “hew him
in pieces, and give him his portion with the hypocrites” to “cut him asunder, and
appoint him his portion with the hypocrites.” The echoing ‘asunder’ and ‘appoint’
replace ‘pieces’ and ‘give.’ The word ‘appoint’ is more easily memorized than ‘give,’
because it contains the beginning ‘a’ of asunder, the ‘po-’ of portion, and the final ‘t’
of cut. Three of the words terminate their second syllable with the ‘n’ sound: a-sun-
der, ap-point, and por-tion. The easier ‘cut’ replaces ‘hew.’ Its ‘u’ rhymes with the
‘u’ in ‘asunder.’ Its ‘t’ matches the ‘t’ in ‘appoint’ in sound and position. In Matt. 3:7
the KJB changes “hath warned you to flee from the anger” to “hath warned you to
flee from the wrath.” Now ‘hath’ rhymes with ‘wrath,’ whose ‘r’ sound and eye-
rhymed ‘w’ and ‘a’ match ‘warned.’
Beauty is more than skin deep in the KJB. In Matt. 22:21 the KJB changed the
Bishops’ “Give therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” to “Render
therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” The KJB substitutes ‘Render’
for the Bishops’ easy word ‘Give.’ The re-version NIV, TNIV, and HCSB also use ‘Give.’
The one syllable word ‘give’ does not match the two syllable pattern heard in the
rest of the sentence. The word ‘Render’ also matches the final ‘r’ sound repeated
throughout the sentence. Most importantly, ‘Give’ does not have the same built-in
connotation as ‘Render,’ which is a part of the word surrender. To rend is to split or
take away. To render carries with it the idea that what is given is due to the person
to whom it is given. It is not a gift; something we ‘give’ can be a gift. To render is to
give in return, not just to give. The first usage of ‘render’ in the KJB gives a picture of
this (Numbers 18:9). God says I have ‘given’ ten times in Numbers 18:6-26, but only
once does he say, “they shall render unto me.” In other words, God gives first; only
then can we render to him. (See also OED s.v. rend, render.)
The following examples demonstrate just a few of the thousands upon thousands
of examples of alliteration, rhyme, assonance, and consonance seen in the KJB. These
are just a few of the ones that were polished in the transition from the Bishops’ Bible
to the KJB. The sources of the KJB’s choices were often from earlier English versions.
The KJB changed “halt came” to “lame came” (Matt. 21:14), “heart was blinded” to
“heart was darkened” (Romans 1:21), “causeth wrath” to “worketh wrath” (Romans
4:15), “cannot abstaine” to “cannot contain” (1 Cor. 7:9), “boldness and entrance” to
“boldness and access” (Eph. 3:12), “measure of the age” to “measure of the stature”
(Eph. 4:13), “powdered with salt” to “seasoned with salt” (Col. 4:6), “suddenly moved”
to “soon shaken” (2 Thes. 2:2), “spirites of errour” to “seducing spirits” (1 Tim. 4:1),
“partaker...chaste” to “partaker...pure” (1 Tim. 5:22), “lucre is godliness” to “gain is
godliness” (1 Tim. 6:5), “made perfect from the foundation” to “finished from the
foundation” (Heb. 4:3), “blood of oxen” to “blood of bulls” (Heb. 9:13), “win gain” to
“get gain” (James 4:13). In Mark 9:3 the KJB transforms the Bishops’ Bible into the
engraved-memory KJB. The Bishops’ “did shine, and become very white” developed
into “became shining exceeding white.” It uses the long ‘e’ in ‘exceeding’ to match
the long ‘e’ in ‘became.’ It pairs the ‘-ing’ sounds in ‘shining’ and ‘exceeding.’

The Comfort of the Scriptures

The polishing of “the sword of the Spirit” done by the KJB translators was done
on both of its edges. They forged contextually precise word meanings with the
intricate literary devices available in the English language. Today’s Bible critics and
translators evidence little sensitivity to the aesthetic potential of our language. The
KJB translators prayerfully put the God-provided linguistic puzzle pieces into the
correct places, much like parent-guided children putting a puzzle together, that when
finished, is a Rembrandt painting. God provided the heaven-sent building blocks at
Babel and in Acts 2; the God-guided hands of the KJB translators simply set the blocks
into their fitting places preserved by the Holy Ghost. The KJB is called “the word of
God” and “the word of the Lord” in hundreds and hundreds of verses, because it is
God, who needs no translator, speaking directly to the reader (1 Thes. 2:13). God can
speak English and all of the languages of the world. “Do not interpretations belong
to God?” (Gen. 40:8). Would God, who himself created new words and languages
for men at the tower of Babel, commit the communication of his pure and perfect
mind, to sinful man?
How can you tell if you have the English Bible which has the life-giving breath of
the Spirit of God? The King James Bible of 1611 is still living and loved by millions now,
400 years later. Hundreds and hundreds of would-be bibles are buried with their
copyright holders, unable to breathe without the hot air of advertising campaigns.
They have no life and breath of their own. The KJB’s “author” lives “for ever” (Heb.
5:6, 9). God’s handywork, his world and his word, came from the breath of his mouth.
Like breathing, they exhibit rhythm.
Rhythm is evidenced in the KJB in several ways. One means is through the
regular repetition of accented syllables. When these loud accented syllables are
placed at equally proportioned intervals, a sense of rhythm and order is achieved.
The continued ebb and flow of evenly spaced accented and unaccented syllables
mirrors the rhythm of a living, breathing speaker, GOD. The ordering of accented
syllables accomplishes more than just rhythm. It is used in the KJB to direct the
reader to mirrored meanings. In Psalm 73:2 the matching iambic meter helps the
reader find the parallel definition of words. It chimes: “my feet were almost gone/
my steps had well nigh slipped,” Each line has six syllables, divided into 3 identical
two syllable feet each. These pair up perfectly to create parallel definitions for ‘feet’
(steps), ‘were’ (had), ‘almost’ (well nigh), and ‘gone’ (slipped). In iambic meter, there
are two syllables, the first syllable is unaccented, the second is accented. This is a
trimeter (three meter) line, with three feet in each line.
Every line of the King James Bible pulses with such rhythms. A randomly chosen
verse, John 16:29, exemplifies the miraculous cadence of the word of God. 1.) Note
that the beginning words, “His di-sci’-ples/ said un-to’ him,/ Lo, now speak’-est”
break up into identically matched sets of 4 syllables. The accented (loud) syllables
occur on exactly every 5th syllable. 2.) The remainder of the verse, “thou plain’-ly/
and speak’-est/ no pro’-verb” breaks up into identically matched sets of 3 syllables.
The accented syllable occurs on exactly every 4th syllable. The rhythm of the
recurring accented syllable is magnified because they begin with ‘s’ and ‘p’ sounds.
3.) The loud accented syllables are in the most important words in the verse. The
words that do not contain accented syllables can be eliminated and the remaining
words will still communicate the essence of the verse. 4.) Not only do the accented
syllables serve to communicate meaning (i.e. the loud words should be heard),
but also the groups into which the words unite together communicate a complete
thought. They are not paired in chaotic senseless syllables like ‘him Lo now’ or ‘ly and
speak.’ All of the rhythm and special effects would disappear if the word “speakest”
was changed to ‘speak’ and “unto” was changed to ‘to.’ New versions omit these
seemingly tiny elements and mutilate the masterful word of God. A poet might miss
the aforementioned phenomenon and simply see the trochaic meter, which accents
every other syllable, and the dactylic meter which accents every fourth syllable.
Note also the ‘s’ and ‘p’ sounds in the precise position for rhythm (For many more
examples and further elaboration on any topic in this booklet see G.A. Riplinger, In
Awe of Thy Word, e.g. pp. 346-348 et al.).
If God does “count all my steps,” how much more closely would his thoughts be
“weighed in an even balance” (Job 31:4, 6). For example, in Rom. 2:20 the Bishops’
uneven 3/7 syllable pattern (“in-for-mer/of them which lacke dis-cre-tion”) became
the mirrored 4/4 syllable and accent pattern in the KJB’s “An in-struc’-tor/Of the
fool’-ish.” In Romans 13:12 the Bishops’ 4/5 syllable pattern “the night is passed/the
day is come nigh” became the mirrored 5/5 syllable pattern, “The night is far spent/
the day is at hand.” The NIV and TNIV destroy this with the 7/6 mis-match, “The
night is nearly over:/the day is almost here.”
Through the pulsing pages of the King James Bible, “the Spirit of the living
God”…“shall talk with thee…” (2 Cor. 3:3, Prov. 6:22). How is all of this possible, the
critic may ask? English is a gifted language. Through the centuries missionaries both
into and from English-speaking nations have brought to it the gift of words from
many languages. This makes English perhaps the most poetic language in the world,
because English provides the largest vocabulary with which to work. Nearly every
English word has many synonyms. We who speak English can say the same thing
using a three syllable Latinate word or a one syllable Germanic word. English (and
the KJB) have become today’s international language, in part, because of this.

“Come ye yourselves apart…and rest a while…” Mark 6:31

“And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me...” (Exod. 33:21). The
rhythmic heartbeat of Jesus Christ, the Word, was heard by the apostle John
“lying on Jesus’ breast” (John 13:25). We too can move close to the living Word
of God and hear him yet today through his written word, “the spirit of his mouth”
(2 Thes. 2:8). We can hear the heartbeat of God through the rhythm in the King
James Bible. Our stethoscope on the KJB tells us it is alive and well. For example,
in 2 Cor. 4:10 the KJB changed the Bishops’ Bible’s “beare about in the body” to
“bear-ing a-bout in the b-ody,” so that the ‘b’ sound resonates uniformly every 4
syllables. The KJB’s miraculously ordered pattern and sequence of sounds sing to
us of a heavenly kingdom where disorder and chaos do not exist. The Bible is our
placid land of rolling hills and trickling brooks, of the high then soft sounds of a sea
rushing then receding to carry us off to the land of an unclouded day. Jesus said,
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth...” (John
14:27). Curl up in the “clift,” as Moses did (Exod. 33:21-22); listen closely to sounds
from the heart of God, echoed line after line in the KJB. The translators wrote that
the scriptures will first, “make thee wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15) then, “...
if out of the way, they will bring us home; if out of order, they will reform us, if in
heaviness, comfort us; if dull, quicken us; if cold, inflame us...” (The Translators).
When the storms surge in the soul, the sea rages, and the gales rip, linger in their
pages. Hear heaven’s harps through the strains of the King James Bible.
 THIS BOOK is a summary of the 662 page history section of the 1,184 page
color-coded hardback book, In Awe of Thy Word: Understanding the King James Bible, Its History
and Mystery. That book is the first and only documented history of the words of the Holy Bible.
• It is based on a word-for-word and letter-by-letter analysis of a vault of ancient, rare and valuable
Bibles. Ten thousand hours of collation rescued echoes from these documents almost dissolved
by time.
• See for yourself the unbroken preservation of the pure holy scriptures from the first century to
today’s beloved King James Bible. Watch the English language and its Holy Bible unfold before
your very eyes.
• Examine the letters and sounds, shown in red, which bind the words of each successive Bible from
the Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, pre-Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale, Great, Geneva, and Bishops’ to the
King James Bible.
• Uncover time-buried eyewitness reports, views, and Bible study secrets of history’s great
translators and martyrs.
• See word-for-word collations, aided by the KJB translators’ newly discovered notes, revealing
exactly how the translators polished the sword of the Spirit.
• Watch in horror as the destroyer, through the NIV, TNIV, HCSB, NKJV, and ESV, teams up with
Jehovah Witness and Catholic versions to silence the utterances of the Holy Ghost. History’s Bibles
and their champions defeat their challengers, as they meet on this book’s pages.

I n Awe of Thy Word also contains 522 pages explaining what past generations knew – how to
find the meaning of each Bible word, inside the Bible itself.
• Understand also what translators, such as Erasmus and Coverdale, meant when they spoke of the
vernacular Bible’s “holy letters” and “syllables.” See how these God-set alphabet building blocks
build a word’s meaning and automatically define words for faithful readers of the King James Bible
– which alone brings forward the fountainhead of letter meanings discovered by computational
linguists from the world’s leading universities.
• Learn the latest research tools from the Universities of Toronto and Edinburgh, which prove the
purity of the KJB and the depravity of the new versions.
• Find out how only the King James Bible teaches and comforts through its “miraculous”
mathematically ordered sounds.
• Meet the KJB’s built-in English teacher, ministering to children and over a billion people around
the globe.
• Journey around the world and see that only the KJB matches the pure scriptures preserved “to all
generations,” including the Greek, Hebrew, Old Itala, Danish, German, French, Spanish and others.
In Awe of Thy Word · 1,184 pages
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