Here is an interesting article from christianpioneer.com
Bible Translations
Most Christian bookstores have numerous versions of the bible available for sale. The usual requirement is for it to be easy to read. This may not be the best criteria if one plans on using it to get a clear understanding of what is true. Passions can run high in regard to what is the “best” translation. To understand this subject it can be useful to examine how we came to have the bible.
The first and largest part of the bible is the Old Testament written mostly in Hebrew and translated into Greek as what is called the Septuagint in about 200 BC. The word “testament” can also be called covenant or contract and refers the the agreement between the nation of Israel and God made at Mt. Sinai. Most bible translations use the Hebrew of the Masoretic text which was compiled roughly 1000 AD. The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls dated to around 100 BC tend to support the accuracy of the Masoretic text over the Septuagint.
The second part of the bible is Called the New Testament and was written in Greek. The first four books are called the gospels and written to give a record of Jesus and what he said, what he did, and where he went during his ministry. The rest of the New Testament are epistles (letters) written by Paul, John, James, Peter, and Jude to various groups and churches.
Already at the time of Paul copies of letters were being distributed (Col 4:16). In the 4th century Jerome wrote a translation from the Greek into Latin that was used by the Roman Catholic church for over 1000 years. The quality of his translation left something to be desired. For example the practice of penance was derived from a result of his mistranslation of the Greek metanoia (often translated as repent in English and meant a change of mind in Greek). Jerome translated metanoia into Latin as poenitentiam agite (do penance). As an ascetic himself, he perhaps might be understood to have seen this as a requirement.
Two events happened in the 1400s that would change how Christians would have access to the bible. Constantinople finally fell to the Muslims and the printing press was invented. Scholars from Constantinople brought their copies of the Greek bible with them and some secured teaching positions in Western European universities. Erasmus was a scholar and widely traveled around 1500. In 1515 he had published a Greek New Testament from eight copies of the Greek he had managed to compile. He had been motivated to make a Greek version since he was so dissatisfied with how the Latin version had been translated. Over the next 100 years the compilation Erasus had made was further edited and came to be known as the Textus Receptus (received text). Since then thousands more Greek texts and fragments have been discovered and added to what is now called the “Majority Text”
The King James Version of the bible was first published in 1611. However, numerous initial printing and other errors were corrected which is why some refer to the KJV less as 1611 than as the Authorized version which includes a later more correct version. Many today hold to a strong view that the KJV bible is inspired or preserved by God. It would seem difficult to support this view as there are also a few errors in the KJV. However, one can understand a degree of defensiveness because almost all modern translations of the bible are based on a different Greek text than the one used for the KJV.
Almost all modern translations use a compilation of the Greek called the Critical Text (Also Alexandrian is used) which is different than the Majority Text. In the late 1800s there was a push by academics to have a newer version of the Greek to be used for bible translations. Today the NA28 (Nestle Aland version 28) is mostly used. These versions are considered to be approved by committees of scholars that study various manuscripts. Nestle built his compilation in 1898 by using the Tiscendorf Greek (based on his discovery of a manuscript scheduled to be burned in a monastery in Sinai) and Wescott and Hort who were partial to the Vaticanus manuscript. In 1927 Nestle’s son Erwin came out with version 13 which reduced even further the inclusion of majority text documents.
My opinion is that the Critical Text is inferior, but not cataclysmically so. While getting an accurate version of the original language is important, much greater risk is involved in trying to take the meaning of one word and bring it into another language. For example language is dynamic and changeable. In 1611 the word “test” had not yet come into usage in the English language. As a result, translators would use worlds like “try” or “prove”.
If one were to translate the English word “tall” into another language a choice might have to be made as a mountain can be tall as well as a man. Similarly, in Greek the word “aion” (age, frequently the time of the reign of a ruler) can be variable and is often translated as “eternal” in English. Young’s Literal Translation uses “age-during” to translate aion. The Amplified translation even though it uses the critical Greek text provides multiple words to translate the original language that can help the reader understand better.
Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: - KJV
Eph 2:8 For it is by free grace (God's unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God; - Amplified
Another example of usefulness is the Wuest translation although it also is based on the Critical text makes use of verb information often lost when bringing the Greek to the English.
Eph 2:8 For by the grace have you been saved in time past completely, through faith, with the result that your salvation persists through present time; and this is not from you as a source; of God it is the gift, - Wuest
It can be helpful to have computer software like esword (free) which allows one to examine the original languages and provides bible dictionaries for the original languages.
Eph 2:8 ForG1063 by graceG5485 areG2075 ye savedG4982 throughG1223 faith;G4102 andG2532 thatG5124 notG3756 ofG1537 yourselves:G5216 it is theG3588 giftG1435 of God:G2316 (KJV esword w/Stong’s numbers)
Strong’s G4102 faith
From G3982; persuasion, that is, credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; abstractly constancy in such profession; by extension the system of religious (Gospel) truth itself: - assurance, belief, believe, faith, fidelity.
Thayer - G4102
1) conviction of the truth of anything, belief; in the NT of a conviction or belief respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, generally with the included idea of trust and holy fervour born of faith and joined with it
1a) relating to God
1a1) the conviction that God exists and is the creator and ruler of all things, the provider and bestower of eternal salvation through Christ
1b) relating to Christ
1b1) a strong and welcome conviction or belief that Jesus is the Messiah, through whom we obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom of God
1c) the religious beliefs of Christians
1d) belief with the predominate idea of trust (or confidence) whether in God or in Christ, springing from faith in the same
2) fidelity, faithfulness
2a) the character of one who can be relied on
One can begin to see how bible tools would be useful for one who desires to delve into the bible and draw from it an accurate understanding.
I prefer the KJV for several reasons. Firstly, it is drawn from a superior Greek text. Secondly, the translators did not try to simplify it. Thirdly, its wider use of the English vocabulary approaches the poetic in both expressiveness and almost Shakespearean evocativeness. Lastly, it is useful to locate a verse if it contains a word less common in today’s English. However, the KJV is not perfect, but serves well as a springboard from which to explore the original languages especially since many tools are keyed to the Strong’s numbering system.
I am glad to see this thread is a recently made one. I decided to hop on here to see if I could find any information on the texts that the KJV uses.
When reading online, most of the time what I could find is "Erasmus used multiple texts".
I understand that many of the newer translations refer to the dead sea scrolls. And it is the DSS that is used as a reason stated for why the newer bible translation was made, I have noticed when asking people.
I have read that what was found in the DSS wasn't anything that was actually "new" which made me wonder why there is differences in the newer translations not just difference from the kjv to newer translations but even between the newer translations. Some of the verses in my personal opinion sound like it is saying something completely different sometimes. And if the DSS contains nothing "new" then wouldn't the DSS actually support the KJV?
Also wouldn't the Septuagint (LXX) be more reliable than the Masoretic (MT) because it existed before the MT and Christ's Death? Or is this about what documents were the most numerous for making more copies for preservation?
Granted from what I understand reading online, the LXX copies doesn't seem consistent/don't all agree with each other..
I guess it is the LXX that falls under the Critical Text and the MT that falls under the Majority Text?
Also I found this helpful to post.
"
Here is a short summary of each theory, with more detail to follow in each theory’s section.
“Reasoned Eclecticism” or the “Critical Text” Theory
This method applies a series of rules to the various manuscripts we’ve found (
we’ll look at those rules in a moment). Using these rules – and a healthy dose of scholarly input – they decide what was likely added, removed, or changed, and therefore what’s likely original. The result is called a “Critical Text”. This is the position held by a majority of New Testament Scholars, and nearly all modern Bibles are translated from the Critical Text.
The Majority Text Theory
Majority Text scholars take a more mathematical approach to deciding what the original text of the New Testament was. Their approach is to take all the manuscripts we have, find which Textual Variant has support among the majority of manuscripts, and give that reading priority. This is based on the assumption that scribes will choose to copy good manuscripts over bad ones, and thus better readings will be in the majority over time. There are good mathematical reasons for this method (
which we’ll look at lower down). Because most of our New Testament manuscripts come from the Byzantine Text family (
which we’ll explain lower down), the document that results is often called the “Byzantine Majority text”.
The “Confessional” Position, or “Textus Receptus Only”
This position takes its name from where it starts: a “confession of faith”. The Confessional view holds that God must have preserved the scriptures completely without error. (
We’ll look at the verses they use to support this statement lower down.) They believe that God kept one particular text completely free of error, and that text is the Textus Receptus. The Textus Receptus is a 16th-century Greek New Testament on which the King James Bible is based (
in the New Testament). They will typically only use the King James Bible (
KJV) or New King James Bible (
NKJV) as an English translation, but some will only accept the KJV.
---
There are three major textual families/text types.
Alexandrian Text Type
The Alexandrian text type will need little introduction because nearly all modern Bibles are based on the Alexandrian text type. If you pick up any popular Bible (
except the KJV and NKJV) it’s almost certainly translated primarily from the Alexandrian text type. Almost all of the oldest manuscripts we have are of the Alexandrian text type, probably due to the climate in the location where they are typically found (
Alexandrian is in Egypt, and its dry climate is ideal for preservation.) The Alexandrian text type is slightly shorter than the Byzantine text type.
Western Text Type
The Western text type is different from the other textual families mostly because of its “love of paraphrase”. One scholar said of the Western text type: “
Words and even clauses are changed, omitted, and inserted with surprising freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness.” Unsurprisingly, they aren’t given too much weight because of this freeness. Further, we have relatively few Western text-type manuscripts.
Byzantine Text Type
We have more manuscripts of the Byzantine text type
by far than the other two families combined. Robinson-Pierpont said in their introduction to their Greek New Testament “
Of the over 5000 total continuous-text and lectionary manuscripts, 90% or more contain a basically Byzantine Text form“. However, the majority of these manuscripts are later than Alexandrian manuscripts. The Byzantine text type does have some very early witnesses, (
in papyri from the 200s and 300s) but these often contain Byzantine readings mixed in with the other text types. The Byzantine text type is noticeably longer than the Alexandrian text type.
(
Note: the Byzantine Text type has several names, including the Traditional Text, Ecclesiastical Text, Constantinopolitan Text, Antiocheian Text, and Syrian Text.)
-
Majority Text vs. Critical Text vs. Textus Receptus - Textual Criticism 101 - Berean Patriot
"
