mrmoderate

Nope! It's all there in the NIV. The KJV was translated into the Old English of King James's time using the oldest text available at the time. The NIV is translated into more modern Americanized English and has used even older texts that were found after the KJV was written. For this reason there are some passages that were in the KJV text that has been removed from the body of the NIV but are still inserted in the footnotes.

RRK

A lot of people have mentioned links, but it's largely because even for those who hold to Byzantine supremacy, the Textus Receptus is a really crappy sampling of Byzantine manuscripts. Not to mention, parts of the Greek text were back-translated.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Actually, in regard to the gospels, the differences between the Byzantine text, the Majority text, and the Textus Receptus are for the most part technical.

For example, here,

http://www.greeknewtestament.com/

you can see the Byzantine version and the Textus Receptus (2 of them) for any given verse. The differences, if any, are usually very minor.

The picture gets more complex in the Epistles and the Revelation.

IMO there's nothing wrong with the KJV. It's a fine English version for the most part -- a lot better than the "modern" translations that are all based on the N/A Greek.

YLT is also a fine translation, and sometimes it's quite good for clarifying KJV and the other versions.

All the best,

Yuri

Magdlyn

I guess you mean you think the KJV is a "fine" translation of the Greek Scriptures. You are leaving out the Hebrew Scriptures as irrelevant? The translations of Sheol (grave or pit) as Hell (Hades), for one ex?

Jinksy

I have a more specific question - I'm bickering over whether the Bible contradicts itself on the question of number of gods (based on the quotes here: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/gods.html ). The usual bend-over-backwards apologetics have ensued, but there's half a chance the latest respondent may have a point - he's saying the word 'God' is used to refer to a completely omnipotent being, whereas 'god' (lower case) is used to refer to... well, he hasn't provided a definition, but something lower.

I'm inclined to think that's a bit of a stretch, considering the writers just chuck in an upper case G when it's a reference to the Christian one, but it just occured to me that the original text might shed some light on whether the defence is a valid one one way or another...

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Jinksy,

You can tell that guy that this argument doesn't hold water.

Ancient NT manuscripts do not have this type of capitalisation. So they cannot show a difference between "god" and "God".

OTOH it should also be mentioned that, in the earliest NT manuscripts, special types of abbreviations, known as "nomina sacra", were used. Read about them here,

Nomina Sacra
http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/NominaSacra.html

[this website by Robert Waltz is generally a pretty good reference source for text critical matters]

And in the Hebrew manuscripts, the tetragrammaton is usually used for "god". A whole different story.

And in reply to Magdlyn, yes, he's got a point there. I only commented on the NT text so far, and I should have said so. The question of how the KJV translates the Tanakh is a separate matter, and it's far from simple AFAIK.

I know some Messianic Jews who claim that the KJV translation of the Tanakh is the best (although they may be in the minority).

All the best,

Yuri

Jinksy

Thanks Yuri