King James Version

From MormonWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Mormon King James Bible
The King James Version of the Bible is an English translation of the Christian Bible. It was begun in 1604 and first published in 1611 by the Church of England. It is called the "authorized version" in England. It was issued by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII. In January 1604, King James I of England convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected by the Puritans. The Puritans were a faction within the Church of England. [1]

The translation was completed with great care by 47 scholars located at various centers of higher learning in England—the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and Westminster. All of the scholars were members of the Episcopal, or Anglican, Church—The Church of England—and all but one were ordained priests. The translation was expected to uphold Protestant ideals and beliefs. As with most other translations completed during the era, the New Testament was translated from the "Received Text" series of Greek texts, and the Old Testament was translated from the Masoretic Hebrew text. The original Authorized version also included the Apocrypha. The translators of the Apocrypha for the Authorized Version worked from the Greek Septuagint (created for Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria, Egypt), except for 2 Esdras, which was translated from Latin texts.

A King James Version printed by the LDS Church
The original King James Version replaced the "Bishop's Bible" in England. One of the requirements for the translators was to refrain from making notes in the margins, as marginal notes in previous editions had made value judgments offensive to some—a few offensive to the King himself.

The translators did refer to the text of the Bishop's Bible, keeping the names of Biblical characters from the former text. They also consulted previous English translations of the Bible: the Tyndale Bible, the Coverdale Bible, Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible. Recent scholars have also detected influences from the Taverner's Bible and the New Testament of the Douai-Rheims Bible. [2]

The edition used by English-speaking members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not include the Apocrypha. Nor does it include the following books: The Song of Songs, Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, Baruch.

The edition printed by the Mormon Church is identical to the Authorized King James Version in every other way, except that it has been thoroughly cross-referenced to the other scriptures in the Standard Works of the Church.


References

  1. Wikipedia:Authorized King James Version
  2. Ibid.

Read More