Let’s begin at a place of awe and mystery: the Codex
Sinaiticus. Dated to approximately AD 330–360, this Greek manuscript stands
as the oldest nearly complete copy of both the Old and New Testaments.
Discovered in the 19th century at Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai,
the Codex Sinaiticus includes not only the full New Testament and large
portions of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures),
but also early Christian writings like the Epistle of Barnabas and The
Shepherd of Hermas. Today, this codex is split between the British Library
in London, Leipzig University, the National Library of Russia, and its original
monastery.
What’s striking is how little the 17th-century King James
translators knew of this treasure. When the King James Version (KJV) was
translated between 1604 and 1611, scholars had no access to Sinaiticus, nor to
Codex Vaticanus—another early 4th-century Greek manuscript sitting largely
unnoticed in the Vatican Library. The translators of the KJV had to work with
far later Greek manuscripts—what we now refer to collectively as the Textus
Receptus, compiled from 12th to 15th-century Byzantine texts. This means
that, despite the KJV's literary majesty, its textual base was already more
than a millennium removed from the earliest witnesses to the New Testament.
Even Codex Alexandrinus, a 5th-century Greek
manuscript, didn’t make it to England until 1627—well after the KJV had been
published. In contrast, the Textus Receptus, which formed the Greek
backbone of the KJV New Testament, was first published by Erasmus in 1516,
based on a small number of later manuscripts. He famously had access to only
one manuscript for Revelation—and it was incomplete. Erasmus ended up back-translating
missing sections from the Latin Vulgate into Greek. So, ironically, the Greek
New Testament that became the basis for English Protestantism included
reconstructed passages not originally found in Greek at all.
The Latin Vulgate, of course, loomed large in the
background. Translated by Jerome between AD 382 and 405, this version of
the Bible dominated Western Christianity for over a millennium. Jerome’s
translation was groundbreaking: he turned not to the Septuagint (as many
earlier Latin translations had) but to the Hebrew texts for much of the Old
Testament. Yet he retained some Old Latin traditions and appended books not
found in the Hebrew canon—what Protestants later labeled the Apocrypha.
By the time of the Reformation, the Vulgate was declared the official Bible of
the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1546.
The KJV translators consulted the Vulgate but did not rely
on it. Their stated aim was to return to the “original tongues”—Hebrew for the
Old Testament and Greek for the New—though ironically, their Greek texts were
centuries removed from the originals. Nevertheless, the Vulgate was invaluable
for comparison, especially when the Greek or Hebrew texts were ambiguous. But
Protestant theology demanded a certain distance from Rome, and so the Vulgate’s
influence, though real, was ultimately limited.
The KJV project was itself a marvel of scholarly
collaboration. Fifty-four translators were appointed, though only forty-seven
completed the work. These scholars were divided into six companies across
Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, with each team assigned a specific portion
of scripture. Their method was rigorous: individual translations, followed by
group discussions, revisions, and a final committee review to ensure
consistency and beauty. The result was a literary triumph—but also a
translation deeply shaped by the limitations of its day.
So what were those limitations? Most crucially, the Textus
Receptus was laden with later additions and theological expansions.
Consider Mark 16:9–20, the so-called "longer ending of Mark,"
which includes the signs that will follow believers—handling snakes, drinking
poison, etc. These verses are absent from the earliest manuscripts but included
in the TR and therefore in the KJV. The story of the woman caught in
adultery in John 7:53–8:11? Again, absent in earlier manuscripts, but
present in later Byzantine copies. Or take the Comma Johanneum in 1 John
5:7–8—"the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are
one"—a Trinitarian flourish found only in very late Latin manuscripts, and
yet embedded in the KJV.
In contrast, modern translations rely on critical texts like
the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament (currently NA28) and the United
Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (UBS5). These texts are based on
thousands of manuscripts, including 2nd–3rd century papyri and early
codices like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. They often prefer shorter, more
difficult readings—on the principle that scribes tend to expand, not
abbreviate, and that theological harmonization usually came later.
Then there’s the Majority Text, a 20th-century
attempt to reconstruct the New Testament by following the readings found in the
majority of surviving manuscripts—most of which are Byzantine. While similar in
many respects to the TR, it doesn't carry the same theological glosses. The SBL
Greek New Testament (SBLGNT), edited by Michael Holmes, offers another
approach: a textual collation not based on manuscripts directly, but on
scholarly editions like Westcott and Hort, Tregelles, and the Majority Text,
with an eye toward openness and clarity.
All these efforts—Nestle-Aland, UBS, Majority Text,
SBLGNT—represent the flowering of modern textual criticism, a discipline
that didn’t exist in the time of the KJV. Back then, scholars didn’t have
access to the thousands of manuscript witnesses we have today, nor the
discipline of comparing them methodically using internal and external criteria.
Today’s scholars consider things like geographic distribution, date,
scribal habits, and even linguistic flow to determine what is
likely original.
Some may ask: does all this matter? Isn’t the Word of God
still the Word of God, regardless of textual variation?
Yes—and no.
The divine spark, the inspiration behind scripture, is not
bound by human hands. But the vehicle of that inspiration—the text
itself—was entrusted to fallible stewards. And if we are serious about
truth, then understanding how that text has changed, expanded, and sometimes
even been manipulated over the centuries becomes a sacred responsibility.
This is not about undermining faith. It’s about deepening
it. When I look at the history of Bible translation, I don’t see a reason
to abandon the sacred. I see a reason to approach it with humility. To study.
To compare. To listen to the voices of the past—both those preserved and those
nearly silenced. And to let the Spirit speak freshly in each generation.
The Word is alive, yes. But it has also been edited.
To ignore that is to risk mistaking the wrappings for the gift. To recognize it
is to more clearly behold the light shining through all the layers of history,
culture, doctrine, and translation.
So for those of us who walk the line between tradition and
critique, between reverence and reform, this work matters. The Bible we hold is
not static. It is, in a very real sense, a living document, shaped by
scribes, monks, reformers, skeptics, scholars—and yes, by the Spirit of God
moving in the hearts of those willing to ask, seek, and knock.
And that, to me, is where faith and scholarship meet.
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