Question: Why do you prefer the KJV over modern translations?

The Berean Call Podcast

Question: I was very upset by the answer from you about the reason you prefer the KJV.... I need you to please send me several examples of what you consider "serious" errors [in modern translations]. I would also be very appreciative of some reading material that the lay person can understand...or names of some sources....

Response: Thank you for your recent letter challenging me regarding my support of the KJV. This question is too complex to deal with in a brief letter, but let me try once again. You asked for sources.

The best case against "KJV only" is presented by D. A. Carson in The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism. He points out, in "eight key Christological verses (Jn 1:1,18; Acts 20:28; Rom 9:5; 2 Thes 1:12, Tts 2:13; Heb 1:8; 2 Pet 1:1)... the KJV fails to underscore the deity of Christ in four." Most modern translations do as well or better. The NIV scores in seven of the eight. Even Thomas M. Strouse, though strongly criticizing Carson, admits these four KJV failures (Jn 1:18; 2 Thes 1:12; Tts 2:13; 2 Pet 1:1) and explains them as "a textual problem (Jn 1:18) and the other three are translational problems." Even its defenders must admit to some flaws in the KJV.

Critics fault the KJV because it comes from a Greek New Testament which was put together by Erasmus in 1516, later improved by Theodore Beza and Robert Stephanus. The latter's fourth edition in 1551 is "substantially the Textus Receptus," according to Jasper James Ray, one of its most fervent defenders. Too late in time, say the critics, and too few manuscripts as its source. Yet this was basically the Greek text that had been accepted by the Greek church in the East for centuries (the Roman Catholic Church in the West used the Latin Vulgate), earlier manuscripts from which the Greek Bible came having been worn out and discarded. Modern translations (some are worse than others, the RSV in particular) come from a Greek text developed by Westcott and Hort (two scholarly heretics) based largely upon Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, which, though older, are clearly corrupted.