The King James Version of 1611 (in editions following the editing of Blayney at Oxford in 1769) still has an immense following, and as such there have been a number of different attempts to update or improve upon it. The English Revised Version and its derivatives also stem from the King James Version.
| Abbreviation | Name | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Webster | Webster's Revision of the King James Version | 1833 |
| (Johannes Lauritzen) | 1920 | |
| CKJV | Children's King James Version Jay P. Green | 1960 |
| KJ II | King James II Version of the Bible Jay P. Green | 1971 |
| KJ3/LITV | King James 3 Version of the Holy Bible (by Jay P. Green) | 1985 |
| KJV20 | King James Version—Twentieth Century Edition Jay P. Green | |
| NKJV | New King James Version | 1982 |
| KJ21 | 21st Century King James Version | 1994 |
| TMB | Third Millennium Bible | 1998 |
| MKJV | Modern King James Version by Jay P. Green[15] | 1999 |
| KJV2000 | King James Version 2000[16] | 2000 |
| UKJV | Updated King James Version[17][18] | 2000 |
| KJVER | King James Version Easy Reading[19] | 2001 |
| HSE | Holy Scriptures in English[20] | 2001 |
| CKJV | Comfort-able King James Version[21] | 2003 |
| NCPB | New Cambridge Paragraph Bible[22] | 2005 |
| AV7 | AV7 (New Authorized Version) | 2006 |
| AVU | Authorized Version Update[23] | 2006 |
| KJV-CE | King James Version—Corrected Edition[24] | |
| DNKJB | Divine Name King James Bible[25] | 2011 |
| MCT | Mickelson Clarified Translation, translated by Jonathan Mickelson[26][27] | 2008, 2013, 2015, 2019 |
| MEV | Modern English Version[28] | 2014 |
| King James Bible for Catholics[29] | 2020 | |
| SKJV | Simplified King James Version[30] | 2022 |
The list above actually tells a story—not of perfection, but of devotion. When a text is considered flawless, it sits still. When a text is loved but acknowledged as human work, it gets revised, polished, clarified, expanded, modernized, and sometimes “fixed,” depending on the editors’ convictions.
The King James Bible sits right in that human-work category, even among believers who revere it. The long parade of revisions points to one simple conclusion: the KJV is respected, treasured, influential, but not treated by its own editors or its descendants as perfect or beyond improvement.
A few key observations emerge.
The KJV has required updates because English changes. Words in 1611 meant things they don’t mean today. “Let” used to mean “hinder.” “Suffer” meant “allow.” “Conversation” meant “conduct.” When a language keeps evolving, any fixed translation drifts out of sync. People create “modern KJVs” because the original becomes harder to understand without constant footnotes.
The KJV has textual issues inherited from the manuscripts its translators used. The 1611 translators didn’t have access to many Greek manuscripts discovered later. Their New Testament was based heavily on Erasmus’s “Textus Receptus,” which itself was compiled from a handful of late manuscripts. This doesn’t make the KJV bad; it just means it reflects the scholarship of its time. Modern translations draw from a much larger pool.
If the KJV were perfect, no one would risk altering it. But your table reads like a family tree of continual tinkering. “Revision,” “twentieth-century edition,” “corrected edition,” “clarified translation,” “modern English version”—these titles tell you that editors saw room to improve clarity or accuracy.
People revise because they believe something can be improved. That’s the entire logic of textual transmission.
The better conclusion is this: the KJV is a masterpiece of English literature and a monumental translation for its era, but it isn’t a flawless snapshot of the original Hebrew and Greek, nor is its English eternally suited to modern readers. It stands as a historical achievement, not as a translation frozen in perfection.
Studying the KJV is richer when it’s set alongside other translations and the original languages. That’s where nuance begins to bloom and where the living text emerges from behind the centuries of ink.
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