King James and his UNholy Bible

Character Assassination

Come, have a sit.  Let me tell you about a king that lived a long time ago. It is an offensive story, and rightly so, but I don’t think the good king is going to rise from the dead and sue me for slander.  I just think people need to know about the man who “Authorised” the worst version of the Bible ever created.

Witchcraft

King James had a fascination with witchcraft.  He considered it a branch of theology, and when visiting Denmark, he was fascinated with the witch hunts there.  He amended the previous Witchcraft Act that was in place to move it to common law.  He personally supervised torture of women, and they were subsequently burned or hanged.

Kingly Stuff

In 1597, James wrote a treatise called “The True Law of Free Monarchies” in which he claimed the “divine right of kings”.  This writing claimed that, for Biblical reasons, kings were higher beings than other men.  After Guy Fawkes (catholic) tried to blow up Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder, James enacted religious reforms. (Hmmm… monarchs and religious law… sound familiar?)
James hated Catholics and they hated him.  He had many executed and many of them tried to assassinate him.

The “Authorised” Bible

Fed up with the Catholics, and bowing to pressure from the English clergy, James commissioned a new version of the Bible.  He gave the translators instructions that it must conform to the ecclesiology and episcopal structure of the Church of England.  All 47 translators were members of the Church of England.
By the 18th Century the King James bible had replaced the Vulgate Bible for all English translations.  The Vulgate Bible was the work of St. Jerome, who wrote it in the 4th century.  It was the definitive and official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.
Jerome was a meticulous translator.  For the most part his translation into Latin was accurate (except for notable problems like introducing the word “Lucifer” in Isaiah, which was not in the original Hebrew).
There are literally THOUSANDS of mistranslations, changed words, added verses, manipulated scriptures and it has 419 archaic terms that have absolutely no modern equivalent.
Steve Rudd, who has studied the errors, notes in his page, KJV Only Refuted

• There are over 8,000 alternate English renderings from Greek and Hebrew manuscripts (THAT WERE IDENTICAL)
• The KJV translators included many alternate translations in the margins because they had no idea which was correct.
• There were four revisions of the KJV and they all are different!

 

Some Blatant Errors

• KJV changed “robbers of temples” to “robbers of churches” in Acts.
• “Lucifer” is inserted in Isaiah 14:12, which was a common English name for the Devil in the 1600s.  However, in the original texts the reference is to the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar.
• KJV replaces “Passover” with “Easter” which is a Pagan Roman holiday.
• They replaced “immersion” with “baptism” which in 1611 meant sprinkling water on the head.
• Tithing was changed from being on “all I acquire” to “all I possess”.  The original meaning was to tithe on any INCREASE in your resources, NOT on ALL of them.  This was a nasty trick when trying to manipulate the enemies of James into paying taxes.
• KJV uses “Schoolmaster” instead of “attendant”.  This is egregious.  I changed the notion of the law from “bringing us to Christ” into “TEACHING us about Christ”.  This is where the Pauline scriptures were manipulated from spreading the Gospel to enforcing made-up rules.
• KJV says “ashes upon his face” where the original says, “bandages over his eyes”.  That’s awkward.
• In dozens of places in the New Testament the KJV translates IDENTICAL WORDS and phrases DIFFERENTLY in different places!  The exact phrase is repeated in scripture, but differs in KJV.
• The translator Erasmus was criticized for leaving out the verse: 'the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth' (I John v. 7-8, King James version).  He explained that it was not included it ANY GREEK manuscript he’d ever seen, but that he would go back and retroactively INSERT it in Greek!!!!  The source was found to be from a translation by a Franciscan friar who got it from a DISPUTED VERSION of the Latin Vulgate.  (INTERESTING!  THE WHOLE “COMMA JOHANNEUM” MAY BE WRONG!  Trinitarianism may be a human error!)

A BIG FAT HUGE PROBLEM

Many modern fundamentalists refer to Rev 22:19, which includes the “book of life” and use that to justify eternal hellfire.  The phrase “book of life” was NEVER IN ANY GREEK MANUSCRIPT!  The phrase is supposed to be “tree of life”.

* Let me take a minute and explain why this is a huge problem.  Fundamentalism refers to all those not having their name written in the “Book of Life” being burned forever.  If you remember back in Genesis, the “Tree of Life” was the source of eternal life.

Fundies want you to believe that “SOULS” will be burned.  This is not true.  The New Testament affirms REPEATEDLY that anything “not of the spirit” will be burned up.  This means your body.  Your possessions.  Your works.  IT WILL ALL BE GONE!

YOU, however, are not your body.  Your body decomposes.  Your soul lives forever basking in the presence of God.  It’s true that everything not of the “Tree of Life” will be burned away.  If you recall in the previous verses John states that death ITSELF will be destroyed.

My point is:  YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO!  Not one single person will ever be eternally damned to hell!  There is no eternal hell!
STOP LISTENING TO THIS LIE!  START LIVING YOUR LIFE IN JOY KNOWING YOU ARE ETERNAL AND LOVED BY GOD.  STOP BEING SCARED AND SCARING OTHERS!

Summary

Nearly every ignorant, intolerant or false statement or concept in modern fundamentalism can be traced back to the King James Bible.  It’s the one most of us were taught with and many people actually believe God spoke in Old English!
The KJV is a terribly botched political tool that contains thousands of errors and has caused indescribable grief.  I encourage anyone to confirm these statements on their own, but most of all STOP QUOTING IT BECAUSE IT IS WRONG!

LINKS

Here is a great summary of many of the errors:
KJV Errors