Part One

We know that ancient holy men spake (and wrote) as “they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21). Clearly their words were inspired by God. But could the Holy Spirit also inspire a translation of the Word of God just as He inspired the original manuscript?

It’s an intriguing question and not one to be answered by a shoot from the hip, knee-jerk reaction.

The short answer is that unless the Spirit guides and leads the translator the resultant translation will be but the handiwork of men; it will not carry the imprint of God as the divinely inspired, infallible, sovereignly preserved and provided word of God. It may not have the power to change dead-in-the-water sinners into saints.

Yet those who have been saved by the King James Bible’s words, and daily find light and blessing from perusing its pages, hold that the KJV carries a special anointing of God’s power. That is, its words, when understood and believed, impart the very power of God to a believer in a way other bibles do not.

It has been said the King James Authorised Version is more than just a Bible translation; it is a living entity that not only can be read to hear God’s voice but also actually speaks to those who dare to study its pages.

For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intent of the heart, (Heb. 4:12).

Is that true of other Bible translations, you ask? Not nearly to the same extent. The King James Bible has an incredible origin and history, one that speaks loudly of divine intervention, sovereign inspiration and God’s providential overruling of circumstances. The same cannot be said of most modern bibles which derive from the humanly based and questionable work of academic scholars and their theories as to what the Bible text should say but in their view doesn’t in the KJB.

Example: the KJB says the previously hid revelation of the “dispensation of the grace of God” to Paul (Eph. 3:1-4) was to “fulfil the word of God” (Col. 1:25). Therefore the majority received text on which the KJB is based is fulfilled and complete in the form in which it has come down to us, the King James Bible. All latter bible translations assert that the KJB is not complete or has serious errors; certainly they deem it in need of improvement. It is claimed these new translations remedy omissions, mistranslations and make necessary deletions of words that “shouldn’t be in the text”.

Yet all such versions themselves omit the glaring truth that they are brought into being by publishers seeking profit. Did you know that Rupert Murdoch, owner of the erstwhile salacious News of the World and disgraced Sun, the British daily paper built on “sex, sport and sensation”, was the money behind production of the New International Version of the Bible?

Facts is, almost all Bible publishers have now been taken over by publicly traded companies. The gender-neutered New International Version (2011), New King James Version, New Century Version, International Children’s Bible, Expanded Bible, and The Voice are published by Zondervan and Thomas Nelson, both owned by Murdoch's News Corp. Murdoch also owns the main Bible copyrights in the US and also controls the text of the NIV, the NKJV, and the ESV in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Against all this there is the virtually copyright free King James Bible.

Standing above others the King James Version is unique in several respects:

1 It is still the world’s best-selling Bible after 400 years. Latest figures show KJB sales outstripped those of the NIV and other latter-day bibles in 2024.

2 The authoritative Strong’s and Cruden’s concordances can only be used with the King James Bible.

3, The KJV is the only Bible which clearly states the rules and procedures for studying and interpreting scripture. Other bibles fudge the clear command to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), for example

4. According to the Joy Creative Bibles Survey the KJB was the top favourite in 2024 with 1.2 million copies sold in the U.S.

5. The King James Bible 1611 was not a new translation, as most modern Bibles purport to be. The 47 KJV translators plainly said their aim was not to produce a new version but to make existing translations better.

6. Unlike most modern bibles the KJV is faithful to the received, majority Greek New Testament text, called the “Received Text” or Textus Receptus, that is found in thousands of ancient written Bible versions that, surprisingly, are in very large agreement, even though translated into many different languages.

7. The King James Bible is the only bible that is not copyrighted – outside of Britain it is free to all who will faithfully reproduce it. In Britain it can be published with the consent of the Cambridge and Oxford universities and the publisher Collins.  Again, the main aim for all other bibles is to make money. And to do that they need to change the text in order to establish copyright.

7. Because the KJV doesn’t need to do so it does not have the many corruptions and mistakes found in the Vaticanus and Sinaiaticus texts rediscovered in the 19^th century and which form the basis for the many omissions and alterations found in most modern Bibles. However, the KJB does not derive at all from these corrupt texts which form the basis of the Westcott and Hort Greek theories of textual criticism which underlie nearly all modern bibles. Rather, the KJB faithfully follows the Received Text.

Today biblical scholars shy away from admitting the alterations in their recent translations derive from the corrupt and error-strewn Sinaiaticus and Vaticanus codexes, yet  their widely used United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament draws heavily on the Westcott and Hort New Testament Greek text and its many departures from the KJB.

Highly influential textual critic Bruce Metzger is one of the editors of the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament and the author of many widely used books on textual criticism. In his 1981 book “The Westcott and Hort Greek New Testament--Yesterday and Today”, Metzger admits:

“The International committee that produced the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament, NOT ONLY ADOPTED THE WESTCOTT AND HORT EDITION AS ITS BASIC TEXT, BUT FOLLOWED THEIR METHODOLOGY IN GIVING ATTENTION TO BOTH EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CONSIDERATION” (Metzger, cited by James Brooks, Bible Interpreters of the 20th Century, p. 264).