How many kjv editions

For instance, the Gothic s looks like the Roman s when used as a capital letter or at the end of a word. But when it is used as a lower case s at the beginning or in the middle of a word, the letter looks like our f. Therefore, also becomes alfo and set becomes fet. Another variation is found in the German v and u. The Gothic v looks like a Roman u while the Gothic u looks like the Roman v. This explains why our w is called a double-u and not a double-v.

Sound confusing? It is until you get used to it. In the edition, love is loue , us is vs , and ever is euer. But remember, these are not even spelling changes. They are simply type style changes. In another instance, the Gothic j looks like our i.

So Jesus becomes Iefus notice the middle s changed to f and joy becomes ioy. Even the Gothic d with the stem leaning back over the circle in a shape resembling that of the Greek Delta. These changes account for a large percentage of the "thousands" of changes in the KJV, yet they do no harm whatsoever to the text. They are nothing more than a smokescreen set up by the attackers of our English Bible. Spelling Changes Another kind of change found in the history of the Authorized Version are changes of orthography or spelling.

Most histories date the beginning of Modern English around the year Therefore, by the grammatical structure and basic vocabulary of present-day English had long been established. However, the spelling did not stabilize at the same time. In the 's spelling was according to whim. There was no such thing as correct spelling. No standards had been established. An author often spelled the same word several different ways, often in the same book and sometimes on the same page. And these were the educated people.

Some of you reading this today would have found the 's a spelling paradise. Not until the eighteenth century did the spelling begin to take a stable form. Therefore, in the last half of the eighteenth century, the spelling of the King James Version of was standardized.

What kind of spelling variations can you expect to find between your present edition and the printing? Although every spelling difference cannot be categorized, several characteristics are very common. Additional e's were often found at the end of the words such as feare , darke , and beare. Also, double vowels were much more common than they are today.

You would find ee , bee , and mooued instead of me , be , and moved. Double consonants were also much more common. What would ranne , euill , and ftarres be according to present-day spelling? See if you can figure them out. The present-day spellings would be ran , evil , and stars.

These typographical and spelling changes account for almost all of the so-called thousands of changes in the King James Bible. None of them alter the text in any way. Therefore they cannot be honestly compared with thousands of true textual changes which are blatantly made in the modern versions.

Textual Changes Almost all of the alleged changes have been accounted for. We now come to the question of actual textual differences between our present editions and that of There are some differences between the two, but they are not the changes of a revision. They are instead the correction of early printing errors.

That this is a fact may be seen in three things: 1 the character of the changes, 2 the frequency of the changes throughout the Bible, and 3 the time the changes were made. First, let us look at the character of the changes made from the time of the first printing of the Authorized English Bible. The changes from the edition that are admittedly textual are obviously printing errors because of the nature of these changes.

They are not textual changes made to alter the reading. In the first printing, words were sometimes inverted. Sometimes a plural was written as singular or visa versa. At times a word was miswritten for one that was similar.

A few times a word or even a phrase was omitted. The omissions were obvious and did not have the doctrinal implications of those found in modern translations. In fact, there is really no comparison between the corrections made in the King James text and those proposed by the scholars of today. Scrivener, in the appendix of his book, lists the variations between the edition of the KJV and later printings.

A sampling of these corrections is given below. In order to be objective, the samples give the first textual correction on consecutive left hand pages of Scrivener's book. The reading is given first; then the present reading; and finally, the date the correction was first made.

Even if they were not corrections of previous errors, they would be of no comparison to modern alterations. But they are corrections of printing errors, and therefore no comparison is at all possible. Look at the list for yourself and you will find only one that has serious doctrinal implications.

In fact, in an examination of Scrivener's entire appendix, it is the only variation found by this author that could be accused of being doctrinal. I am referring to Psalm where the edition has "seek good" when the Bible should have read "seek God. First, the similarity of the words "good" and "God" in spelling shows how easily a weary type setter could misread the proof and put the wrong word in the text.

Second, this error was so obvious that it was caught and corrected in the year , only six years after the original printing and well before the first so-called revision. The myth that there are several major revisions to the KJV should be getting clearer.

But there is more. Not only does the character of the changes show them to be printing errors, so does their frequency.

Fundamentalist scholars refer to the thousands of revisions made to the as if they were on a par with the recent bible versions. They are not. The overwhelming majority of them are either type style or spelling changes.

The few which do remain are clearly corrections of printing errors made because of the tediousness involved in the early printing process. The sample list given above will demonstrate just how careful Scrivener was in listing all the variations. Yet, even with this great care, only approximately variations are named between the edition and modern copies.

No comprehensive revision of the King James Version was undertaken again until the middle of the 19th century. Advanced Search. Privacy Copyright. DigitalCommons Cedarville. The Editions. Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. However, to follow this example, if the publisher did not accurately transcribe the author's manuscript in the original edition, then the corrections would be incorporated into a second edition, not a revision.

This second edition would simply be what the author originally wished to say assuming that all of the printing errors were purged. And this is the case with the KJV. Of the changes of the first kind, there were about typos in the edition. Considering how big the Bible is and that they lacked word processors and spell-check-on-the-fly, that is a remarkably small number. Scrivener, M. Most of these typos are simply a word that was mistakenly used in place of a similar word.

Also, a plural may have been used in place of a singular and vice versa, or the word order inverted, or a word or phrase omitted. Of all of these, there is only one that is doctrinally significant. In Psalm , the KJV reads,. Bear in mind how labor-intensive printing was back in those days. Johann Gutenberg, to whom invention of the moveable type printing press is usually attributed A.

However, little had changed in the intervening years. Printers had to set type into the plates by hand from boxes and boxes of metal type, one letter at a time. There have been several unofficial revisions of the KJV, such as the revisions by the American Bible Society in and , and revisions in the Scofield Bible. These revisionary processes are to be distinguished from the standardization processes of Parris, Blayney and Scrivener.

From to the state of printing had improved significantly. Search this site. Editions of the KJV and the Apocrypha. Unofficial revisions There have been several unofficial revisions of the KJV, such as the revisions by the American Bible Society in and , and revisions in the Scofield Bible.

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