The following is more than a quick entry, but a modest attempt to explain the relevance of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. 

I prefer the use of the digital over the traditional because it’s generally more powerful and efficient. I only accumulate hard copy, when I must, because physical bookshelf space is expensive, and Moore’s Law continues to make digital storage cheap. However, I do appreciate the beauty of the older bindings, and I am nostalgic like any Baby Boomer might be about the past. That being said, Is new always better? New is always better, if it is an improvement. “Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2Peter 3:18 KJV). 

In economics, bad money drives out good, according to Gresham’s Law, which accounts for the lack of Silver Dollars or $20 Gold Double Eagles in the cash register, when change is made at Walmart, if you still use cash. In biology, the concept of survival of the fittest necessitates the disappearance of the least fit, if you believe in evolution. Because an investment was good yesterday, will it necessarily be good today? So, if I cite the LORD’s statement, “Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16 KJV), then, in that instance, old is better. 

As a Baby Boomer, I prefer the King James Version (KJV 1611) of the Bible. I was raised on it, taught from it, and memorized it. In fact, I use a smartphone to translate between KJV and other translations. In the providence of God, I believe the KJV is the finest conveyance of the Word of God into the English language. And, it’s language immediately draws attention to the fact that God’s Word is being cited, in comparison to citing the more colloquial language of modern translations. “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth” (John 17:17 KJV). 

If the Spirit of God would allow you, here is my understanding about the King James Version (KJV). 

The KJV relies upon the Textus Receptus or the Received Text. It is also known as the Majority Text or Universal Text from the Byzantine family of Greek manuscripts [MSS] of the New Testament. The Alexandrian Text — once identified as the Minority Text or the Egyptian Text — with its extra-Biblical Apopcrypha and Gnostic tendencies — was used to produce the Westcott-Hort Greek New Testament (1881), which is the foundation of most modern translations. 

Two liberal theologians, Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901) and Fenton Anthony Hort (1828-1892) — both rejected the inerrancy of the Scriptures and its literal interpretation. Westcott confessed, “No one I know, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of Genesis, for example, give a literal history.” Hort admitted his inability to assert the “absolute infallibility of a canonical writing.” Their New Testament Greek Text (1881) was the result of a 28 year collaboration at Cambridge, producing the basic text adopted by the United Bible Society, and is used widely among most theological and divinity school students. Westcott and Hort based much of their work upon the Codex Vaticanus (B) manuscripts in the custodial care of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), and upon Constantin Tischendorf’s Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph), which were discovered in a wastebasket of the Monastery of Saint Catherine on the Sinai Peninsula in 1859. 

An observation, the RCC would derive great pleasure in any Critical Scholarship that insists upon the superiority of the “older manuscripts” of the Alexandrian Text (Egyptian), for it would weaken the Protestant notion of an Infallible Bible, as represented by the commonly Received Text of the KJV, and could more easily lend support for an Infallible Pope. Just look at Mark 16:9-20 in the New International Version (NIV), the text is italicized because it is not found in the Greek Texts from Egypt. The Great Commission of one of the four Synoptic Gospels is missing (16:15) because of the reliance upon Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. 

Further, any need for “redaction” of the Old Testament manuscripts, would be unnecessary, for the Levitical copyists have already faithfully preserved the Hebrew Old Testament, which can be found in the Ben Chayim or Bomberg Text of the Rabbinic Old Testament, without the necessity of a 250 BC Septuagint (LXX) translation of the Hebrew into Greek, which contained Origen’s subsequent Hexapla inclusion (third century AD) of the spurious Apocryphal books later found in the Catholic Bibles. 

Seven Facts About Scripture 

(1) The concept of inspiration is found in the NT. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2Timothy 3:16 KJV). 

(2) Inspiration is the work of God acting upon the writer without setting aside their moral agency. “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2Peter 1:21 KJV). 

(3) Scripture does not contradict itself, since the authority of Scripture is final and cannot be set aside. “If He called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35 KJV). 

(4) God’s Word accomplishes exactly what He intends. “So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11 KJV). 

(5) The Word of God is meant to be lived out by man. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4 KJV).

(6) God’s Word accomplishes all that an Unholy Trinity of the Devil, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet never could. “For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:12-13 KJV). 

(7) Jesus Christ is the Living Word of God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1 KJV). “And He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and His name is called The Word of God” (Revelation 19:13 KJV). 

Continuing our narrative of the KJV, though the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of the Original Manuscripts extends to both the Old and New Testament writings of the Scriptures, of what value can such no longer existing Original manuscripts be to us, if the Almighty has not provided some kind of preservation by which we might be benefitted? Unlike the handful of 45 Alexandrian manuscripts, where Codex Vaticanus (350 AD) and Codex Sinaiticus (about 350 AD) disagree thousands of times with each other, the 5,321 manuscripts of the Textus Receptus (KJV) speak with a unified voice, being descended from the Byzantine manuscripts, which come to us from the original Church at Antioch. “And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch” (Acts 11:26 KJV). A very critical question arises in determining the validity of the manuscript source of any translation of the Word of God. “Did it come from the Roman stream of the Codex Vaticanus?” 

The lineage of the manuscripts used for the KJV show a chain of custody dating back to the Church of Antioch in Syria. It is said that the Vaudois [pronounced vo-DWAH] of the Valley of the Piedmontese Alps had received the Scriptures from missionaries from Antioch of Syria sometime after 120 AD and had completed a translation of the Scriptures into their native Latin tongue by 157 AD — the Old Latin Vulgate, which is distinct from and not to be confused with the later Vulgate of Jerome (380 AD) with its Roman Catholic Apocrypha. 

James A. Wylie (1808-1890) described the “apostolicity of the Churches of the Waldensian valleys” with the observation that “Rome manifestly was the schismatic,” while the Vaudois or Waldenses deserved the “valid title of the True Church,” and even the Waldenses’ greatest enemies, Claude Seyssel of Turin (1517) and Reynerius the Inquisitor (1250), have admitted their antiquity, and stigmatized them as “the most dangerous of all heretics, because the most ancient” (excerpted from “The History of Protestantism” Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 6 “The Waldenses – Their Valleys” [1878] by James A. Wylie). The Vaudois were martyred by Rome. Innocent III sounded the tocsin of persecution, and “not fewer than a hundred thousand persons are said to be destroyed” (Wylie, pp.30-31). 

Since the Byzantine Manuscripts commonly accessible to Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) were used in his production of the Greek New Testament, which formed the Textus Receptus (1516, 1519, 1522, 1527, 1535), their use demonstrated a continuity with the Vaudois. The Vaudois Christians had likewise used and preserved the ancient Byzantine manuscripts of Antioch in the form of Latin Scripture; and, their survival from the displeasure of Papal Rome from the time of the Early Church until the sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”) of the Protestant Reformation (1521) is testament that the True Church and the True Word of God triumphed! “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1John 5:4 KJV). 

Both the KJV and the ancient Vaudois Bible were descended from the Byzantine Manuscripts, which are in stark contrast to the vast majority of modern translations, which trace their lineage back to Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. The Bibles of the Textus Receptus (KJV) opened like a flood gate to the world, giving us the Spanish Reina-Valera (1569), the Italian Diodati (1603), the Coverdale Bible (1535) the Tyndale New Testament (1536), the Great Bible (1539), the Bishops Bible (1568), the Geneva Bible (1560-1599), and of course, the King James Bible (KJV) (1611). 

John Wesley (1709-1791) attested to the accuracy and understanding that the Vaudois Christians were not merely a more recent vintage of Protestant reaction to the Church of Rome, coming upon the scene through Peter Waldo in twelfth century France (1171 AD), but that the Vaudois were ancient Christians, who preserved their Christianity along with the Scriptures — separate from the Church of Rome — as far back as the second century AD. 

John Wesley had this to say about the Vaudois or Waldenses: “It is a vulgar mistake, that the Waldenses were so called from Peter Waldo of Lyons. They were much more ancient than him; and their true name was Vallenses or Vaudois from their inhabiting the valleys of Lucerne and Angrogna [Valley of Groans]. This name, Vallenses, after Waldo appeared about the year 1160, was changed by the Papists into Waldenses, on purpose to represent them as of modern original” (“Notes on the Revelation of John,” Revelation, Chapter 13, Verse 6, p. 936). 

If ancient Christianity changed the face of the world with a complete canon of Scripture, what wonders may be wrought, if the restrictions are restored to just the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark! 

May God grant you the blessing of the use of those italicized words in the close of Mark 16:9-20 (NIV), for which your ancient brothers and sisters in Christ — the Vaudois — gave their last full measure! 

Amen and amen. 

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