Subject: tc-list KJ or not KJ

From: "Vinton A. Dearing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:24:40 PST

What helps did the King James translators turn to when they 
translated the Hebrew Bible? They said themselves in their preface 
that they used every available help. That should settle the question.
Attempts to prove that they did what they said they did are more 
difficult, and I do not find Ronald Minton's of July 5 convincing.
     We do not know, for instance, what edition of the MT the 
translators used, or even that all members of the committee used the 
same one. And what edition of 1611 do we mean? The one that has "he 
went" in Ruth 3:15 or the one that has "she went"? And, for that 
matter, how do we know that when these two editions agree they always 
give what the translators intended their readers to see? In sixteenth 
and seventeenth century printing we cannot be sure that any edition 
of any book has every copy identical. Minute correspondences and 
differences, then, are not of themselves convincing. Specialists in 
editing the literature of the period compare as many copies of each 
edition in their purview as they can; all the surviving copies of 
Shakespeare's First Folio have been compared letter by letter, 
punctuation mark by punctuation mark, using an optical machine, the 
Hinman collator, named after its inventor, that makes even differences 
in spacing  immediately obvious. No such work has been done on early 
editions of the MT or the KJV to my knowledge.
     I spent an  hour this morning looking at a microfilm of the copy 
of KJV 1611 with "he went" in the Cambridge University Library. I 
shall call it CUL. My desk copy of KJV, American Bible Society, n.d., 
I shall call ABS. Since I am anything but a Hebrew scholar I 
confined myself to the three instances of the divine name referred to
by Minton. For the readings of the MT I used my desk copy of Snaith's 
edition, 1958, in the full knowledge that the King James translators had
something else in front of them, if not several something elses.
What did I find?
     Minton says that in Ex. 34:23 the MT reads "the Lord, the Lord 
God," whereas KJV reads "the Lord God, the God." Snaith reads "the 
Lord, the God of Israel," where Lord is YHWH with the vowels of 
adonai.  CUL reads "the Lord God, the God of Israel," where the first 
"God" is in large and small caps, indicating that it translates YHWH 
with the vowels of elohim. Divergences in the pointing of YHWH, says 
IDB IV, 588, are fairly common in the manuscripts. May they not be 
equally common, then, in editions based on different manuscripts. 
Isn't it possible that CUL translates accurately?
     Minton says that in Gen. 6:5 the MT reads "LORD" whereas the KJV 
of 1611 reads "God." Snaith has YHWH with the vowels of adonai. CUL 
has "God," ABS has "God" in large and small capitals. Isn't it 
possible that CUL has a printer's error here, that "God" should have 
been in large and small capitals and is not a translation from some 
other source than the MT?
     Minton says that in 2 Ch. 17:4 the MT has "God" whereas the KJV 
has "LORD God." Snaith has elohim. CUL has "Lord God" with "Lord" in 
large and small capitals. ABS has the same, except that "Lord" is 
also in italics, indicating that it is an addition by the 
translators. May not the absence of italics in CUL be another 
printer's error? I made a cursory search in CUL for instances when 
"God" or "Lord" was in romans and could find none (CUL is in 
gothic type with the added words in romans instead of in roman type 
with the added words in italics). But it may be that there are instances 
in CUL of "Lord" in roman type, increasing the possibility that 2 Ch. 
17:4 in CUL contains a printer's error.
     And in any case, are these divergences from the MT significant? 
Do they refute the argument that we do not need to correct or 
interpret the KJV from anything but the MT? I cannot agree. I am 
myself willing to look elsewhere for better readings than those in 
the KJV, especially since the translators said they did. But proving 
their assertion is not as easy as Minton makes it seem. 
 
useLooking specifically,

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From: "Kevin W. Woodruff" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:32:20 -0400

As far as the MT text goes,  we know that they used the Hebrew text as
reflected in the Complutesian Polyglot (1517), the Antwerp Polyglot (1572),
the Platin Polyglot (1572) and Jacob Ben Chayyim's  Second Rabbinic
Bible(1524/5), which remained the Hebrew Textus Receptus until is was
replaced by the Codex Leningrad in the 3rd edition of Kittel's Biblia
Hebraica in 1937. 

Readings from the LXX, the Vulgate and Hebrew scribal tradition were also
used by the KJV translators in addition to the readings of earlier English
Bibles and other Eurpeoan viersions such as the Cypriano Valers version of
1602.  After all the KJV was merely a revision of the Bishops Bible 

>their assertion is not as easy as Minton makes it seem. 

Kevin W. Woodruff, M.Div.
Library Director/Reference Librarian
Cierpke Memorial Library
Tennessee Temple University/Temple Baptist Seminary
1815 Union Ave. 
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404
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423/493-4252 (office)
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