Bart Ehrman: What Kind of a Text is the King James Bible? (Manifold Greatness exhibition opening)

so my name is Janet and I am the outreach librarian here at the William a Chanin Library and I want to thank all of you for coming out to celebrate the opening of manacle greatness with us tonight this is the culmination of nearly two years worth of work and waiting and I'm delighted that this day is finally here we were one of 40 academic and public libraries that were selected across the country to host the traveling exhibition of medical greatness it was created to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible in 2011 and it was organized by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC and the American Library Association's Public Programs office it's based on an exhibition of the same name developed by the Folger Shakespeare Library and the modeling and library at the University of Oxford with assistance from the Harry Ransom Center for the University of Texas and this exhibition was also made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities so after tonight's talk all are invited to join us in the atrium to view the exhibition along with the companion exhibit rare books in archives and special collections which is called a singular wisdom the King James Bible and early printed Bibles and then copies of dr. Herman's books are also going to be available for sale and signing if you enjoy yourself tonight I do want to encourage you to help us spread the word and consider its meaning one of the other three events that we have planned over the next month and that you see briefly described behind me we also have these available for take with you it's taken an army of collaborators and partners to make this happen and I need to extend my sincere gratitude to the following supporters and so my colleagues here at the library the LMU Office of the provost the office of the associate provost for undergraduate education the department of theological studies young presidential associates a Center for religion and spirituality campus ministry the William Andrews Clark library at UCLA and they go with a public library and finally I need to thank my guide to all things New Testament who did not know what he was getting into when he picked up the phone back in March 2011 when I call to ask them for advice otherwise I'm pretty sure he would have just left let it go to voicemail and conveniently forgotten about it so please join me in thinking in welcoming Ellen a theological studies professor Jeffery seikar who will introduce tonight thank you thank you very much Jane um I didn't answer the first time she called especially the second thought email and said she wasn't going to let us so I said all right it's a real honor to be able to introduce Bart Ehrman Bart and I go back longer than I care to think we were both students at Princeton Theological Seminary together doing our PhDs he was a few years ahead of me and I'll never forget the first time I met him I walked into the graduate study office for everybody every graduate students basically built a small castle on a desk where their stuff was and Bart this is before the age of computers Bart had all of these 3x5 index cards because he was collating manuscripts from a guy by the name of didymus the blind and I remember asking Bart so what does it mean to look at manuscripts by a guy who was blind no and he said good question and he never really answered it I'm talking ever since everybody let me give you the the formal she'll professor Aaron it might be some editorialized you can never tell um Bart Ehrman is the James a gray distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill he's been at UNC since 1988 after four years of teaching at Rutgers and at the University of North Carolina he has served as the director of Graduate Studies he chaired the department he has one distinguished teaching awards there he received his Masters of Divinity and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary following his BA from Wheaton College and he worked with the person who was clearly was really the preeminent textual critical scholar in the United States at least professor bruce master who was a wonderful wonderful human being and I imagine Bartman has some stories he wants to share um but a sense of finishing in Princeton bard his net let no dust settle under his pen he had is the author or editor of 24 books I think by the end of this year is gonna rise to 28 from on the stick and tons of articles dozens of book reviews he's just incredibly prolific and the rest of the guild is rather jealous and envious many of the books that he's written have been on the New York Times bestseller list which is why he's made it on The Colbert Report a couple of times and on the Jon Stewart Daily Show once and I don't think the more conservative places have invited you yet but but it is true the part has engaged in all kinds of public debates with relatively conservative theological voices across the country since his own roots lie in a more conservative tradition among his most recent books are the Greek English edition of the Apostolic fathers in the low classical library series what is kind of the go-to volume for the Apostolic fathers also he's published an assessment of the newly discovered Gospel of Judas with Oxford University Press and then for New York Times bestseller books Jesus interrupted God's problem looking at the view of suffering misquoting Jesus which is probably the most surprising book that made it on the New York Times bestseller list I think it made it to number three of them on the stadium and it's on text criticism of all things which is not the sexiest subject on the face of the planet typically but Bart managed to pull it off and then most recently forged which looks at why some boasts of New Testament are in fact deliberate forgeries his books have been translated into 27 languages and I asked if Algonquin had been one of them Algonquin was apparently the first Bible published in the United States partner we're wondering how many Algonquin is actually read it at any rate among Bart's fields of scholarly expertise are the historical Jesus early Christian Apocrypha Apostolic fathers manuscript tradition of the New Testament and I should also add the history of the reception of the New Testament text Bart is a a text critic and has been busy working on the task of reestablishing or establishing as best we can the most original version of the New Testament but he's also been very influential and pushing the guild of text critics beyond some of the New Testament into looking at all right what were the texts that the early church fathers used what were the texts these other people used and so very much looking at regional and local texts that various folks have used he has served as president of the South East region of the Society biblical literature he's chaired the New Testament textual critisism section of the Society has served as a book review editor for the main academic journal the Journal of literature and he has been the editor of the monograph series on the New Testament and the Greek father's he currently serves as co-editor of the International of the series tool studies documents and he's co-editor-in-chief for an International Journal Magilla I Kristiana which is one of the main journals that looks at early Christianity and he is served on a bunch of other editorial boards and journals and monographs in the field he lectures extensively anyone he has won numerous university Awards and grants including the 2009 Pope spirit of inquiry teaching award the 1993 UNC undergraduate student teaching award the 94 Prize for artistic and scholarly achievement and the Bowman and Gordon gray Award for Excellence in teaching or it also has done several of the tape series on what's a colleague at time teaching company the Teaching Company yes and so if you may have seen the teaching company series the New Testament among other things and he's just a really brilliant lecturer he's able to write in ways that people can access and understand what he's talking about even if he's talking about complicated things Bart has two kids Kelly and Eric or both now in her 30s which is scarier than anything and he's married to Sarah who is a professor of theatre and medieval English at Duke University and they make their home in Durham North Carolina and we were very pleased to be able to able to get him out here so please join me in welcoming well thank you very much yeah thank thank you all for for coming out tonight I've enjoyed being here so far and enjoyed preparing this lecture on the King James Bible something that is a obviously an enormous cultural artifact and is worth our attention and this exhibition that you have here Ellen you so my talk is what kind of text in the King James Bible manuscripts translation and the legacy of the King James Version I want to start by talking about a very brief history of Bible translation and to begin that to talk about my first interest in Bible translation about 25 years ago before I started teaching at Chapel Hill I was working for my mentor Bruce master who as Jeff said is one of the great textual scholars of the 20th century and he among other things was the chairman of the committee that was preparing the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible which is a standard translation that a lot of people use today and when I when I graduated from my ph.d program with him he asked me if I would serve as his research assistant for the NRSV translation and so I did research for a couple of years with Metzger in preparation for this translation that was coming out in the the office that I had there Princeton seminary at the library spear library Princeton seminary while working for the NRSV there was a metal box that was sitting on bookshelf that Metzger loved to show people and tell about inside this box were ashes and the deal was this in 1952 the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was published and many conservative Christians thought that it was filled with heresy because they had mystery say the important passages and that this translation the RSV was in fact inspired by the devil and so there was a pastor in North Carolina where I now live who who took a copy of the RSV in the pulpit had took a blowtorch and puppet announces the pup publicly before he did this so he'd get a big crowd and he attacked it to the blowtorch and as a burn as it turns out is hard to get a Bible to burn not because is the Bible but just because it's a flood with hard covers and it's gets hard to get and so he had this blowtorch going and it wasn't working he finally says looks like the devil it's hard to burn it's a barley with a hot fire and it burned and he collected the ashes and sent them to the chair of the RSV Bible Translators and this is what I think your Bible so messed would always show off is this uh this box of ashes and then he would say that he's glad that in the modern period that it's only a copy of the translation that gets burned rather than the translation since he was the translator for the other states so yes so in the modern in the modern period some kind of people for translation but in fact at one point they did burn translators the first translator of the Bible into English was William Tyndale and he was in fact burned at the stake for his efforts he goes with the first to translate the Bible into English per se the first to do this was Don Wickliffe or at least the followers of John Wickliffe in 1382 and you're going to have there's going to be another session devoted to the liquefied Bible here is part of part of the series that I'm sure will be extremely interesting Wickliffe tracks related the Latin Bible into English and so the deal is this the the Christian Old Testament the Jewish Bible is written in Hebrew and the New Testament is written in Greek but throughout the history of the Western Church the Bible the people used was the Latin translation that had been done back in the fourth century starting with with the with the great scholar Jerome and so the Roman Catholic Church historically had used the Latin Bible so wit clip or at least his followers translated the Latin Bible into English in the 14th century 1382 and this caused a lot of of Roman Catholics to be upset a lot of Roman Catholic clerics didn't want the Bible available to people in their native language because they weren't sure what use they would put the Bible to and so they wanted to be able to tell them what was in the Bible and what the vibe meant without people reading it for themselves and so they got upset about this Wickliffe I Bible and there was a convention in Oxford in 1408 in obviously in England where there was a policy passed that said that nobody could translate the Bible into English anymore without getting a without being authorized by the church so that they wouldn't allow Bible translation and this became this became the law of the land in England in the early 15th century when Tyndale came along in the early 16th century he decided that in fact he wanted the Bible available to two people that he didn't want it simply to be available to the clergy he wanted people to be able to read it and he wanted them to read a translation that was made from the original Hebrew and Greek not simply from the Latin Vulgate he was trained in Greek as most people were at that time starting certain soon before that at Oxford so he could read Greek well and he picked up Hebrew as well and so he started translating the Bible he translated the entire New Testament and in the process of doing this he knew he wouldn't be in England so he actually I had to go to Germany to do it and he translate the New Testament he ended up being betrayed and thrown in jail he translated the first five books of the Old Testament the Pentateuch and in jail he translated Joshua to second chronicles so he translated about half of the Hebrew Bible but he ended up as I said being betrayed he was in jail they ended up they ended up executing him for violating this law of 1408 and so he was burned at the stake in 1536 and so that was what happened to the first Bible translation we've ended after Tyndale what a lot of people don't realize is that the King James Version was not the first English translation Tyndale's was and it wasn't the first one after Tyndale there were a number of translations that were done there were there were seven major translations after Tyndale but the most important ones were won by a companion of his Myles Coverdale who did a translation in 1535 that was if in fact accepted in England even though Tyndale ended up being executed the next year for doing exactly the same thing the great Bible that was also done by this guy Myles hungar Dale and he's a vote these are entire Bible so Tyndale didn't get through the entire problem because he got Guilford but but these are entire Bibles the great Bible was called the great bottom up because everybody thought it was so great but because it was enormous and so it was designed for churches so you'd have a big Bible up there in church so people people could read it there's a Bible called the Geneva Bible in 1560 which was a called the Geneva Bible because Protestants who were in exile from England had gone to Geneva and they decided they wanted a to do a new translation of the Bible and they did this translation in which they put a lot of marginal notes where they lambasted the Catholic Church these were Protestants who really didn't like the Catholic Church and among other things they had marginal notes that indicated that the roman catholic pope was the Antichrist of 666 of the book of Revelation and another things it didn't make them very popular with their Catholic friends and neighbors finally there was a bishops Bible done in 1568 by a group of a group of bishops these two Bibles here the Geneva Bible and envision smile where the first part was done by committee today almost all Bible translations are done by committee and there are there are different opinions about that about whether that's a good thing or not some people think that really what you what a better thing is to have somebody's individual genius come through in the translation and other people think that it's better to have a committee because that way you can sort of get rid of the idiosyncrasies of any particular translator but you know sometimes translation by committee doesn't go so well because it's like writing a memo by committee as you get to kind of the lowest common denominator it's not so good well the thing about all these Bibles is that even though they're separate translations all of them were heavily dependent on Tyndale's translation and that of course is of course that that is what we're going to see within James Bible as well so let me say something about were the King James Waddell came from King James became the King of England in the early 17th century he had been the King of Scotland and he was he was related by blood to Queen Elizabeth and he became the king and one of the big problems that Elizabeth had faced during her reign was that the the Puritans in the English church didn't like very well the established church that they thought that the established church with its bishops and its ceremonies and its rituals were not really what religion was supposed to be all about that's a Puritans were sort of like really hyper Protestants and in the Church of England you also had people who are traditional and the Puritans and the traditionalists were at each other's throats and so King James who was concerned about such things call a conference at a palace at Hampton Court which is just outside of London in south southwest side of London it was a palace built by Henry d8 and he had his Hampton Court conference in order to have the Puritans and the traditionalists figure out how we get along with each other well so they had these debates and it didn't go too well for the Puritans but but at the end but at the end of these debates somebody suggest said one of the Puritans suggested we needed a new translation of the Bible they wanted a new translation of the Bible because they didn't like the bishops Bible that had been around Hey I'm sorry the James is actually on the side of the of the traditionalist and he liked the idea of a new translation because he thought if we get a new translation he could he could quiet these Puritans who are the ones who wanted the translation and so he agreed to the new translation but thinking that this would be a way of promoting the cause of the traditionalists and so there were he he made it happen there were six committees appointed mainly these were people who taught at Oxford and Cambridge the two universities in England at the time they formed six committees two of which met at Oxford Cambridge and then in London at Westminster there there are questions among scholars about how many people actually participated in the translation but the best guess is that there were 47 translators who were all skilled highly skilled in a Greek and Hebrew today when somebody who's highly skilled in Greek like Geoff seikar me we're considered highly skilled in Greek that means we can kind of slosh our way through a Greek text if we have dictionary city necklace these guys including King James could speak Greek and did speak Greek to each other when they felt like it and they could read Hebrew like the newspaper so I mean this is the these were serious serious dollars to you know their excuses they didn't have TV there was no ESPN they you know what did they do they said roundly studied Greek this is what they did and so they were and Latin Hebrew and what they had six committees and he's in these places and they started the translation all of the people on these committees were Church people the really clear Puritans or or many of them were bishops or had some kind had some kind of connection official connection with the church it took them seven years it was finished in sixteen sixteen eleven it was called the authorized version in America we called it the King James Bible in England they call it the authorized version although authorized is a bit of a misnomer because the king the King James never really officially authorized the translation and it was never authorized by an active part of it or anything else but but the people translated it considered it to be authorized and so they call it the authorized version one of the striking things about this authorized version the King James Version is just how much it is reliant on earlier translations especially the translation of Tyndale this reliance in fact is admitted by the translators in the preface of the 1611 edition of the King James Bible it says truly good Christian reader we never thought this is the translators problem from the beginning that we should need to make a new trance nation but to make a good translation battery or out of many good ones make one principle good one that have been our endeavor and so they're admitting that they're not in fact ignoring what the other translations have have done they're going to consult those as well as look at the Hebrew and agreed what they don't tell you is that they basically rip off the Tyndale translation so the reality is that the King James Version is a is a technically it's a revision of the bishops Bible the bishops Bible is a revision of the great Bible and the great Bible is our vision of Tyndale in the exhibit out here in the in the exhibit in the room in here where they've got the bottles and things one of the one of the very telling exhibits is they have a passage from Matthew chapter 5 in the Tyndale Bible in the Geneva Bible and and in the King James Bible just look at them and see how similar they are the best estimates are that the King James Bible in the New Testament reproduces Tyndale's words in 92% of eight of the cases not maybe two percent of the words are simply taken from ten dead so you know people celebrate the King Jennings as being the greatest and it it I mean I would go on to say that is the great classic of American literature of America of English literature it's a great classic of English literature but the genius goes back to Tyndale and this isn't often enough acknowledged by people who celebrate the King James not realizing that in fact these translators had predecessors I should say by the way that most of the Bibles that are used today not not most of the Bibles but the New Revised Standard Version that that I did research for was a revision of the 1952 Revised Standard Version that the guy took the blow torch to the Revised Standard Version was a revision of the 1901 American Standard Version which was a revenge of the 1881 revised version which was a revision of the King James which is a revision of Tyndale it almost acted in there when they were when they were doing the lrs-b by the way one of the things people don't recognize is how how do you come up with a name for a new translation and so when I sat in on the committee meetings with the NRSV they debated what are we going to call this thing they ended up calling it the NRSV but there were other options the one that I really hoped it would go for that how they're going to go for is the systems the translation is a revision the RSV I was hoping they'd go with the RSVP du suggested though all right so let me go to PJ's version and the many virtues of the King James Version and there are indeed many virtues of the King James violet for one thing there are very very memorable passages passages the people who know their Bibles these passages they just sound writers they sound like the Bible let me give you some examples Genesis chapter 1 this is from the King James in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said let there be light and there was white you know you can argue that nobody's done better than that that is that is very good Psalm 23 the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want he maketh me to lie down in green pastures he leadeth me beside the still waters he restoreth my soul he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me thy rod and thy staff they comfort me and so on very familiar for very moving and powerful Isaiah chapter 40 verses three to five the voice of him that cries in the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord make straight in the desert a highway for our God every Valley shall be exalted and every mountain and Hill shall be made low and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places planned and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it I move into the New Testament for exactly the passage that's in the room over here the attitudes from the Gospel of Matthew blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled in the last example the gospel of john chapter 1 in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God the same was in the beginning with God all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made in him was life and the life was the light of men and light shining in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not well these are these are very powerful ways of phrasing the biblical text their direct they are rhetorically effective they the the schemes of the scanning schemes work very well they're just a very moving and powerful so they're you know the King James is for this reason has been one of the great classes of the English language that people should read for the sake of the language I think there are not only all passages in the King James there are there are memorable phrases phrases that have become virtually common phrases in the English language Genesis 4 and I my brother's keeper Matthew 5 the salt of the earth Matthew 18 where two or three are gathered together Matthew 26 the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak Luke 12 my favorite eat drink and be merry Romans 2 a law unto themselves Romans 13 the powers that be James 5 the patience of Joe Fridays after phrase the king is come into the the English language and our phrases that we now use in completely different contact just because there's such memorable memorable phrases the impact on the English language has been enormous many people argue that Shakespeare is the most influential individual on the English language and I think that that's probably right if you if you look at the number of words that Shakespeare introduced into the English language it's some phenomenal number and there's no doubt that Shakespeare has had probably the largest impact on the English language but I would argue that William Tyndale is a close second because the King James Bible has made such an enormous impact on the English language and the way we speak the language we understand the language and it's getting a lot of these words from Tibbett so in some respects it's Tyndale who's maybe a pet but it's directly through the King James Bible and so there is there is no doubt that the King James Bible is one of the great literary productions of Western civilization so I think that is an absolute certainty that's not to say that the King James Bible is without his problems there are people today who think that the King James Bible is the only except the translation of the Bible now most of the people who feel that way know nothing about the actual history of how the book was put together and I would suggest that people who think that really should read up on the history of the King James Bible to see how it was put together and one of the books on display out here for sale that I'm not right but I have read is called is by the same name manifold greatness and it's a great little introduction to how the King James Bible came about could be worth they'll be worth reading if you want to see how the King James Bible was was put together there are problems with the King James Bible I think in terms of its usability today by people who want to know what the biblical authors actually said now that's a different issue from do you want to read a great English classic if you want to read a greeting great English classic the King James Bible is the translation to read but if you want to know what the biblical authors actually said the king came from has some problems and I wanted to detail what some of these problems are there are actually three major problems that I'll talk about one is changes in the English language since 1611 because the languages changed most of most of you who are older realized that English has changed a lot in your lifetime you know when yeah so as we we learn from our students all the time so when I started teaching never I can do the feel out of the biases of the translators sometimes affected the way they translated the the Bible I'll give instance of all three of these and third the textual basis the translation is a problem so I'll talk about all three of these first I'll start with changes in the English language since 1611 as it turns out there have been a lot of changes over these four hundred years there are words found in the King James Bible that we simply don't use anymore here are some examples our mug album charge she chose crackles these are in the King James Bible yeah pattern Gyan thousand gap leave your nice new sings ouches room strict sick of mine try and wibbels there are a lot more I beg you to love these words made because what is all look need I have no idea I think you put it in an apple pie the King James has interesting choices about which animals they name okay so it's the problem of animals in the Bible Bible Translators sometimes don't know how to translate certain word I mean modern today 400 years later we don't know how to translate some words in the Bible because you know it's talking about some kind of four-legged creature and that's all you know so what would you call it well the King days you know so in the King James you've got unicorns and satyrs and Dragons and cockatrices and arrow snakes the first for our legendary creatures in the fifth doesn't exist it's not even a legendary creature nobody knows what it is so so yeah modern translations don't use those so well that's the problem if you're reading a passage and it's using one of these words you know so that's the part some phrases in the King James Bible no longer make sense I'll choose of gold call-ups a fat naughty fix LeeAnn with lean with I guess the ground is chapped a brazing wall reqtest my face and me rain of the capital so ah you get words you get phrases you get sentences that simply don't work in English anymore and Jake saw pottage I think that means he was cooking stewed and not Sinai was altogether honest no that sounds illegal thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing which sounds like something a real estate age we do you to wit of the grace of God my favorite is this one yes not straightened in us to hear straightened in your own batters he who left it will less then this incomprehensible the words of the wise are as goats and as nails fastened by the Masters of assemblies which are given from one Shepherd I actually this morning I lift this up in some other possible translations please yesyes twelve and they don't like sense either this is one of those verses party doesn't make sense in Hebrew so but in a cage that it's impossible to know what they're talking about in the King James sometimes how did this do make sense that hasn't changed I would cut off from Jeroboam him that pisses against the wall I looked this one up in Hebrew and you know it's exactly what the Hebrew says I would come from Jeroboam meaning the region of Jeroboam I cut off I will kill anyone that urinates against the wall that's what it says but what so what it means is a man as opposed to a woman and in King James time they understood because men are still pushing against walls apart got what they did during the day so so the modern translations have normally changed this to male supposed to female there are other changes in the language that are a little bit different from the ones I've been talking about what I've been talking about so far have been changes that you don't know the word really means well the bigger problem is there are times when words in 1611 meant something different from what they mean today and when you read the passage you think you know what it means because the word makes sense but they make the wrong sense see what I mean because the word the meaning of the word has changed thanks enemy so for exactly I remember when I was in my 20s I heard somebody preach a sermon I was in a church and somebody freaks sermon on Philippians chapter 3 verse 24 our conversation is in heaven and the sermon was about how you shouldn't tell dirty jokes because your conversation is to be in heaven and so you're not - you know you not to use foul language you're not to curse through your conversations to be in heaven which made sense from the King James but it's not what it means the word conversation in in this the 17th century is what we would use for the word something like citizenship your citizenship is in heaven I mean it's maybe it still means you shouldn't tell that joke about Bush ISM but but it's not what I meant so mean so revelation 17 says this is this is one of my favorites so Revelation chapter 17 you know revelations about this this prophet has these visions these bizarre we scary visions and at 17 he has one of the most bizarre he sees a woman whom the King James is called the of Babylon the of Babylon is in a wilderness she's seen it on a beast this beast has seven heads and ten horns and she's holding a cup in her hand that's filled with her abominations of her fornication and she is drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus it's this horrifying sight and after he looked at her and says I saw her and I wondered with great admiration admiration in the 17th century that astonishment or amazement you know he wasn't admiring her it's a repent against the point of the basset well so so these others second Kings II level of solemn involved many strange women they may have been strange but what it means is they were foreign they mean non-israelite winner is what it means Leviticus 1410 the meat offering in Leviticus 10 the 14 is actually talking about the offering of grains wheat and such but you know calling meat sort of changes the point and something with first Samuel 17 work alive carried a target on his shoulder it means javelin he's carrying a javelin on his shoulder Psalm 88 in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee it means come before you shall come before you first refuse 1024 let no man seek his own but every man another as well which means well-being it doesn't mean you're supposed to God uncovered his money his well did in Acts chapter 10 the Apostle Peter sees a sheet that is lowered from heaven that's filled with animals and in the King James are sent in ship it says that the sheet is knit at the four corners and it means to be let down so it's not that it's a sheet that has unit you know knitting at the corners it's being let down and poking for six be careful for nothing doesn't mean to be careless means don't worry about anything okay so so in the sense that don't care don't be full of caring but don't worry about it so anyway so yeah there are hundreds of these you can come up with in the problem with these as I said is that you read them and they seem to make sense but they mean they have a different sense than what you would take thing today and so this it's a problem if you what we want to do is know what the author's met alright so the other two problems in the text and the theological biases of the translators and the textual basis of the translation so I wouldn't say something about the theological biases of the of the translators it sometimes get in the way got in the way of the translation in my opinion I'll give you just two examples of this Daniel chapter 325 Daniel three is this famous story about these three Israelite men Shadrach Meshach and Abednego who refused to worship a statue of the King Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and Shadrach Meshach and Abednego will not worship the statute because they're faithful to God and they're not going to worship anything anyone except for God but there's a law of the land that if anyone doesn't worship the statue of shatter Nebuchadnezzar they'll be thrown into a fiery furnace and so they refused Nebuchadnezzar gets ticked off and he has the furnace heated up to seven times mohit they take shadrach meshach and abednego and they they bind them they throw them in the furnace and the furnace is so hot that it kills the people who throw them in but they have nebuchadnezzar looked in the furnace and he sees there's a fourth figure in there and the King James says that he sees walking with Shadrach Meshach and Abednego the Son of God now of course any Christian reader is going to read that and assume that it Jesus is in there with them but the Hebrew doesn't actually say the Son of God it's not Hebrew there mayic at this point it says a son of the gods meaning some kind of angelic being but it's not talking about the Son of God Jesus this is important Jesus into the Old Testament which is a which is a theological move so you might want to interpret it that's really Jesus in there but it's all in the text sets okay so you see what I mean it's kind of subtle but it ends up mattering an even more important case is in the book of Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 so this takes a little bit longer to unpack so the deal is this Isaiah was a man living in the eighth century BCE who was a prophet who was a kind of advisor to the king yeah Hey he has who knows that's my father you read King Ahab and a hab is upset because to foreign countries have attacked him the northern country of Israel and the country of Syria have attacked Judah and have laid siege to Jerusalem and Isaiah tells the king that he doesn't need to worry about these two Kings that had attacked him because God is going to take care of the situation and the king says how will I know and Isaiah says that God will give you a sign a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and you shall call him Immanuel that's how that's the King James translation of it and then he goes on to say before the child is old is very is very old to be able to eat honey and curds and these two kingdoms will go back and not bother you anymore now the point of this passage is that some movements going to get pregnant or is pregnant already and is going to give birth and before the child gets very old the problems will pass away okay but in the King James translation it's translated a virgin shall conceive that gets quoted in the New Testament by the Gospel of Matthew as a reference to Jesus a virgin shall conceive and bear a son ye shall call them Emmanuel in the book of Matthew in the New Testament chapter seven now this is complicated but when Matthew is quoting Isaiah he's not quoting the Hebrew of Isaiah he's quoting the ancient Greek translation of Isaiah which does use the word virgin but the Hebrew Bible that is the base of the Greek translation after the king ginger doesn't say virgin in the Hebrew Bible it says a young woman has conceived and will bear a son the Hebrew word is Paloma a young woman it's not the thula which means a virgin and so there's nothing in this passage about the woman being a virgin she's the young woman had that makes perfect sense in the context of isaiah a young woman will concede or has conceived and by the time her son is old enough these kingdoms these kings are going to be disappear well the King James translators are being influenced by their knowledge of the quotation this passage in Matthew and we buy their belief that Jesus was born of a virgin and so they put it back on to isaiah even though it wasn't originally there see what i mean so it's a it's a it's a bias of the translator that's affecting the translation and so in most modern translations today Isaiah 7:14 will be translated a young woman will conceive or has conceived and will bear a son whereas in Matthew courts attracts a virgin because that's the word liqu used it alright so so anyways it so that's that's a case where you're not really seeing what Isaiah had to say because the the translators bias has gotten in the way finally the textual basis of the translation this is the third problem I'll just do these just mention these problems that tend to be in the New Testament and just to give you the brief the brief story of this which is since 1611 a lot of manuscripts that they discovered of the New Testament Greek manuscripts the New Testament originally written in Greek is copied in Greek and copies of those copies were copied over the over the years over the centuries today we have something like five thousand and six hundred copies of the New Testament in Greek the King James translation was based on my eight or ten and the eight or ten they used weren't very good now it's all they have available to them but since then we've discovered thousands but it means that we know more what the original text set because of these thousands they're all different from each other they have different wording here and there in the other place and these few that were available to the King James translators were not very very early their ancient are not very ancient and in some places there they were they had mistakes in them from copies making mistakes this led to a lot of problems here's one of the key ones first John chapter 5 verses seven and eight this is this is called the Johanna c'mon I don't know either go so Johan II because it's in the first job it the first job , means just afraid a short phrase or part of a sentence and so this is an important passage because it's the only passage in the New Testament that explicitly affirms the doctrine of the Trinity it's the only passage in the New Testament that explicitly affirms the doctrine of the Trinity there are passages that mentioned Father Son and Holy Spirit but this passage actually states the doctrine itself as I will read to you from the King James first John 5 so King James first John five verses seven and eight there are three that bear record in heaven the father the word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one okay there you got it three the bear witness there are three divine beings but there's only one three persons one Godhead that's the Trinity so that's that's how the King James translates that verse now when the King James translators were translating the New Testament they were not actually looking at the manuscripts themselves eight or ten manuscripts they were looking at a book that had printed the New Testament based on these few manuscripts the book was produced by the by the great scholar named Erasmus who was a scholar who produced editions of books based on ancient Greek Erasmus was the first to publish a Greek New Testament in printed form over the centuries people copied in my hand printing was embedded in the 15th century Erasmus was the first to produce a printed Greek New Testament and in his printed Greek New Testament he didn't have that verse they had the Trinity in it and the reason was because the manuscript to you mr. first John didn't have the verson well so what happened with what happened was a rasmus's translate version didn't have it and people got really upset because they said you took out the Trinity and Erasmus said you take out the Trinity it wasn't in my Greek manuscript he said I looked at other Greek manuscripts they don't have it either but it was in the Latin Vulgate it was in the lot and so they said but it's you know it should be in there and Erasmus apparently said if you can find me a man Greek manuscript of that verse and I'll put it in my next edition had so they produced the manuscript in fact they literally produce apparently what happened is somebody copied out a man copied it out in Greek and when they got to this passage they translated the Latin into Greek and put the verse in and so Erasmus who agreed to put it in his next edition put it in his next edition and so now the verses in is in his second edition and that's the Edition that's the basis for the King James translation so that's why it made it into English see it's because because of this deal with Erasmus so the verse actually is not originally part of first job it was added later but if you read the King James Bible you would think it was in there okay a couple of there instances that are not as complicated the woman taken in adultery this is the famous passage in the Gospel John where Jesus is teaching the temple and they drag this woman from the Jewish authorities dragged this woman before him and they say she's been caught in the act of adultery and according to the law of Moses she's to be stoned to death what do you say we should do well this is setting a trap to Jesus because if he says well yeah stoner then he's breaking his own teachings about love and forgiveness and mercy but if he says not let her go then he's breaking law Moses so what's he supposed to do well as you know Jesus always has a way of getting out of these traps and this time what he does is he Stoops down he starts riding on Brown he looks up and he says let the one without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her goes back down starts riding around again and one by one they start feeling guilty for their own sins and they leave until Jesus looked up again and there's just a woman there and he says is there no one here to condemn you she says no Lord no one and Jesus says neither do i condemn you go and sin no more that's the end of the story terrific store the favorite story we know it's a favorite story because in every movie produced in Hollywood you've got to have the story with the even Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ even though that's about Jesus last out on earth he has to have a flashback when he remembers the story because you got to have the story it's a Jesus movie so it's in all the problem is this story was not originally in the New Testament it's now found in John chapter 7 8 but in fact it's not in our ancient manuscripts because only in the later manuscripts that this town had so made it into the King James Bible it came into English so everybody knows the story but it's not original to the New Testament it was added by later strike that's problem final Lascaux verses of mark mark is my favorite gospel because there are lots of reasons the ending is quite stark Jesus has been crucified the he's buried by Joseph of Arimathea on the third day the women go to the tomb and it's empty Jesus isn't in the tomb but there's a man there who tells him that Jesus has been raped and the man tells them go tell the disciples that he will meet them in Galilee and then the text says the women said nothing to anyone they fled from the tomb for they were afraid that's it that's the end they didn't tell anyone and Jesus didn't show up to anybody that's it it's over so when you read this you really say oh yeah yeah how can then Jesus show up didn't did they go tell the deciding well scribes in the Middle Ages have exactly the same reaction to copied the Gospel of Mark we got to the end of it and it says the woman fled from the tomb didn't say anything anyone for they were afraid and the scribe said I got a guy he can't bend there and so they added 12 verses in which the women go tell the disciples the disciples go to Galilee Jesus talks with them there Galilee appears to them and so you have a nice rounded ending it ends then well that ending was not originally in the Gospel of Mark who's added by later scribes but the King James translators didn't know that I'm still your King James Bible you'll have those last 12 verses but in modern translations most modern translations either won't include it or they put in the bracket to tell you that it's not original but it was apt later hey well so if you want to know apart how mark into this gospel of gravity matters and so the King James doesn't give you that information let me just say something very quickly about later revisions and additions of the King James Bible people think that the King James Bible is the only Bible there is don't realise that in fact there were lots of King James Bibles the King James was revised in and still called the King James Bible revived in 1613 where they made 413 changes whose revised 150 years later in 1769 with a modernize the spelling language modernize begin in 1873 in 1982 the New King James Bible came out where they got rid of all the DS and vows but left all the problems the result is there many thousands of differences among different King James Bible in spelling and punctuation even though the wording is remain virtually intact but the payoff is there's no one King James Bible so if somebody says you know I just followed the King James Bible yeah Pascal which one did you follow because it's they're different ones there are some major revisions and additions that have that have struck modern readers as somewhat humorous and interesting because of typographical mistakes in addition some of which are in the exhibit over here for example the unrighteous Bible in addition done in 1653 first corinthians 6:9 says know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom that should encourage some activity thus in on Bible 17:16 where Jesus tells you woman caught in adultery go and sin no more it's the vinegar Bible 1770 they had titles for the different passages and this one for instead of the parable of the vineyard is it but that's the point the Lions 5 of 1804 first team 819 Street making David the southern that's happened forth from the lion which is supposed to be loins and then my favorite one which is on display over here I didn't know it was going to be a display before I picked it and sometimes called a wicked Bible or I prefer calling it the adulterous Bible 1631 they left out the negative in the seventh commandment is thou shalt commit adultery this is the most popular Bible of all time all right so let me just draw two very obvious conclusions the King James is one of the worst study Bibles that you can go to if you want to know what the authors of the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament and the New Testament we're trying to communicate the King James is not a good Study Bible because of all the problems that I've laid out for you at the same time it is one of the greatest classes of English literature and should be celebrated because of that it not only affected the English language with its resonances and its vocabulary and its phrases and its sentences it actually is quite beautiful to read and so in some ways it's it's the worst Bible in some ways it's the best Bible thank you very much I have questions in English of course and I'm very interested in your presentation you did an outstanding job with clarity and logical presentation I've learned tonight and ever question the day of the Greek Bible de prevención the duration with in Greek yeah maybe I'm a Hebrew from Hebrew to Greek yes I'll repeat the questions so you can all hear what she's asking she's asking when was the first Greek Bible and it depends whether you mean Old Testament or New Testament do you mean Old Testament okay yeah okay good yeah she's asking about the Greek Old Testament so um we don't know when the Bible was translated into Greek but it was it is usually dated to around 200 BCE that the translation was made and the reason the translation was made is because by by about the Year 200 BCE Jews of course Jews had been scattered throughout the Mediterranean after the destruction of Jerusalem in the 6th century by the Babylonians and by these by around the Year 200 many parts of the Mediterranean were speaking Greek because of the conquests of Alexander break and so there were clear Jews who couldn't read Hebrew who could repeat and so they were translation being made that's the translation the Greek translation is usually called the Septuagint the situation which is based on the idea that there were 70 translators and so Septuagint from 70 so 70 translated we don't actually know what was made and there there were actually different track Greek translations but but the the kind of basic answer is probably around here 200 BCE and I justify me and you said that in that would men were you anything in the world and all the Middle Ages there were some kind of receptacles in front of the windows when men would leave themselves yes and then house lady would use let you in the container ammonia you soak washing yes yes she's pointing out that in the Middle Ages under a wall derby receptacle that the domenica men would urinate into and they would use use this for for cleaning because of the ammonia in the urine and in fact it isn't just the Middle Ages it's in antiquity too so that this was how your your clothes yeah I mean the fuller the one who would clean your clothes would use the gavin urine and bags and use it and it's one of the reasons they required folders to be outside of the limits of ten the outskirts of town because you didn't what couldn't stop yes yes so one of a I'm certainly struck in the 21st century by the way the KGB sounds but looking at police I'm also subscribe and how different it looks that from our vibrance to things that sort of strike me our Roman letters that I see occasionally interspersed in the black leather and I was wondering about those yeah I'm also wondering if you know as when you see pronouns in the KGB where the antecedent is God or Jesus they're not capitalized we're sort of used to seeing yes capital keys yes that's what a point when did that happen well that's a great question he's asking when when to do start getting capitalization pronouns for the deity for God and for Jesus and I don't know the answer does anybody know I don't know the other question is that you have these different typeface Arriaga to have a word that's in a different typeface and that's still replicated in most King James Bibles today at a different way work though where they'll do it in italics and what that is is four words that are not represented in the Greek or Hebrew directly representative your Hebrew that their supply and so that sometimes makes sense they'll put those in this house so you know that that's not an original and you know part of the logic of that is that the original words is what really matters and you need to know what the original words are and so they don't want you to think that they're worth their supplying yeah or as inspired as the original words yeah yeah but that does go all the way back to 16 yes thank you for your talking interesting I have two questions one I think is really easy and straightforward and the other one is slightly more complicated perhaps the first one is you said that there were estimates of how much of Tyndale was in that in the King James and I'm surprised that they still have to estimate hasn't anybody uploaded the two and done it kind of a comparison doing did you hear in the back I think yeah no you're saying I don't know if anybody has done it the the greatest difficult in Dale scholar today says it's 92 percent but he he did that calculation before he would have had a computer to do it and I don't know if there's a straight forward with having kids in most cases there would you you can just take word but with them there might be like a different like a different part of speech but the same root word and so you know you capital not well it's like that Turnitin program that you use for undergraduate drive but the second question has to do with the ways in which some language comes into later versions layer of the manuscript versions and you seem very confident that that means those are always added later but given the presumably much larger number of these manuscripts that once existed that never been discovered and don't survive how do we know that yes the things that we see in slightly later the written versions are not also the earlier things that we just don't know that yeah so this is when Jeff was introducing me and saying that I was trained as a textual critic what he what he was referring to is a shorthand way of saying that that's the kind of thing that my training is that that you you have the text of creative isn't somebody just kind of analyzes attacks it somebody who tries to reconstruct what the oldest form of protection was based on the surviving manuscripts and so there it's a probability judgment and so there's almost never any complete certainty but in some cases the probabilities are so high you can really be fairly certain because these manuscripts that do supply these these five thousand six hundred management we happen to survive that it's a random sample in some ways because if they're you know some of them just happen to show up and so if you get a random sample of you know for the book of first John you know if you get around one sample with 600 managed trips and none of them before the sixteenth century have this passage you know so so you know 596 of these over four of the sixteenth century none of them have a passage but the only ones with a sixteenth century having that then you know it's a probability judgment but so that's pretty common so the three examples I gave you are the one the one about the Trinity there's really no nobody except with complete fundamentalists who have any questions about that the woman taken in adultery is quite that high but it's pretty not and there are there are a couple of people who still argued that those last four verses of Mark really were original but there are more problems than just the manuscripts for one thing another thing you do is you look at the can you Larry and is the vocabulary consistent with the rest of the book and you look at the rioting stock because the writing style consists of the rest of the book so you do you do lots of things and you don't just look at manuscripts you actually look at other other factors and so anyone make any probability check yes my question is you mentioned that a lot of lobbying but not filing degree and that's simple thing added things of the law yes yeah yeah okay so her question is it so if you get it you get a verse that's in the Latin but it's not in the Greek how did you get in the lab right yeah yeah so it's a great question and so um you also get instances in which you get Greek scribes adding things so for example the woman taken in adultery it probably got added in by Greek scribes before got into the lap and what happens sometimes is for example that passage but some people think is that this is a story that everybody heard the woman taken in adultery is a popular story about Jesus and subscribe who's copying the Gospel John responses you know this passage reminds me of that story that we all know and he wrote it in the margin and then the next right thing long said oh look this guy left out the story and stuck in the margin I'm going to put it back in so when he copies it he copies it so then he puts the story in then the next guy copies that manuscript and so it happens like that so sometimes that happened also with the Latin manuscript that somebody would be copying something they'd add a version of margin where they were that something I thought should be there and so it was in the Latin but it never happened on the Greek side excuse me yeah yeah one more question back again so first of all thank for your time we talked a lot about being over added in later division were there any is the things that are left out because I did agree yeah yeah one of the things that subscribes uptown yeah absolutely there were and some some rather interesting incident sometimes sometimes guards would leave things out because by accident but they would copy a word and then so you when you're copying in maastricht it's a little bit tricky one thing these people didn't have desks and so they probably haven't answered from there me and another manager on the other day and they're just kind of and so you're copying you copy a word you read the word and then you copy the word and then you look back where you just word sometimes you I would go to the wrong place so you'd leave out a word or a sentence or page so that that happened um one of the ways it happens is that one of the more interesting ways is sometimes you'll have a passage we have the same words within a verse so like whoever betrays me before people will be betrayed learned that whoever confesses me before people will be confessed before the Son of Man whoever denies me will be denied before the Son of Man okay so we get before the Son of man before the Son of Man sometimes when in a manuscript those words the same words before the son manhood would come on subsequent lines and sometimes when described you do it he'd copy this line but then it's either go back to this law and think that's the line you just copy and so then he'd continue on with the next line and he leave out the middle line so that that is called that has a technical name so the idea of your eyes skipping from one thing to another is called pair of lexis and lines ending the same way or cut this call going to tell you Tom so this kind of mistake is called para Bluffs this occasion my home I tell you talk so two statistic so sometimes sometimes the scribes leave things out on purpose because they didn't like what it said so give you an example this is a probability directed people people could debate this one but there's much debated passage in the Gospel of Luke it's a famous passage it's when Jesus is being crucified and when they're nailing it to the cross in Luke stop this is only Luke it's not Matthew Mark or John Jesus praise Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing right very famous words some manuscripts don't have in fact a lot of manuscripts don't have and some hanket's do have and so either somebody puts words in or somebody took the words out right I mean somebody changed the text so I'm included in or somebody attack that's a which is it well what probably the majority of scholars think is this when the early church fathers talked about this verse they thought that Jesus was praying not for the Romans who crucified Him but for the Jews who were responsible for his death moreover these Church Fathers thought that God never did forgive the Jews for what they did and if that's the case then you can figure out whether somebody put the verse in or took it out probably somebody took it out because they don't want Jesus praying for forgiveness as God isn't going to forgive them and they certainly don't want Jesus praying for forgiveness for these Jews for the rotten things they did and so it's taken out because for anti-jewish reasons to approach so Jesus doesn't pray for forget so so that's an example some it looks like it looks like it was intentional one where they had somebody intentionally stuck in or somebody eventually took it out but you can see why somebody might and yeah so you know where you can come up with an argument for putting it in but either way it does happen in absent your question or tell them the Codex Vaticanus Hebrews okay okay that's all right so on my wall at home in my study I've got a a photograph of a page from a fourth Center management called codex Vaticanus it's called codex Vaticanus because this manuscript was discovered into that library it's a very famous manuscript that is a very important as what our best page which is a New Testament and in the this page the picture of the page I have is the book of is from the book of Hebrews in the New Testament and in a margin this manuscript has the right has described writing in three columns on the page so they're three columns on the page boom boom boom and this is the beginning of the Hebrews and in the middle between the first and second columns there's a handwritten note by a scribe so when you look at the manuscript about a fourth of the way down the page there's there's a word that's written that it looks like has any racer underneath it let somebody erase something you wrote over it and so if you look closely if you with a magnifying glass and look at it and put it under ultraviolet light or if you do you can actually figure out what happened this passenger Hebrews 1 verse 3 says in almost all Bibles says Christ who bears all things by the word of his power now in this game kappahd ik Vaticanus described didn't write Christ bears all things the original wrote Christ manifests all things by the words of it by the word of his power the words look kind of symbol engraved Pharaon and Fonterra they look kind of similar he wrote manifest into the bears which isn't found in any other manuscript subscribe came along and he manifests and put in the word bears so in other words the describe made it said manifest and centuries later scribes reading this and that's wrong he raced it and put in the right word a few centuries later another scribe came along and realized what his predecessors were done and he raced bears and put back in manifest and in the margin he wrote a little note in Greek and the note says fool and they leave the old reading don't change it oh great so I got hit reducing on my wall if you put the punctuation on the Ventus let me change the meaning of the word yeah so that's where the vehicle before the translators came in from the lack of the punctuation lake would have interpreted this way oh yeah well that rapidly the problems of translation in the ancient world but the modern translators are using pointed texts they're using Kodak leningrad dances which is pointed so yeah yeah okay thank you very much you

Channel: LMU Library

Views: 314,647

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Keywords: loyola marymount university, manifold greatness, king james bible

Id: ehnEZtqj2Mo

Length: 79min 39sec (4779 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 07 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/jenjenjaroo]

It’s not the most correct. It’s just one the doesn’t have a copyright and is free.

[u/nbrentout]

The KJV is the bible of Joseph Smith's restoration of the Mormon Gospel. So much depends on this specific translation: the Book of Mormon passages, Smith's revelations, specific Mormon Doctrines, etc., that the church must defend this translation at all costs.

[u/[deleted]]

We need more of these kinds of posts!

[u/InfinitelyManic]

The KJV as one of the Greatest Classics of English Literature.