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King James Is Good, But Not the Best
By Wink Wilson, Goshen
I'd like to respond briefly to Marcel LeRoy's response [Translated for the Glory of God, June 7] to Darril Deaton's King James Version article [Weighing In on the Translation Issue, May 24]. Mr. LeRoy was undoubtedly upset by Dr. Deaton's excellently written article showing many obvious weaknesses in the King James Version Only arguments against those of us who believe other translations of the Bible are not just equal to, but in some case much better and far more accurate than the King James Version of the Bible. There are thousands of manuscripts available today that hadn't been discovered when the KJV translators did their work in 1611.
Mr. LeRoy stated a common KJV-only argument with absolutely no factual support behind it: that "The King James Version is the only version in the English language that was translated for the glory of God. The rest of the modern translations were done for MONEY–to make more money for the publishing companies." Sounds good enough to those who don't look past their noses and it's a very old argument, but if Mr. LeRoy thinks those who publish the KJV aren't making money, accounting is definitely not his bag. Anyone who is publishing any version of the Bible is making money. That is just one of the arguments that KJV-only folks use in superior-like tone when looking down upon those of us who prefer one of more of the other versions. Dr. Deaton's article wisely pointed that out. Even the completely distorted and inaccurate Jehovah's Witnesses Bible, The New World Translation, makes the bucks.
The King James Bible is very, very good and I have no problem reading it at all. (I used it solely for 25 years daily.) In fact, most of my memorization is King James and I constantly refer to the KJV-based concordances, dictionaries, etc. However, I did not (and I doubt Mr. LeRoy does) use a 1611 version of the KJV. The one I used was actually the 16th revision (1879) of the KJV–the most common one around these days–and that's the one I suspect that Mr. LeRoy uses too, but apparently he's not aware of it. He and I would probably labor our way through an actual 1611 version, what with many of the letter S's being printed as f's (i.e., Moses being spelled "Mofes," etc.) and all the other problems that have since been brought up to date, so to speak. The King James is good, but it's definitely not the best in our modern English-speaking world. And it should never be a point of division among Christians at all.
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